Religion in Tudor England : An Anthology of Primary Sources [1 ed.] 9781481304894, 9781602582972

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“Debora Shuger and Ethan Shagan’s Religion in Tudor England is a remarkable book. A wide-­ranging, illuminating, and wonderfully accessible anthology of primary documents from the sixteenth century, it permits readers to hear the edgy particularities of religious thought and feeling of the period, and it also ensures that these individual voices join together in pointedly imperfect harmony to tell the complicated story of how and how much religion mattered to the age.” —­David Scott Kastan, George M. Bodman Professor of English, Yale University “This is a rich, imaginative, and original selection of key documents, with an authoritative introduction and framing commentaries. Students will profit greatly from using it.” —­Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, St Cross College, University of Oxford “Anyone looking for a collection of documents illustrative of the conventional history of Reformation and post-­Reformation England need look no further. Religion in Tudor England is an indispensable aid for all teachers of English religious history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” —­Peter Lake, University Distinguished Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

GENERAL EDITORS Roger Lundin Blanchard Professor of English Wheaton College requiescat in pace Debora Shuger Professor of English University of California, Los Angeles

Religion in Tudor England An Anthology of Primary Sources

Ethan H. Shagan and Debora Shuger, editors

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

© 2016 by Baylor University Press Waco, Texas 76798-7363 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press. Cover Design by Pam Poll Interior images courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. This ebook was converted from the original source file. Readers who encounter any issues with formatting, text, linking, or readability are encouraged to notify the publisher at [email protected]. Some font characters may not display on all ereaders. To inquire about permission to use selections from this text, please contact Baylor University Press, One Bear Place, #97363, Waco, Texas 76798. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shagan, Ethan H., 1971– editor. Title: Religion in Tudor England : an anthology of primary sources / Ethan H.    Shagan, Debora Shuger, editors. Description: Waco : Baylor University Press, 2016. | Series: Documents of    Anglophone Christianity Identifiers: LCCN 2016003932 | ISBN 9781602582972 (hardback : alk. paper)| ISBN 9781481304894 (web pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: England—Church history—16th century—Sources. | Great    Britain—History—Tudors, 1485-1603—Sources. Classification: LCC BR750 .R445 2016 | DDC 274.2/05—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003932

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations for Works Commonly Cited

xxxiii

I. PRE-­R EFORMATION/LATE MEDIEVAL 3

Anonymous The miracles of Our Blessed Lady 1496

5

John Alcock Spousage of a virgin to Christ c. 1497

10

Anonymous The doctrinal of death 1498

18

John Colet The sermon of Doctor Colet, made to the Convocation at Paul’s 1512 (preached and Latin ed.; English trans., 1530)

25

12

20

27

II. ENGLISH REFORMATION 35

Simon Fish A supplication for the beggars 1529

37 v



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William Tyndale An answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue 1531

42

William Tracy, William Tyndale, and John Frith The testament of Master William Tracy, esquire, expounded both by William Tyndale and John Frith 1535

59

Elizabeth Tudor A godly meditation of the inward love of the Christian soul towards Christ our Lord (by Marguerite de Navarre) 1545

68

John Calvin A faithful and most godly treatise concerning the most sacred sacrament of the blessed body and blood of our Savior Christ 1541 (preface and English trans., Miles Coverdale, 1548)

81

John Jewel The Apology of the Church of England 1562 (Latin Ed.; English trans., Anne Bacon, 1564)

87

44

61

73

82

91

The Thirty-­Nine Articles 1563, 1571

103 105

John Foxe Acts and monuments

111

The Prefaces from the editions of 1563, 1570, 1576, 1583 The martyrdoms of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, 1563 The martyrdom of three women and an infant at Guernsey 1563

114 123 127

III. CEREMONIES John Knox, William Whittingham, et al. The form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments, &c., used in the English congregation at Geneva 1556

137

Anthony Gilby To my loving brethren that is troubled about the popish apparel, two short and comfortable epistles 1566

148

vi

141

150



Table of Contents

Matthew Parker A brief examination for the time, of a certain declaration, lately put in print in the name and defense of certain ministers in London, refusing to wear the apparel prescribed by the laws and orders of the realm. . . . 1566

154

John Field A view of popish abuses yet remaining in the English Church, for the which godly ministers have refused to subscribe 1572

164

John Whitgift The defense of the Answer to the “Admonition” against the reply of T. C. 1574

171

Richard Hooker Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity 1593 (Books I–­I V), 1597 (Book V), 1648 (Book VI)1

201

158

167

177

205

IV. ECCLESIOLOGY John Field and Thomas Wilcox An admonition to the Parliament 1572

233

Robert Browne A treatise of reformation without tarrying for any 1582

240

Henry Barrow A brief discovery of the false Church 1590

247

Thomas Bilson The perpetual government of Christ’s Church 1593

264

Richard Hooker The laws of ecclesiastical polity 1593 (Book III), 1648 (Book VIII)

275

1

235

242

249

266

279

These are, of course, dates of publication; Hooker died in 1600.

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V. PREDESTINATION William Perkins A golden chain, or the description of theology 1591

287

Samuel Harsnett A sermon preached at S. Paul’s Cross 1594 (pub. 1658)

302

John Dove A sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, the sixth of February 1596 1597

316

The Lambeth articles and glosses 1595; 1595–­c. 1605 (pub. 1651)

330 336

291

306

319

VI. CATHOLIC REFORMATION AND COUNTER-­R EFORMATION Thomas Watson Two notable sermons . . . concerning the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the blessed sacrament 1554

349

Roger Edgeworth A perfect exposition of S. Peter’s first epistle, in twenty treatises or sermons 1557

362

William Allen A defense and declaration of the Catholic Church’s doctrine touching purgatory and prayers for the souls departed 1565

370

Robert Parsons A brief discourse containing certain reasons why Catholics refuse to go to church 1580

389

Henry Garnett A Sum of Christian doctrine . . . to which is adjoined the explication of certain questions c. 1592–­1596

398

Robert Parsons The Jesuit’s memorial for the intended reformation of England c. 1600 (pub. 1690)

404

viii

351

364

374

391

400

406



Table of Contents

VII. PRIMERS, PRAYERS, AND PSALMS Primers Hore beate Marie virginis secundum usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum 1507

423 428

This primer in English and in Latin 1536

430

William Marshall, A goodly primer 1535

435

Prayers A book of Christian prayers 1578 Appendix: Thomas Becon, The pomander of prayer, 1561

439

Thomas Bentley, The monument of matrons 1582

462

John Norden, A pensive man’s practice 1584 & 1592

474

Psalms Sir Thomas Wyatt, Certain psalms chosen out of the psalter of David, commonly called the vii penitential psalms, drawn into English meter c. 1536–­1542 (pub. 1549)

486

Anne Lock, A meditation of a penitent sinner, written in manner of a paraphrase upon the 51 psalm of David 1560

497

Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, trans., The Psalms of David c. 1600

511

VIII. PASTORAL THEOLOGY Richard Greenham Παραμύθιον: two treatises of the comforting of an afflicted conscience c. 1580 (pub. 1598)

529

Richard Hooker A learned and comfortable sermon of the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect 1585 (pub. 1612)

542

Arthur Dent The plain man’s pathway to heaven 1601

553

533

546

557 ix



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IX. PROTESTANTISM AND THE SOCIAL WORLD John Northbrooke Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dancing, vain plays or interludes with other idle pastimes [et]c. commonly used on the Sabbath day are reproved 1577

585

Richard Greenham A godly exhortation and fruitful admonition to virtuous parents and modest matrons . . . 1584

593

Thomas Beard The theater of God’s judgments 1597

599

William Perkins A treatise of the vocations, or callings of men 1590s (pub. 1605)

613

587

594

602

615

X. CONCLUSION William Claxton (?) Rites of Durham 1593

623

Glossary

637

626

x

INTRODUCTION

I The Tudors won the English throne at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, when the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, was killed while calling for a horse. At the time, Henry Tudor’s victory appeared to be just another short-­lived turn of fortune’s wheel in the decades-­long factional struggle known retrospectively as the Wars of the Roses; no one would have predicted that his dynasty would rule England for 118 years, until the death of his granddaughter Queen Elizabeth in 1603. The political success of the Tudors for more than a century was of no small significance in providing the relative stability necessary for the distinctive religious culture that we associate with the Church of England. The documents anthologized here represent a cross section of the English-­language religious writings of the Tudor century. They were chosen, idiosyncratically but never arbitrarily, for their historical importance, literary merit, or theological insight; sometimes they are here because they represent important trends, but sometimes because they are so unique as to be genuinely interesting; they embody diverse genres, theologies, and backgrounds. We have not, however, included easily available texts like Spenser’s Faerie Queene or the Book of Common Prayer; we have only offered a small selection of the kinds of foundational documents commonly found in historical source books, like the Thirty-­nine articles; and we have perforce included only snippets of long works like Hooker’s Laws of ecclesiastical polity. Our goal is that readers can here immerse themselves in the religious culture of the period; discover much that is brilliant, beautiful, and unexpected; and finish knowing much yet thirsty for more. Many of these texts are difficult for modern readers, for a variety of reasons. Because modern conventions of English usage had not yet been developed, we have modernized spelling and punctuation, tried to make sense of convoluted syntax, and offered notes to explain archaisms whenever possible. Because the theological terrain is often alien, we have offered introductions to the texts, of varied length and depth, to give readers the resources they need to leap into the sources and make the most of them. And finally, xi



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because the historical context of the period is confusing, we have written this introduction to the whole volume to fill in the ellipses between the sources and provide an overview of the salient theological (in the broadest sense) divisions, concepts, contexts.

II The revolution that we call the “break with Rome” or the “English Reformation” is perhaps the most obvious context for Religion in Tudor England. But when the Tudors won the throne in 1485, that revolution remained far in the future; the immediately relevant context for the start of this book was another revolution, the one that had begun roughly forty years earlier with the experiments of a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg. Before Gutenberg and his colleagues developed the printing press in the 1440s, every copy of every book had been laboriously copied out by hand. In this manuscript culture, books were produced by skilled artisans in workshops called scriptoria: they were expensive, handmade objects, beyond the financial means of most English subjects. In such conditions, few people learned to read unless their professions required it; thus, the majority of readers were clerics, lawyers, and physicians. Likewise, few books were “published”—­that is, produced in multiple copies for sale—­and even fewer were new works, since “authorship” was only really possible for men or women famous enough that readers would pay good money for what they had to say. Indeed, the majority of new works in the century before the printing revolution were either commentaries upon, or revisions of, older works; in a world where the production of books was so laborious, literary culture was more about transmission and preservation than innovation. In this culture, educated people with literary pretensions had private libraries that measured in the dozens of books, almost never in the hundreds; learning consisted in rereading deeply rather than reading widely. Gutenberg printed his first full-­length, moveable-­type book around 1455—­a Bible, for which there was always a lively clerical market. The first productions of the Gutenberg press and his early competitors were even more expensive than the manuscripts with which they competed: people paid for the technological novelty of print as well as for the high production quality that was possible because the press, unlike the scribe, never tired. But over the next two decades, very gradually, it became clear that the real benefit of the printing press was its ability to increase volume while reducing costs: hundreds of identical books could be produced at the same time, without having to pay for skilled labor. In this new world, readers could afford to buy more books, so authors could hope to publish more of their writings on topics both profound and incidental; and with more texts available on a wider variety of subjects, there was more incentive for people (especially among the leisured elite and urban business owners) to learn to read for pleasure and edification rather than professional necessity. This revolution came to England in 1476, when the first printing press was set up in Westminster by William Caxton, former governor of the Merchant Adventurers Company in London, who had extensive business dealings in Europe and had already owned a successful printing business in the Flemish city of Bruges. The first books off this first English printing press, unsurprisingly, fit the traditional model of old texts and famous authors. But under the guidance of Caxton’s protégé and eventual successor, the Alsatian émigré Wynkyn de Worde, English presses began churning out newly written and xii



Introduction

relatively inexpensive texts aimed at a mass market that did not yet exist but that de Worde hoped to cultivate: children’s books, husbandry manuals, poetry, Latin grammars. And under the patronage of Margaret Beaufort, mother of new king Henry VII and a woman famed for her piety, de Worde also began for the first time to mass produce religious works in vernacular English that were aimed at a lay rather than clerical audience. Her efforts bore fruit: throughout the Tudor period the majority of English books fall into the “sacred” category. The earliest texts in this volume, while recognizably “medieval,” thus represent genuine novelty, for the medium fundamentally transformed the message. Bishop John Alcock of Ely, for instance, was the first English bishop whose work was printed. In his Spousage of a virgin to Christ we can see him taking a sermon ostensibly aimed at nuns, which was in many ways a pastiche of earlier texts, and transforming it into something new by thinking about how it could resonate with a lay consumer audience: in what ways are all Christians like nuns preparing to marry Christ? Likewise, The miracles of Our Blessed Lady translated a medieval tradition of miracle stories—­present in sermon exempla, cycles of religious stage plays, and collections of saints’ lives like the Golden legend—­into a new medium, and through the very act of compiling so many Marian stories into a single book, made the Virgin appear as a common presence in English life. The doctrinal of death purports to be written to priests, advising them how to minister to parishioners on their deathbeds; yet because those parishioners could read The doctrinal themselves, the anonymous author in a sense ministered to the whole community of Christians, and he was able to reach many of them long before the hour of their deaths.

III One of the prominent themes of early published Christianity in England was reform. Of course, from as early as St. Paul’s epistles, reform had always been a prominent theme of Christianity: the Church Militant was prone to corruption and would require periodic renewal for as long as it had to survive in a fallen world. The fact that this theme appears particularly vibrant in the early sixteenth century is certainly related to the emergence of so-­called Christian Humanism, the first great manifestation of the Renaissance north of the Alps, led by the Dutch scholar (but resident in England for several years) Desiderius Erasmus. Humanism was at heart a movement to strip away corrupt medieval accretions and return ad fontes: to original fonts of wisdom like Cicero for eloquence and the Bible for religion. Inherent in this philosophy was a great drive for reform: a thousand years of human history had to be scrubbed clean so that ancient purity could be restored. But in addition to humanism, we might again point to the new medium of print and the vast increase in vernacular religious production as reasons for the apparent significance of reform in early sixteenth-­century England. After all, the English vernacular was an essentially lay language, parallel to the Latinity of the clergy: to write Christianity in English was almost eo ipso to call for reform, in the sense that the whole enterprise was about bringing religion to laypeople in new ways, and about the importance of those laypeople in constituting the Christian community. Writing for the laity also had the potential to develop reform in new ways, calling on vernacular audiences—­for instance, the landed classes and their representatives in Parliament—­to rein in abuses of the clergy. So, for instance, the famous convocation sermon by John Colet, the humanist dean of St. Paul’s xiii



Religion in Tudor England

Cathedral in London, was delivered in Latin to a clerical audience in 1510 and printed in Latin in 1512; but its calls for reform took on very different meanings when they were translated into English and printed in 1530. The early English Reformation—­represented here by the doctrinal and controversial works of William Tyndale, by Simon Fish’s Supplication for the beggars, by William Tracy’s will and its Protestant glosses—­was just such a program of reform. These were English-­ language works that explicitly sought the support of England’s lay governors against the clergy, condemning a series of alleged abuses that were financial and ecclesiastical as well as, increasingly, theological. The new concept of salvation by faith alone, with its concomitant rejection of penance, purgatory, and the whole Catholic economy of salvation, made this movement for reform significantly more radical than most of its predecessors. That this movement crossed over the line between reform and revolution was a contingency related to events in Germany, where Luther had failed to reach accommodation with either pope or emperor and hence had decided to tear down the Church and build a new one rather than merely reforming the one already in place. But the fact the early English Protestants were so spectacularly successful in turning England’s lay governors against the clergy was due almost entirely to contingencies in England: the King’s desire for a divorce from his wife and his willingness to exploit lay reformist energies against the clergy to get it, even if that meant becoming allies with reformers whom he regarded as heretics. The early English reformers also owed a substantial debt to Lollardy, the great indigenous English heresy of the Middle Ages, begun by the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe in the fourteenth century and then diffused through a small but widespread underground movement in England’s south and east. Lollardy, although a decentralized sect without leadership or precise doctrinal formulations, anticipated the Reformation in its anticlericalism, bibliocentrism, and eucharistic theology, but never in the core doctrines of forensic justification and salvation by faith alone. Nonetheless, during the period of overlap in the 1520s, it is often hard to distinguish Lollardy from Protestantism when they focused on practical rather than theological matters, and Protestant writers propagated currents of lay anticlericalism that, like basso continuo, provided a steady underlying beat, sometimes louder sometimes softer, over the rest of the Tudor century (and beyond, but that is another story). Besides this indigenous influence on reform, which perhaps helped to prepare the ground but certainly in no way caused the Reformation, the specifically Protestant Reformation reached England along three conduits: Lutheran, Tigurine (i.e., the Zurich, or Swiss, Reformation), and Genevan (or Calvinist). The last conduit does not figure significantly before the 1550s, although it increasingly dominated thereafter. It was thus on the bases of Lutheran and Swiss theology that the foundations of English Protestantism were laid. Of the Lutheran contribution, two elements—­the vernacular Bible and justification by faith—­remained fundamental to all varieties of Tudor Protestantism; a third, the Law-­ to-­Gospel paradigm of spiritual inwardness, played a central role in most. The preface to William Tyndale’s abortive 1525 New Testament,2 which has a fair claim to being the The preface was later published, with revisions, as a separate pamphlet titled A pathway into the holy Scripture, c. 1536; it is from this version (reprinted in Doctrinal treatises and introductions to different portions 2

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Introduction

earliest Protestant text in English, sets forth all three elements with Tyndale’s characteristic clarity and passion. The opening call for an English Bible marvels, its tone suspended between bewilderment and irony, “that ever any man should repugn or speak against the Scripture to be had in every language, and that of every man. For I thought that no man had been so blind to ask why light should be showed to them that walk in darkness, where they cannot but stumble, and where to stumble is the danger of eternal damnation” (7). The passage on justification is more complex: “In Christ,” Tyndale explains, “God loved us, his elect and chosen, before the world began . . . and, when the Gospel is preached to us, openeth our hearts, and giveth us grace to believe. . . . The blood of Christ hath made satisfaction for the rest. . . . By faith are we saved only, in believing the promises” (14–­15). One notes already the braiding together of this sola fide position (“by faith we are saved only”) with predestination (here single predestination, or election) and with preaching (rather than sacraments) as the primary conduit of saving grace. The Law-­Gospel dyad traces the experiential path that leads to saving faith, the path of guilt and self-­despair: The Law condemneth us and all our deeds . . . inasmuch as it requireth of us that which is unpossible for our nature to do: it requireth of us the deeds of an whole man. . . . But, saith John in the same place, grace and verity is given us in Christ, so that when the Law hath passed upon us and condemned us to death (which is his nature to do), then we have in Christ grace: that is to say, favor, promises of life, of mercy, of pardon, freely, by the merits of Christ. . . . Moreover, the Law and the Gospel may never be separate, for the Gospel and promises serve but for troubled consciences, which are brought to desperation and feel the pains of hell and death under the Law. (10–­11) Protestant pastoral writings almost invariably follow this Law to Gospel structure, which turns out to be capable of immense subtlety and variation. The second principal tributary comprising the Tudor Protestant mainstream derives from the Zurich Reformation and its principal theologians, Zwingli and Bullinger. Zurich’s unitary model of a Christian commonwealth, in which the jurisdiction of the civil magistrates, like that of the Israelite kings, extended over both Church and state, fused with Henry VIII’s own predilections and medieval Imperial ideology to shape the royal supremacy, which placed the English monarch at the head of a national Church. This model is often termed Erastianism from its crucial corollary, defended by one Thomas Erastus in a 1568 Heidelberg disputation: namely, that the magistrates to whom God entrusted the governing of his Church were not subject to its ordinary discipline and, in particular, not, as in Calvin’s Geneva, subject to formal excommunication. Zurich’s most pervasive and problematic legacy to the English Church was the hard-­ edged, flesh-­spirit dualism central to Zwingli’s theology, the dualism encapsulated in Coverdale’s Johannine tag, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing at all” . All external worship—­images, rituals, candles, vestments—­is merely external, incapable of containing or conveying the Spirit, and, as such, either empty pageantry or, more often, idolatry. Foxe’s “Fourth question” offers the quintessential Tudor of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Rev. Henry Walter, Cambridge, 1848, 7–­28) that the quotations below are taken.

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version of this opposition between, in the words of Milton’s archangel, those “who in the worship persevere / Of spirit and truth,” and “the rest, far greater part,” who “deem in outward rites and specious forms / Religion satisfi’d” (Paradise lost 12.532–­35). Tigurine dualism manifested itself most obviously in the stripping of the walls and altars, and in the repeated attempts of the Reformed vanguard within the Church of England to banish the remaining frippery. Its more pervasive and subtle impact is implicit in Peter Lake’s observation that, up to the very end of the Elizabethan era, those defending the Church of England’s mandated externals argued for their use solely on the grounds such things were “indifferent” (adiaphora)—­that is, intrinsically neither good nor bad—­and therefore the sort of thing that (according to the thirty-­fourth of the Thirty-­nine articles) “every particular or national Church . . . {had} authority to ordain, change, and abolish” . The fifth book of Hooker’s Laws of ecclesiastical polity, published in 1597, marks the first attempt to defend outward worship as having positive religious value: a defense premised on the Laws, overarching rejection of dualism.3 The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith and its Law-­to-­Gospel spirituality, as well as the Swiss distrust of the visual, ritual, and external, get taken up into Calvinism, and therefore remain characteristic and central elements of English Protestantism through (and beyond) the Elizabethan era. By c. 1550, key differences between Genevan and Tigurine teachings had been smoothed over and the two confessions largely merged to form what is now called “Reformed” Christianity. The differences between the Swiss and the Lutherans, however, ran deep. The Lutheran Reformation was, in many respects, conservative and traditionalist, both in its theology of the sacraments and its worship, which retained a good deal of the old ceremonial, along with organs, candles, bells, processions, vestments, and the like. The divergence between the two wings of the Reformation increased mid-­century, as Lutheran orthodoxy abandoned the strong predestinarianism of Luther’s early teaching, while Calvinism, which embraced it, fanned out from Geneva across Europe. Bucer’s attempts in the 1530s to heal the breach between the German and Zurich reformers failed, and the final such attempt, the 1586 Colloquy of Montbeliard, ended with the Lutheran theologians, appalled by Beza’s teachings on predestination and the sacraments (as, for example, that baptismal regeneration pertained only to elect infants; those not elect merely got wet), refusing even to shake hands with their Reformed counterparts. The fracturing of the Reformation mattered for England on two principal fronts. First, Lutheranism’s “invigorated traditionalism”4 became a crucial, manifestly Protestant, and hence not-­popish source for the nascent anti-­Calvinism of the late Elizabethan period—the astonishing pre-­Reformation devotions in the 1578 A book of Christian prayers come from a Lutheran volume, while the opposition to predestinarian doctrine at Cambridge in the 1590s draws extensively on Lutheran arguments.5 Second, concern lest the English Reformation fracture into Reformed and Lutheran/traditionalist camps haunted those responsible for Tudor ecclesiastical policy from Thomas Cranmer in the Lake, Anglicans, 164. John Bossy, “The German Reformation after Moeller,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994): 673–­ 84, at 679. 5 See the introductions to A book of Christian prayers and the Lambeth articles . Also see Peter McCullough, introduction to Lancelot Andrewes: selected sermons and lectures (Oxford, 2005), xx. 3 4

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Introduction

1540s all the way into the seventeenth century. Their intense fear of division staved off disaster for nearly a century, but by papering over deep divisions, it also perhaps made that disaster more destructive when it arrived.

IV The most heated theological issue of the early Reformation was the debate over the real presence: was Christ really, physically, carnally present in the communion wine and bread? The issue was particularly fraught because it focused the energy of so many other more abstruse or theoretical debates into a single urgent question. If the Reformation was at some level a debate between works theology and salvation by faith alone, then the sacrifice of Christ’s body in the Mass was the most obvious and important of Catholic works. If the Reformation was at some level a debate over the role of clergy in human society, then the daily miracle of transubstantiation was the most obvious symbol of the mysterious power vested in the clerical estate. Battles over purgatory, predestination, idolatry, ceremonialism, the boundaries of the Christian community, and many other issues, could all be fought on the battlefield of the Eucharist. The Catholic position remained consistent and relatively straightforward, represented here most forcefully in two sermons preached by Thomas Watson in 1554. For Watson, Christ must be physically present in the consecrated elements, not only because Christ was so explicit and literal in his foundation of communion—­“this is my body”—­but because only by partaking of Christ himself, rather than a mere symbol, can Christians participate in Christ’s sacrifice and partake of his merits. This was, in fact, to invert Protestant claims that the Catholic Mass, being a propitiatory sacrifice, diminished the unique significance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Not so, says Watson; the real diminution of Christ’s sacrifice comes from those who think they can partake of it merely by remembering rather than by eating Christ’s body as he commanded. Watson’s framing of the issue reflects the fact that in England, up to c. 1550, the dominant alternative to Roman Catholic eucharistic doctrine was memorialism. This was Zwingli’s doctrine, a corollary of his conviction that material things cannot mediate spiritual realities. For Zwingli the Christian community celebrates the Lord’s Supper in memory of Christ’s all-­sufficient sacrifice on the Cross, the physical elements functioning as “visible words,” that is, as signifiers of a past event; whereas the true eating of Christ’s body, he maintained, was faith itself: “he who believes has eaten Christ’s Body, for eating is believing.”6 Coverdale’s 1548 preface on the Eucharist is memorialist. Yet Cranmer held on to his belief in the corporeal real presence of Christ in the sacrament until sometime in the 1540s, long after he rejected papal authority, and he only went public with that conversion following the publication of the fairly conservative first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. As has long been observed, the replacement of the 1549 sentences of administration (“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life”) with those of 1552 (“Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving”) marks the switch from a real presence to a memorialist stance. Less often noted is the fact that the 1552 prayers before and after the Communion imply that the 6

Brian Gerrish, “The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed confessions,” Theology Today 23 (1966): 233, 226.

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sacraments not only signify what faith apprehends, but the elements themselves, received in faith, have spiritual efficacy. So the Prayer of Humble Access, pronounced right before the receiving of the elements, asks that God grant us “so to eat the flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” The post-­communion prayer begins by thanking God “for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, which have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of thy Son our savior Jesus Christ”; it does not say that the “holy mysteries” of the communion rite are the “spiritual food,” but it unmistakably links the receiving of the former with being fed by the latter. These prayers should probably not be taken as concessions on Cranmer’s part to traditionalist pieties but rather as responses to a new theological development, one that Peter Martyr noted (with disapproval) in a letter of 1552, commenting that “many” of the leading English evangelicals, those laboring with Cranmer to set the foundations of the Church of England, “hold that grace is conferred (as they put it) through the sacraments [volunt multi . . . per sacramenta ut aiunt conferri gratiam].”7 This view of the sacraments as conduits of grace does not imply corporeal presence, but it clearly does imply something more than memorialism. The following year, Cranmer’s Forty-­two articles (precursor of the Elizabethan Thirty-­Nine) make this explicit, article 26 affirming that the sacraments are “efficacious signs of grace . . . through which God acts invisibly in us [efficacia signa gratiae . . . per quae invisibiliter ipse [Deus] in nobis operatur].”8 The new development to which Cranmer responds, put simply, is Calvinism, and the fact that Calvin, whose sacramental theology is, compared to the rest of the Reformed tradition, strikingly “high,” slowly persuaded Bullinger to accept a sacramental theology sufficiently robust that Geneva and Zurich could reach a compromise. Brian Gerrish’s classic study, “The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed confessions,” concludes that the two formulations remained slightly different, with Calvin holding that our communion with Christ takes place “through the elements,”9 a position Gerrish terms symbolic instrumentalism; whereas according to Bullinger’s symbolic parallelism, “by some mysterious divine arrangement, grace is given at the same time as the sacrament is administered.”10 For Bullinger, that is, the sacrament signifies the simultaneous giving of the promised grace; for Calvin, the sacrament is the conduit for that grace. It is not clear, however, whether sixteenth-­century divines understood these as distinct positions; Hooker’s chapters on the Eucharist use instrumental and parallelist language indifferently. From 1553 on, the official texts of the Church of England (the Articles of Religion, the Book of Homilies) affirm that the sacraments are not merely signs but truly give what they signify, so that in 1597 Hooker could claim that “all sides” had come “to a general The writings of John Bradford, ed. Aubrey Townsend, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1848), 2:401 (our translation). Gerald Bray, ed., Documents of the English Reformation (Minneapolis, 1994), 299. 9 A second hallmark feature of Calvin’s eucharistic doctrine has to do with what might be called “directionality”: for Calvin, communion takes place by lifting the believer’s heart up to Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father, not, as in medieval eucharistic piety, by Christ coming down to us. 10 Gerrish, “Lord’s Supper,” 239–­42. As Gerrish notes, symbolic parallelism closely resembles the medieval Franciscan position known as occasionalism. See the introduction to Hooker’s Laws . Cranmer’s post-­communion prayer quoted above uses the language of symbolic parallelism. 7 8

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agreement concerning that which alone is material—­namely, the real participation of Christ and of life in his body and blood by means of this sacrament” . Yet, it was often Hooker’s wont to describe as obvious and consensual what was in fact contested and partisan. In fact, for all their Calvinism, the instincts of the English godly tended to be memorialist: the presbyterian-­puritan Cartwright thus regards sacraments as merely signifying ceremonies .11 To return to Cranmer and the Edwardian era: MacCulloch’s magisterial study suggests that, as archbishop, Cranmer was travelling two seemingly divergent paths. On the one hand, considerable evidence—­above all, the changes between the 1549 and 1552 Book of Common Prayer—­indicates that he sought to bring the Church of England into the Reformed camp, to refashion it according to the Zurich model and make it a vanguard of Reformed Protestantism. And yet, going back to the Henrician period, the evidence also points to Cranmer’s commitment to the vision of a national Church, as opposed to the confessional Churches of the Swiss cities, that could accommodate a wide range of theological and liturgical positions.12 This was evidently the vision of Henry VIII, who kept putting Cranmer and the conservative Gardiner on to the same committees with instructions to thrash out a consensual formula, one acceptable to the increasingly “Protestantized” evangelicals and to traditionalists like Gardiner who were willing to jettison papal supremacy but little else. Even at the height of the Edwardian Reformation, MacCulloch points out, rather than embracing the Zurich model (which he himself may well have preferred), Cranmer struggled to find doctrinal middle ground “acceptable to the whole spectrum of evangelical truth on the Continent, from the Lutherans to the Swiss.”13 Cranmer was not alone on this second path. Martin Bucer, the Strassburg reformer, and Hermann von Weid, the Catholic archbishop of Cologne, spent years trying to heal the wounds of the post-­Reformation Church—­a shared vision that led them, together with Melanchthon, to collaborate in devising perhaps the only “sixteenth-­ century ecumenical liturgy,”14 the Pia consultatio of 1545; it was this text, more than any of the Reformed liturgies, that Cranmer used in revising the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.15 Given the strong pressure towards confessional purity on all sides, seeking a “middle ground” was scarcely a safe option. Both von Weid and Bucer got canned, with the latter ending up in Cambridge. Cranmer, of course, met a worse fate, but his successors, who generally shared Cranmer’s non-­confessional instincts, managed to hold the Church of 11 See also the sole communion devotion in Norden, whose theology balances delicately between memorialism and incoherence . 12 Sixteenth-­century Zurich had a population of c. 7,000; Geneva c. 13,000. The Church of England, by contrast, had over four million members, which made the Swiss cities’ “love it or leave it” policy unfeasible. 13 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: a life (New Haven, 1996), 393. 14 Bryan Spinks, Reformation and modern rituals and theologies of baptism: from Luther to contemporary practices, 2 vols. (Ashgate, 2006), 2:20. 15 An English translation came out in 1547 (2d ed. 1548), under the title of A simple and religious Consultation of us Herman, by the Grace of God, Archbishop of Colone, and Prince Electoure, &c., by what meanes a Christian reformation, and founded in Gods worde, of doctrine, administration of divine sacramentes, of ceremonies, and the whole cure of soules, and other ecciesiasticall ministeries, may be begon among men committed to our pastorall charge, etc.

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England together until the middle of the next century. Throughout the pre-­Civil War period, however, the central fault line within the English Church follows the rift between Cranmer’s own divergent paths: the opposing ideals of unity and purity. It has been argued that, had Edward VI lived, the Church of England would probably have taken the more radical path, discarding vestments and gradually moving towards a Zurich-­style Reformation—­and hence that the Elizabethan Settlement, which froze this process at an early Edwardian moment and so produced the style of Christianity later known as Anglicanism, was more or less an accident.16 Yet the best surviving evidence for what Elizabeth and her counselors had in mind in 1558 suggests that some historical accidents are less accidental than others. The evidence is a memorandum, probably by William Cecil, titled the Device for alteration of religion. Most of this short document treats the likely Roman Catholic resistance to the impending changes, but two paragraphs, one in the section dealing with probable opposition, the other in the section suggesting possible responses, anticipate trouble from the opposite quarter: “Many such as would gladly have the alteration from the Church of Rome,” the memorandum warns, “when they shall see peradventure that some old ceremonies shall be left still, or that their doctrine, which they embrace, is not allowed and commanded only, and all other abolished and disproved, shall be discontented, and call the alteration a cloaked papistry or a mingle mangle.” Those crafting the Elizabethan Settlement, that is, knew that it would not meet either the liturgical or ideological standards of Reformed purity—­a purity that the Marian exiles, particularly those returning from Geneva, had experienced firsthand, and which many of them had come to love and revere. The author of the Device does not, however, suggest reassuring those displeased by the “mingle mangle” that such accommodation was only temporary. On the contrary, for those “content to have religion altered, but would have it go too far, the straight laws upon the promulgation of the book, and severe execution of the same at the first, will so repress them, that it is great hope it shall touch but a few.”17 Because both passages anticipate the precise course taken by the Elizabethan regime, one can make the case that already in 1558 the distinctive mingle mangle of the English Church was intentional: even if it did not yet represent a coherent theological position, the plan from the outset was that some traditional ceremonies and vestments be retained and that confessionalization be resisted.

V Another profoundly important framework for this book, which emerges directly from the mingle mangle of the Elizabethan settlement, is the emergence of something called puritanism. The meaning of the term has been debated since its first usage in the 1560s to describe the faction in the Church of England that refused to wear the surplice because it was a popish holdover. They were denounced by their enemies as “puritan” or “precision” for their allegedly exaggerated concern for liturgical purity (“purity” in this context meaning freedom from the contamination of popish idolatry), putting their own opinions over the peace of the Church regarding matters that were indifferent, neither required nor MacCulloch, Cranmer, 618–­20. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and establishment of religion . . . during the first twelve years of Queen Elizabeth’s happy reign (London, 1709), 394, 396. 16 17

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forbidden. In the sixteenth century, virtually no one referred to themselves as puritan; it remained solely a term of abuse until the seventeenth century, when its objects began to reclaim it as a badge of honor. It might be suggested—­indeed it has been suggested—­that the term should be dropped from our lexicon as it is too swathed in evaluative miasma. However, of the alternatives proposed, “the godly” seems hardly better on that score, and “professors,” although neutral enough, has other problems, so “puritan” remains, although with “the godly” as a corrective synonym. The most basic definition of puritanism is simply that puritans were those Protestants who, after the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559, sought further reformation along Genevan lines. This is partially satisfying insofar as it can help to organize many puritan impulses—­opposition to ceremonialism, calls for reformation of Church government, calls for moral reform—­under a single heading. But in the end this definition is impoverished because it imagines puritanism as a policy program, whereas it was more like a mode of engagement with the world. To understand this mode of engagement, we must first delve into the doctrine of predestination. Predestination

Many strains of Christianity are not predestinarian, including the Fathers before Augustine, Greek Orthodoxy, and multiple strains of medieval theology, as well as, on the Protestant side, a good many Lutherans, including Melanchthon. These theologies are not predestinarian in that, as Lancelot Andrewes explains in his commentary on the Lambeth articles , they do not distinguish God’s foreordination from his foreknowledge. So in Boethius, Lady Philosophy describes how God, “who seeth all things from eternity, beholdeth these things with the eyes of His providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its merits [Quae tamen ille ab aeterno cuncta prospiciens prouidentiae cernit intuitus et suis quaeque meritis praedestinata disponit].”18 Predestination is here based on divine foresight and therefore not, in the relevant sense, predestination at all. Predestinarian doctrine—­where foreordination is independent of foresight—­descends from Augustine. Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas uphold a fairly strong version of predestination, but always single predestination—­the position affirmed by the Thirty-­nine articles, by the Marian martyr John Bradford, by Richard Hooker in his restatement of the Lambeth articles : that from the mass of condemned humanity after the Fall, God in his mercy chose some for salvation, and to those so chosen he gave inward graces, healing the corruption of fallen nature, either 1. so that in the end he might reward us for that which his gifts enabled us to be and do (the Catholic version), or 2. so that we might receive the word in faith and, believing, be saved (the Protestant one). Those not so chosen are merely left to themselves and in the end condemned for their sins. The Calvinist position, the predestinarianism on offer in Elizabethan England—­the position of Perkins and the Cambridge heads in the 1590s—­differs in important respects from virtually all earlier models.19 Known as double predestination, it holds—­and these are Calvin’s words—­that The consolation of philosophy, book 4, prosa 2. Translation of H. R. James (London, 1897). It was not the Zurich position. When the Dean of Chichester wrote to Bullinger in 1552 about the English enthusiasm for Calvin’s teaching and their concern that he leaned “too much to Melanchthon’s view,” Bullinger disappointed the Dean by confessing that he did “not approve of Calvin, when he states 18 19

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“before the creation of the first man, God in his eternal purpose decreed what he wished to befall the entire human race. According to God’s secret purpose it was ordained that Adam would fall from his state of natural integrity and by his lapse would draw all his posterity into a guilt deserving eternal death. The distinction between the elect and reprobate depends on this same decree, for he adopted some to himself for salvation, others he appointed to eternal torment. For if the reprobate are vessels of God’s just vengeance, and the elect in turn vessels of mercy, we are to seek for no other cause in God of this difference than his untrammeled will, which is the sovereign norm of justice.”20 It is this position that the anti-­Calvinists at Cambridge were attacking. Samuel Harsnett’s 1593 Paul’s Cross sermon, reprinted below, lays out the objections to this doctrine with passionate eloquence. John Dove’s sermon preached from the same pulpit three years later mounts an equally powerful defense, the first half taken from Lombard and the second from Calvin: a striking testament both to the continuity of predestinarian doctrine and to its significant hardening in the Genevan version. The objections are obvious enough; the doctrine had always been controversial because of the seeming injustice of God in reprobating men before they were evil, and because it offered the terrifying possibility that God might be the author of sin. Yet in the second half of the sixteenth century, double predestination took hold in Calvinist Churches across Europe, because it so thoroughly encapsulated the voluntaristic doctrine of God’s absolute authority over his creation that made Calvinism so attractive to reformers in search of theological purity. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination was, however, interpreted, at least in England, in two rather different ways, which modern scholars refer to as “creedal” and “experimental” predestination. Dove is primarily a creedal predestinarian; Perkins, an experimental . For Dove, that is to say, the doctrine affirms the transcendent power and glory of God, before whose alien omnipotence the imperfect works of puny men and their little notions of right and wrong count as nothing. But such a doctrine does not ask us to do anything—­except, like Job, to fall silent and confess, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth” (40:4). Predestination is a doctrine to be believed but not experienced or enacted. Dove’s “conclusions,” however, switch into the experimental mode, where the point of predestinarian teaching is not to affirm divine sovereignty but to obtain assurance of one’s own salvation. This connection between predestinarian doctrine and the experience of godliness in the world is best described by what Perkins termed Calvinism’s “golden chain”: the doctrine that the individual stages in the order of salvation (ordo salutis)—­ election, regeneration, saving faith, justification, sanctification, and perseverance—­are “all part of an unbreakable golden chain which only applies to the elect.”21 Only the elect that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but that he also at his own pleasure arranged it” (quoted in Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols., 6th ed. [New York, 1890], 1: § 81). 20 Jean Calvin, “Articuli de praedestinatione,” in Tractatus theologici minores, vol. 9 of Calvini opera quae supersunt, ed. Guilemus Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, & Eduardus Reuss (Brunschweig, 1870), 713–­14 (our translation). 21 Sean Hughes, “The problem of ‘Calvinism’: English theologies of predestination c. 1580–­1630,” in Belief and practice in Reformation England, ed. Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot, 1998), 245.

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will be regenerate in baptism, and all the regenerate will at some point attain saving faith, and all who have saving faith are justified, and so forth. The golden chain thus entailed that, if one truly believed that she had been forgiven, that Christ died for her, then she might be sure of salvation, for, as an early Jacobean preacher told his congregation, “predestination, calling, justifying, and glorifying are so coupled and knit together that, if you hold fast one link, you draw unto you the whole chain.”22 Here, predestination ceases to become an abstract doctrine and becomes the central preoccupation of human existence, something to be constantly sought and hoped for. Puritans, predestination, and social praxis

If the links that make up the ordo salutis were separable—­if, for instance, those whom God called might fall from grace thereafter, and those regenerate in baptism might fail of glory—­then predestination becomes nearly irrelevant from the human point of view: it makes no practical difference whether God foreordains or simply foreknows whether one will die in a state of grace, hence predestination’s relative unimportance outside the Reformed orbit.23 For Aquinas, as for Roman Catholic theology in general, all the baptized received the grace of regeneration, but the elect alone attained the grace of final perseverance, so that a person who had been justified by faith and cooperated with the grace of sanctification could nonetheless thereafter sin with eyes wide open, die without repenting, and so fail to obtain the prize. The official formularies of the Elizabethan Church would seem to uphold the same theology.24 For Perkins, however, as for subsequent generations of English Calvinists, the first dawn of faith is already radiant with the promise of eternal glory, which is inevitably manifested in sanctification and perseverance on earth. Thus, the unbreakable enlacement of the links in the ordo salutis mattered very deeply. From the beginning, the Reformation had promised assurance of salvation—­as opposed to the doubt and fear tormenting the Roman Catholics, who could never know if her good works were sufficient or whether she would have the grace to persevere unto the end.25 But the almost accidental result of this assurance turned out to be a doctrine that sneaked “works” in through the back door, with the elect as pulsating beacons of godliness in a reprobate world. That is to say, although assurance was a matter of inward experience, it had social implications, since, as the puritan minister in Dent’s best-­selling Plain man’s pathway explains, among “the most certain and infallible evidences of a man’s salvation” is “sound regeneration and sanctification” . Saving grace, which only the elect received, at least partially healed the corruption of fallen nature; the godly were “in but not of the world,” a chosen band of wayfaring saints committed to the fulfillment of God’s commandments and always battling against sin. In this vision, the world itself was divided between the sheep and the goats, and a semi-­visible Church of true believers subsisted in 22 Anthony Maxey, The golden chain of man’s salvation (London, 1610), A3r. Kendall refers to this theology as “experimental [i.e., experiential] predestinarianism” (Calvin and English Calvinism). 23 The canons of the Council of Trent have little to say on the topic. 24 See article 16 of the Thirty-­nine articles and the introduction to The form of prayers . 25 See the final prayer from the 1507 primer . The relevant passages from Calvin, Beza, and others are cited in Debora Shuger, “Faith and assurance,” in A companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, 2008), 223–­26.

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and alongside the visible Church; that visible Church was useful only insofar as it offered a safe home for the godly and a vehicle for their opposition to sin. The visible Church, and indeed the whole of Christian society, was like the hard shell of a nut: not alive in itself, but simply the carrier and sustainer of the living kernel within. This emphasis on the experience of predestination was the beating heart of puritanism. Puritans were committed to the regeneration of society, the Church, and the world, through their own actions and leadership as the small remnant of true Christians in a wicked and unbelieving world. This self-­understanding informs the Admonitioners’ scathing critiques of the Elizabethan Settlement’s mingle-­mangle religion and the separatists’ apocalyptic denunciations of the same. It likewise informs the puritan drive to reform their neighbors’ private conduct, producing the sometimes quite spectacular moral invective enlivening the pages of Dent, Beard, and Northbrooke, with threats of instant damnation for behavior that the dominant culture—­which was, one remembers, a Christian culture—­considered at worst minor infractions. This precisian rigorism was central to the construction of godly identity over and against the religious establishment, the cultural status quo, and the “mere” Christianity of traditional lay piety. In other puritan texts the accent falls less on castigating than redeeming the world. Sometimes this redemption is ecclesial: Field and Wilcox’s Admonition exemplifies a drive to recreate the apostolic ecclesiastical discipline that they, like Beza, regarded as the third essential mark of the true Church, without which the Church of England could not fulfill its twin purposes of nurturing its godly remnant and restraining its ungodly masses. At other times, redemption must begin at home. Indeed, puritan tracts on the godly ordering of ordinary life—­marriage, family, and work—­often link ethics to ecclesiology, for “surely, if men be careful to reform themselves first, and then their families . . . it were the best way to move the Lord to bestow reformation and discipline on his Church among us” . The long deferral of this perfect reformation, combined with the puritan sanctification of work, marriage, and family, led to a (partial) untying of religion from traditional loci of the sacred—­in particular, the parish church—­and its reweaving into the fabric of society and the laity’s ordinary lives: a shift of vast, if subtle, transformative significance. Yet, whether they were denouncing the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer, demanding the elimination of diocesan bishops, raging against theaters, or preaching sermons on pious childrearing, puritans were puritans insofar as they saw themselves as godly islands within a reprobate ocean, with a calling to reclaim as much land as possible from the sea. With respect to ecclesial regeneration, the first generation of English puritans were most concerned with the issue of ceremonies and the reform or elimination of the Book of Common Prayer. During Edward’s reign and the beginning of Elizabeth’s, people of this godly inclination more or less accepted ceremonialism as a stepping stone to true and thorough reformation, but as the new Church of England stabilized they were scandalized that this temporary expediency appeared to be made permanent. The requirement of Catholic vestments, of bowing at the name of Jesus, of godparents, of wedding rings, of the sign of the cross in baptism—­a nd indeed the whole emphasis upon liturgical formulae rather than lively preaching at the center of worship—­struck them as flirting with antichrist rather than fulfilling their godly obligation to fight xxiv



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against him. Yet because this generation by and large came to Protestantism via Zurich, their mistrust of externals had to contend with the authority in sacris with which Tigurine theology invested the Christian magistrate. When the controversies over vestments first erupted in 1550 and again at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, the leading Continental Reformers—­Bullinger, Bucer, Peter Martyr—­urged obedience while working for change. In the second generation, beginning in the 1570s, this focus on ceremonial niceties was overtaken by Calvinism’s more radical demand for the reform of the government and discipline of the Church itself. Among those dissatisfied with the Elizabethan status quo, some (although far from all) began to suspect that the source of the trouble was not the Book of Common Prayer but the more fundamental fact that the Reformation in England had thrown out the pope but, institutionally speaking, little else: the Church of England remained a hierarchical Church ruled by diocesan bishops and archbishops, offices not mentioned in Scripture. Many began to call instead for “presbyterian” government on the Genevan model, in which no minister was superior to any other, and the Church was governed from within by elected ministers and lay elders, who had power to excommunicate the unreformed. This vision of Church reform was anathema to English authorities, not only because they disagreed with it theologically, but because it offered the terrifying possibility that the most senior member of the Church—­the English monarch—­could be excommunicated by her or his subjects. That is to say, the Calvinist model of church-­state relations was not Erastian. It held that the temporal magistrate had a duty to protect and support the Church (the notion of a secular state in the American sense being no less anathema in Geneva than in Zurich, Rome, or Windsor), but was also subject to its discipline. This included excommunication, a spiritual rather than temporal penalty but one that would have stripped royal authority of all legitimacy and respect—­a penalty with which the Calvinist leadership of Scotland’s Kirk repeatedly threatened James VI, who, as James I, found the English setup far more to his liking. Moreover, the sort of decentralizing and anti-­hierarchical impulse at the heart of presbyterianism could quickly get out of control, and by the 1580s some puritan radicals, like Robert Browne and Henry Barrow, began to call for separation from the Church of England altogether and the creation of gathered churches of true believers, separated from the reprobate parishes around them. It was not hard to see how the puritan emphasis on the radical distinction between the godly and the ungodly could lead to the formation of sect-­t ype congregations.

VI In the 1590s, for the first time the majority of heads at Cambridge were Calvinists, at which point the university undertook a campaign to force out opposing views, particularly regarding predestination. To this end, its most prominent divine composed a rigorously Calvinist formulary, known as the Lambeth articles that the Calvinist heads presented to Archbishop Whitgift. After some revisions, Whitgift signed off on the document as expressing the normative teaching of the English Church. This is a bald summary of complicated and controversial events narrated more fully in the introduction to the Lambeth articles. These events are discussed at length by modern scholars, becasue of the fact that Whitgift, who was generally silent on the topic of xxv



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predestination, endorsed the Articles seems the single strongest piece of evidence for a “Calvinist consensus” among the leadership of the late Elizabethan Church. Indeed, the Lambeth articles are Exhibit A for historians who argue that the Church of England was, at least by the 1580s, a Calvinist Church in the full confessional sense, even if its official formularies were more open-­ended. (Indeed, as far as the Cambridge heads were concerned, the point of the Lambeth articles was to remedy that open-­endedness.) Given the centrality of this episode in the centuries-­long scholarly controversy over the theological identity of the English Church, the editors have violated their own “English-­ only” policy and included (in translation) a series of Latin glosses on the Lambeth articles, all but one of which had been prepared at Whitgift’s request. Reading these, one realizes that most of the senior churchmen whose opinion Whitgift sought were not Calvinists, properly speaking, but fairly traditional single predestinarians or Lutherans. And, like Whitgift, they too signed off on the revised Lambeth articles. It was they, it turns out, who suggested the revisions. That Whitgift gave these churchmen a place at the table and took their recommendations seems hard to reconcile with any straightforward claim that there was a Calvinist “consensus” in Elizabethan England. Moreover, the fact that, upon being presented with the Lambeth articles, Lord Burghley—­who has a fair claim to be the architect of the Elizabethan Settlement—­ responded as if he had never heard of Calvinist-­style double predestination before, warning the Calvinist heads against a doctrine that seemed to accuse God of cruelty, suggests that outside the Universities predestination may not have been particularly central, at least up to the end of the Tudor period. Peter Lake notes that even the most dogmatic of Elizabethan Calvinists virtually never mentioned a decree of eternal reprobation in their sermons.26 So, if one identifies Calvinism with the doctrine of double predestination, there may not have been many Calvinists among the Elizabethan laity. Perhaps for this reason, there also were not yet many anti-­Calvinists, and those there were cannot be called “Arminians,” given that in the 1590s Arminius, a respected Amsterdam minister, had only just begun his move away from Reformed orthodoxy. But this leaves a crucial question. While there was not yet an anti-­Calvinist party or position of any great consequence, there was nonetheless without question a powerful weight of opinion against the puritans: people who supported and defended the Church of England as by law established and regarded puritans as self-­righteous busybodies, hypocrites, and seditious disturbers of the peace. These were people like Arthur Dent’s spokesman for ordinary village piety, Asunetus, who represents that broad current of Christianity, by no means confined to rustic yokels, convinced that godliness consists not in the experience of election but in going to Church, loving God, and forgiving one’s enemies. What ought we to call these people? What should we call the defenders of the Elizabethan Settlement? That Asunetus was a layman suggests a related question: how to categorize most of the texts written or compiled by laity in this volume. In contrast to the polarized and confessionalized (clerical) texts on ecclesiology, predestination, and ceremonies, the collections of (lay) private prayers reprinted below (by Norden, Day, and Bentley) are stunning reminders of a different aspect of Elizabethan religion. Norden is godly, and 26

Lake, Moderate puritans, 151–­52.

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increasingly so over time, but nonetheless his prayers do not betray Calvinism in the theological sense but rather a lay mode of thinking about holiness, organized not around canonical hours but the routines of the work day; this is not a drive for reform but a new sort of piety embedded in ordinary life. The volumes of Day and Bentley, moreover, are wholly unexpected in their interweaving of medieval, Catholic humanist, and Protestant devotions, including the Anselmian prayers that Eamon Duffy makes the core of late medieval piety. Even more unexpected are the former’s magnificent visuals, some based on medieval primers’ woodcuts of the life of Christ, others depicting Protestant worship, allegories of the five senses, and macabre-­comic dances of death. The resulting pastiche was sufficiently popular—­despite its enormous expense—­to go through four editions by 1608. Bentley’s massive collection of prayers by, for, and about women likewise reveals a valuing of tradition, preference for theological copia over confessional purity, and the reincorporation of broad swathes of Catholic spirituality. One could make similar points about Princess Elizabeth’s translation of Marguerite de Navarre’s Miroir, whose five Tudor editions carry forward into the 1590s an early sixteenth-­century humanist-­evangelical spirituality that was utterly alien to English Reformed devotions, and yet the work gets across better than any of these what assurance of God’s love and having one’s place in the household of heaven would feel like. These were all licensed publications that went through multiple editions without provoking an uproar, or even a squeak, of controversy, as far as the records tell us. They represent, in other words, a position well within the boundaries of the Elizabethan Settlement that, in its preference for bringing doctrines and traditions together rather than tearing them apart, was distinctly un-­confessional and un-­puritan. So what ought we to call such texts and their authors? The time-­honored answer would be, of course, “Anglican.” This term is not anachronistic, as is sometimes alleged; it goes back to the Elizabethan era, when, according to OED, it was first used—­a nd this is clearly supernatural serendipity—­by none other than the future James I. The context is revealing: “Anglican,” as used by the Scots’ King, referred to the Church of England, but in particular to those aspects of the Church of England that true-­blue Calvinists despised, such as, for example, what James called “Papisticall or Anglican bishopping.” That is to say, the word had a late sixteenth-­ century meaning more or less the same as its modern one, again according to OED: “Of or relating to the Church of England,” and more specifically, “characterized by or holding moderate High Church opinions”—­which is another way of saying “the aspects of the Church of England that true-­blue Calvinists despised.” And yet, however tempting it might be to call the Tudor position we are describing “Anglican,” the term nonetheless poses insurmountable problems. First and foremost, there was a good deal about the Elizabethan Church of England that Calvinists did not despise: a broad mainstream of that Church was Calvinist, including a couple of archbishops. The term “Anglican” implies, simply because the term is Latin for “English,” that the English Church rightfully belongs to Anglicans. But on the contrary, it was only after 1662, with the emergence of nonconformity as a widespread phenomenon, that it makes sense to contrast “Anglicans” who defended the Church of England from the dissenters who arrayed against it. In other words, we cannot justly use the term “Anglican” to describe one side in what was essentially a prolonged custody battle over xxvii



Religion in Tudor England

the Church of England: almost every puritan in this book, with the exception of the radical separatists Browne and Barrow, would have proudly claimed to be Anglican and insisted that her or his brand of religion, rather than that of the bishops, was true Anglicanism. This churchmanship-­that-­we-­cannot-­call-­A nglican, yet which seems to have a familial relationship to later Anglicanism, involved a commitment to comprehensive inclusion, a stress on charity and community over purity and orthodoxy, and a conscious choice not to parse small differences or force theological issues to their divisive conclusions. It involved a commitment to obedience and neighborliness—­that is cohesion—­as the lifeblood of Christianity and a core function of the Church. It involved a syncretic approach to Christian history, drawing from diverse sources—­Catholic and Protestant, medieval, ancient, and modern—­and respecting tradition for its own sake. It involved a positive commitment to ceremonies because ceremonialism glues Christians together into the sort of Church that can organize a society and a state. But if not Anglican, what can we call it? Mingle mangle clearly will not do, nor the inescapably pejorative “conformity.” John Bossy uses “moral tradition” for those strains of post-­Reformation Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, that gave precedence to the claims of charity—­the multi-­scale bonds of parish, community, and nation—­over those of self-­ and social discipline; so defined, the-­position-­we-­are-­tempted-­to-­call-­A nglican does belong to the moral tradition.27 Yet the phrase, which has no adjectival form, cannot function as a label; and to use “tradition” for a Christianity sans prayers for the dead, sans monasticism, sans sacred images, sans relics, sans Marian devotions, sans patronal saints could be thought misleading. It does not help to call it “Episcopal” because in the Tudor period hardly anyone was anything else. We might call it “the bishops’ party,” as some did in the aftermath of the 1604 Hampton Court Conference, but this produces the false impression that it was elite, prelatical, and policy oriented, whereas in fact it was much more lay, popular, and granular. Moreover, this thing we are identifying could be a tendency rather than a party. The great martyrologist John Foxe was in some ways a puritan, but in other ways he was the hero of this nameless position, molding an inclusive English Protestant identity around a shared tradition and a national creation myth rather than around purity of doctrine or purity of life.28 It needs a name, but we have none to offer: it is the Church That Must Not Be Named. A name would reify this position, making it much more like an ideology or identity than it ever was in the sixteenth century. But that it should not be reified does not make it any less real.

VII The Reformation succeeded in putting political and ecclesiastical power into the hands of Protestants, but if part of its goal was also to eradicate Roman Catholicism in England, then its success was only partial. Catholicism remained a viable religious choice and a vibrant religious culture. Not only did many Tudor women and men steadfastly reject Bossy, Peace, 2. See his moving image of the English ship of state at the end of his address “To the true and faithful congregation of Christ’s universal Church,” prefacing the 1570 Acts and monuments . 27

28

xxviii



Introduction

the new religion, but a good many others who did become Protestants or were raised as Protestants converted back to Catholicism. The relationship between the residual Catholicism of the pre-­Reformation Church and the new Catholicism of converts, missionaries, and the Counter-­Reformation has been a subject of lively scholarly debate. According to the now classic work of John Bossy, indigenous English Catholicism was fading away by the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, a victim both of official pressure and simple demographics, for the old Catholic priesthood was a dying breed. The savior of English Catholicism, on this view, was the great exiled leader William Allen, who founded English seminaries in Europe (Douai and later Rome) to train a new generation of Catholic priests. When this educational imperative was crossed with the missionary zeal of the Society of Jesus, priests began streaming back into England. At great personal risk and with great heroism—­many of them were captured and executed by the regime—­they restored vibrancy to the dying faith, often taking up residence in the households of prominent Catholic gentlemen, from which they could provide sacraments and spiritual support for the surrounding population, creating islands of Catholicism in a largely Protestant sea. This narrative was challenged, however, by Christopher Haigh, who argued for the continuity of Catholicism across the Reformation divide. On this view, traditional English Catholicism, albeit pared down, was still functioning in the early decades of the English Reformation, as much of the populace and many of their priests, declining to convert to the new religion, found ways to practice the old faith alongside their nominal membership in the Church of England. The arrival of the Douai missionaries in the 1580s, then, was a disaster for this traditional Catholicism. It forced the Elizabethan regime into a policy of persecution. It disallowed the possibility of Catholicism within the framework of the established Church (so-­called “church papistry”) and insisted instead upon strict “recusancy,” refusal to attend parish services as required by law, a standard which few were willing or able to meet. And by settling in the households of wealthy gentlemen, the mission priests, abandoning the great mass of ordinary English Catholics to their own devices, turned English Catholicism into a seigniorial religion confined to a handful of country manors. Both Bossy and Haigh’s accounts, however, agree in positing a sharp break between, on the one hand, “medieval religious culture rooted in rote-­learned prayers, pilgrimages, relics, and protective magic,” the traditional religion of the Catholic rural masses before and after the Reformation, and, on the other, the disciplined and austere spirituality of Counter-­Reformation’s mission priests.29 This claim is centrally relevant for our understanding of the post-­1559 Catholic texts included in this volume, all of which are the work of these Mission priests (since church papists by definition kept a low profile, and the rural masses were mostly illiterate). If such a sharp break exists, then these texts pertain only to post-­Reformation Catholicism; one cannot use them as a window onto traditional religion. Yet, as Walsham suggests in a recent article, there may have been greater continuities between medieval and mission Catholicism than Bossy and Haigh allow. This Alexandra Walsham, “Translating Trent? English Catholicism and the Counter Reformation,” Historical Research 78 (2005): 300. 29

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Religion in Tudor England

more nuanced account, in turn, corresponds to the actual character of the Catholic texts reprinted here. Some clearly belong to the world of Tridentine discipline. As early as Edgeworth’s Marian sermon (and Edgeworth is by no means original) one finds an explicit repudiation of Bossy’s “moral tradition,” which equated sin with doing others harm and Christianity with loving one’s neighbor: the traditional religion that puritans likewise repudiated in the name of discipline. For both Edgeworth and William Allen, the problem with Protestantism is that it is too easy, whereas real religion is all about the disciplining of the self. Parson’s Memorial, which sets out his vision for the reconversion of England once a Catholic monarch has regained the throne, bears, in Walsham’s words, “all the hallmarks of the brand of ecclesiastical discipline which is now synonymous with the word ‘Tridentine’” (289)—­and which so closely resemble those of the brand known as “puritan”: the stress on disciplina, both academic and ethical; on doctrinal purity; on the importance of (to use Cartwright’s metaphor) making goats impersonate sheep and expelling swine from the flock altogether . The ideal, in both cases, is a confessional state: an ideal that, in Parsons’ version not less than in Field and Wilcox’s, is nothing short of revolutionary. Watson’s defense of the corporal real presence, Allen’s of purgatory and prayers for the dead, and Garnett’s of sacramentals and relics, by contrast, do battle on behalf of the faith-of-our-fathers. They defend the beliefs and practices at the heart of late medieval piety and do so on the same late medieval grounds on which pre-­Reformation piety rested: namely, the expectation that “the sacred [would] manifest itself in material objects that could be seen, touched, smelled, and ingested.”30 Thus, for Father Garnett, the sanctity of holy men and women inheres in their bones and clothes, and consecrated objects are not merely signs nor even channels of the holy, but themselves possess sacred power. This material conceptualization of the sacred stands, almost by definition, behind the doctrine of the corporeal real presence, but it likewise informs Allen’s Defense touching purgatory, where things that are parts of people (attributes, words, behaviors) take on an ontological reality, even agency: as, for example, the prayers for release of a brother’s soul from purgatory that, failing to locate him in its flames, finally discover him alive but in prison, at which point the same prayers, creatively adapting their original mission, make his chains fall off .31 Allen’s entire theology of penance hinges on acts having a reality apart from the person: since the act incurs the debt of punishment, payment need not be made by the offender himself, but merits accrued by one person can pay down the balance owed by another. Both merits and sins thus take on the character of spiritual things—­things to be paid for or paid with—­the credits and debits of a penitential economy. Purgatory, as Allen and the late Middle Ages understood it, depends on this objectification of acts, their conversion into currency.

Edward Muir, Ritual in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), 165. The episode embodies the deep-­seated medieval commitment to what Duffy calls the “religious reality of the ties of blood,” ties whose “spiritual effect . . . was believed to function mechanically, even when hidden from the living and forming no part of their intentions”: if one prayed for a soul that (unbeknownst to oneself) had been adjudged to hell—­a nd was hence beyond the reach of intercession—­one’s prayer would be redirected to benefit the next of kin residing in purgatory (Stripping, 354). 30 31

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Introduction

This sort of spiritual materialism is as characteristic of Elizabethan Catholicism as of medieval, but this continuity means that the “clean break” model applies only in part, and, more important, that the works of the mission priests do, sometimes, provide a window through which one sees darkly the features of traditional religion—­in particular, the features that Reformed Protestantism, which found the whole notion of the divine inhering in bodies both alien and distasteful, sought to destroy. Garnett in fact saw the despiritualization of matter as the signature heresy of the age .

IX. Rites of Durham This volume ends with a text that marks the end of one story and the beginning of another: aged monks’ remembrances of things past—­of the ceremonious splendor of Durham Abbey before the Great Destruction—­recorded in 1593 with reverent detail, not (as was long assumed) by a Catholic recusant but by William Claxton, a Church of England gentleman, antiquarian, and cousin by marriage to John Cosin, the apostle of Anglo-­Catholicism in the North, whose own annotated copy of the Rites is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts. That word—­“manuscripts”—­is important, for it represents yet another form of continuity: for all that this book is a record of the intersection between new religious ideas and a new technology of reproduction, words spoken and written never lost their cultural significance or their capacity to provoke. Ideas that could not be printed, or at least not without embarrassment or risk, could be preserved by pen and ink for the next generation, as became clear after 1641, when the abolition of Star Chamber and the beginning of the Civil War temporarily ended prepublication press censorship. Of the tens of thousands of pamphlets that poured from the presses in the years that followed, not a small number were typeset from Tudor manuscripts that had never before seen the light of day. And in many ways the Rites of Durham points us forward to the Civil War: with its strong connections to Anglo-­Catholicism and the emerging recidivism of Andrewes, Cosin, and Laud, we reach the end of a story in which English religion was largely about the consolidation of the Reformation, and the beginning of a story that, at least with hindsight, can be narrated as the fragmentation of that Reformation. We also reach, or very nearly, the end of the Tudor century. A new era was about to arrive, on many fronts at once: in 1597, the first of the Poor Laws would propel English social relations into the future; in 1603, the Scottish Stuarts would take the throne of England; in 1605, Bacon’s Advancement of learning would challenge the whole medieval edifice of knowledge. But the author of the Rites of Durham would not see that new dawn; he died in 1597, his gaze still fixed on the past, unaware of the revolutions that were to come or of the irony that, in religion, his own brand of conservatism was soon to be ascendant again.

A note on the text The individual readings are each prefaced by an introduction and brief bibliography. The texts that follow their respective introductions have been modernized throughout: the words are unchanged—­those now unfamiliar have glosses—­but spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and such-­like accidentals have been modified in the interests of readability. xxxi



Religion in Tudor England

Many of the theological tracts included extensive marginalia and footnotes, 90 percent of which lie on the cutting room floor, leaving only a representative remnant to suggest the range of authorities and sources cited. All Latin quotations have been translated in the notes, unless the Latin is followed by a translation or close paraphrase. The volume’s own conventions are few and simple. Everything in braces is an editorial addition, whether in the text or in the notes. Similarly, everything in angle-­brackets refers to a work or page in this volume: for example, “Perkins, A golden chain .” Square brackets sometimes indicate notes or emendations added by earlier editors; more often, they indicate that the bracketed material was originally a marginal annotation, although now placed within the text or below it. Omissions, as usual, are indicated by ellipses, supplemented by ‡ to signify gaps of considerable length. We retained the early modern use of italics to indicate quotations or near-­quotations32 and likewise followed early modern usage in not capitalizing pronouns referring to God. It seemed helpful, however, to use capitalization to distinguish the Fathers (patristic theologians) and the Father (God) from father (male parent); similarly, “Church” refers to the mystical body of Christ or any of its visible branches, whereas a “church” is an ecclesiastical building.33 The sixteenth-­century English of the readings should not present much difficulty. The handful of unfamiliar words have been glossed, as likewise the occasional syntactic snarl. However, a few familiar-­looking words have shifted meaning over time, and these have the potential to cause serious confusion. These are listed in the glossary below, but two in particular should be kept in mind: 1. “Want” always means lack, not desire. 2. “Let” can mean hinder; although it can also have the modern sense of allow. Three other features of early modern English also deserve comment: 1. Sometimes nouns retain their Latin genders; in particular, the soul and the church, both of which are feminine in Latin, are often referred to as “she.” 2. “Which” can be used as a personal pronoun; thus in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer begins “Our Father, which art in heaven.” 3. The abbreviation “li” means book (Latin, liber); “c” or “ca” means chapter (Latin, capitulum).

Acknowledgments The editors are delighted to thank a number of research assistants who helped prepare the documents: Stephanie Bahr, Gillian Chisolm, Robert Harkins, Sam Robinson, and Jason Rozumalski. This book could not have been completed without them. We also owe thanks to Baylor University Press, especially Carey C. Newman and Jordan Rowan Fannin, for their hard work and support of this project over many years. 32 Some sixteenth-­century editions, particularly in the earlier half of the century, make no typographical distinction between authorial text and quotation, in which case we have generally followed suit. 33 So too (following early modern usage), “the Apostle” refers to St. Paul, “the Prophet” to Isaiah.

xxxii

ABBREVIATIONS FOR WORKS COMMONLY CITED

Benedict, Christ’s Churches

Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches purely reformed: a social history of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002)

Bossy, Christianity in the West

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–­1700 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985)

Bossy, Peace

John Bossy, Peace in the post-­Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998)

Calvin, Institutes

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845; repr. Grand Rapids Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989)

Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement

Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (Berkeley: U of California P, 1967)

Collinson, Elizabethans

Patrick Collinson, Elizabethans (London: Hambledon and London, 2003)

Collinson, Godly people

Patrick Collinson, Godly people (London: Hambledon Press, 2003)

Duffy, Stripping

Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400–­1580 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992)

Hooker, FLE

Richard Hooker, The Folger Library edition of the works of Richard Hooker, 7 vols. in 8, general ed. W. Speed Hill (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1977–­1998)

Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism

R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979)

Lake, Moderate puritans

Peter Lake, Moderate puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982)

Lake, Anglicans and puritans?

Peter Lake, Anglicans and puritans? Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988)

xxxiii



Religion in Tudor England ODNB

Oxford dictionary of national biography: online edition (Oxford, 2004–­ )

OED

Oxford English dictionary: online edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000–­ )

Porter, Reformation and reaction

H. C. Porter, Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1959)

Shuger, “Protesting”

Debora Shuger, “A Protesting Catholic Puritan in Elizabethan England,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 3 (July 2009): 587–­630

Shuger, ed., Religion

Debora Shuger, ed., Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–­ 1638, Documents of Anglophone Christianity (Waco, Tex.: Baylor UP, 2012)

xxxiv

I

PRE-­REFORMATION/LATE MEDIEVAL

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ANONYMOUS

The miracles of Our Blessed Lady

This anonymous collection of miracles, of which a few are excerpted here, was almost certainly translated into English from a Continental text. It has the feel both of oral tradition and of the so-­called exempla, or moralizing stories told by preachers in their sermons, so it is likely the culmination of a long and composite textual tradition.1 It was published in Westminster in 1496 by the Alsatian immigrant Wynkyn de Worde, and it was printed in the very first printing house in England, which de Worde had taken over upon the death of its founder William Caxton. The book proved a great success and was reprinted twice, in 1514 and 1530. It represents the early Tudor vernacular religious tradition in a number of important respects. First, it depicts a world where the human and the divine mingle intimately: Jesus is a “good fellow,” the devil appears as a man on horseback, and Mary is “Our Lady” in the literal sense of a mistress to her servants. Second, the “works theology” of the text—­t he sense in which Christians contribute directly to their salvation through good deeds—­is reflexive and unapologetic, not yet tainted by subsequent criticisms. But at the same time, the book is capable of theological sophistication: in one miracle, for instance, a nun is taken to task by the Virgin for forgetting that all her power comes from her Son. For all the spiritual and psychological emphasis on the Cult of the Virgin at the end of the Middle Ages, it was not the case that Mary ever became a fourth person of the Trinity. Third, and most important, the drama of the text comes from the way religion in this period was both a model and a mirror for ordinary social relations. Christ, Mary, and the devil appear as refracted or idealized forms of real persons, and by our dealings with them, we learn to deal with one another. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the 1 The Protestant tradition would soon develop its own version of this homiletic tradition, of which the most important Tudor example is Thomas Beard’s Theater of God’s judgement, 1597 . The two texts are a study in contrasts, not least that Miracles of Our Blessed Lady focuses on virtue rewarded, whereas Beard focuses on sin punished.

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Religion in Tudor England

stories depicting illicit sexual relations, where the Virgin Mary represents sometimes an ideal lover and sometimes a cuckolded spouse, but always a model of forgiveness. [\ Sources: George Bernard, The late medieval English Church: vitality and vulnerability before the break with Rome (New Haven, 2012); Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Miracles of the Virgin in medieval England: law and Jewishness in Marian legends (Rochester, 2010); Duffy, Stripping.

4

THE MIRACLES OF OUR BLESSED LADY 1496

. . .

Of a wicked king that was turned at the last and became a monk, and by the glorious Virgin Mary was delivered from the power of the fiends There was a certain king full cruel and wicked in all his kingdom and power. And when he had thus long continued he felt and understood at the last his life drawing to an end. And on a day this king called for certain bishops and abbots and other of his friends as he should seek help and counsel of them. And as they were come together he said, I see and understand, my lords and friends, that I shall not long live; wherefore I desire you to give me wholesome counsel what I might do for the health of my soul, for I know well that wickedly I have lived hitherto, and I shall be damned in hell. And therefore what may I now do? Then they said, if ye will have forgiveness of your sins and desire to be saved, we advise you that ye leave your kingdom and let your head be shaved, and take on you the habit and clothing of a monk, for this only remaineth for hope of your salvation, and many by this have been saved. Therefore do this that ye may be saved. Then the king, without any tarrying, by the consent of them all was received of a certain abbot into his abbey, the which abbey was of our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, and there he was made a monk. Soothly, soon after he was smitten with a grievious access1 and began to draw fast out of this world. And anon came to him wicked spirits and fiends to face him. Truly then came thither an angel of God and said to them: wherefore come you hither? Then they said, for this king is ours. The angel said again, take your king and go your way; I know him not for a king but for a monk. Soothly, sithen {i.e., since} he became the blessed Virgin Mary’s monk, she hath gotten of her Son forgiveness of all his sins, and tho {sic} have also everlasting life and joy in heaven. And therefore what thing have ye to do with him? Know ye not that as in baptism all sins be forgiven and everlasting life is granted, so the 1

{I.e., onset of a disease}

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Religion in Tudor England

great mercy and pity of our Lord Jesu Christ doth away a man’s sins that taketh of him the order of a monk and keepeth it? Therefore of some it is called a second baptism. And how be it that this foresaid king sinned much, yet at the last he sore repented him and with his weeping washed away his sins. And moreover he was a monk of the glorious Virgin and Mother of God Saint Mary, the which hath gotten of her Son for him remission of his sins and everlasting life in heaven. And also she hath sent me hither to bring his soul before God. And when the angel had said this, he took up with him the soul with great melody and went his way. Truly then these wicked spirits and ministers of the devil with a full great cry vanished away as the smoke doth from the fire, not knowing the great mercy of our blessed Lord Jesu Christ and the goodness of the glorious Virgin his Mother, to whom be now and evermore worship and joy. Amen. . . .

How Our Lady restored a knight’s wife to her life A certain knight there was that much loved our blessed Lady, the which customably used to rise out of his bed at midnight to go to his chapel, not knowing {i.e., telling} his wife whither that he went. And there in the same chapel he used to say every night in the worship of Our Lady 50 times Ave Maria.2 Soothly, it happened on a time as this lady sat at supper with her husband the knight, thinking that he was full fair and godly, said to him: sir, is there any woman that ye love more than me? Then said he to her: for certain, madam, there is no woman that I love so much as you, save one. Then she was full sorry for this word that he said, save one, and thought to herself that the next time that he rose out of his bed from her as he was wont to do, she would slay herself that so he might be slain for her death. And when she had thought this, the next night followng this night her husband rose at midnight as he used to do and went in to his chapel and said in the worship of Our Lady 50 times Ave Maria. The meanwhile his lady took his knife and slit her own belly and slew herself, for she had weened {i.e., believed} that he had gone that time to some other woman. And when she had slain herself there was found in her belly two young babies dead, lying in her blood. Truly, then, when this knight had said his prayers before the image of our blessed Lady in his chapel, he came into his chamber to his bed and there he found his wife dead and all bloody, and two young babies by her and dead also. Then this knight was full sore afraid of this horrible sight, and greatly dread lest his wife’s kin would therefore pursue him to the death. And therefore anon he returned again unto his chapel and prayed devoutly unto our blessed Lady, Saint Mary for help, and said unto her as many salutations as he did afore. And then he fell asleep; unto whom came our blessed Lady and said, because that often times thou hast come hither and worshipped me devoutly, therefore go to thy chamber, and there thou shalt find matter of comfort and joy. And when she had this said to him, anon she vanished away. Then this knight came to his chamber and found his wife whole and alive, and two young babies sucking her paps; and said to her, ô my good lady, be ye alive? She said, yes sir, and blessed mote {i.e., may} ye be, for by your prayers I am saved, when I was damned because I slew myself that ye might be killed also for me. {The Hail Mary, based on the angel’s salutation of the Virgin, Luke 1:28-­38. Along with the Our Father, it is one of the most common of late medieval prayers.} 2

6



The miracles of Our Blessed Lad

And therefore that most fairest Lady, Saint Mary, evermore look that ye love her more than me. And so he did, and both they ended their lives blessedly together.

How a knight fell to poverty, and by the devil was made rich, and by the merits of his wife was by Our Lady restored again to good and virtuous living On a time a worshipful knight fell to great poverty by an undiscrete liberalness that he used to give his goods away. This knight had a full honest woman to his wife, that which served Our Lady full devoutly. And on a time there was a solemn feast of the year, nigh as it might be Christmas or Easter, in the which this knight used afore to give large gifts. And when he saw he had not to give at that time as he was wont to do, full greatly he was confounded and ashamed in himself; wherefore, till that solemn time were passed he went to wilderness to sorrow his misfortune and to eschew his shame. And anon came to him a stern and a ghastful man on horseback sitting, that asked him why he was so heavy. Then this knight told him all thing as it was. Then the other said to him, and {i.e., if} thou wilt do a little thing for me, thou shalt have more riches than ever thou hadst before. I promise thee, said this knight, I will do whatsoever thou biddest me, so that thou wilt fulfill indeed like as thou sayest. Then said he to him, go to thy house, and in such a place thou shalt find great weights of gold and silver and precious stones. And this thou shalt do for me: at such a day bring hither thy wife with thee. Then under this promise this knight returned home again, and in the same place where it was said to him he found great quantity of gold and silver and precious stones. Then anon he bought him places;3 he gave gifts and quit out his pledges and got him servants. And when the day was nigh come to fulfill his promise, he called his wife to him and said, take your horse for ye must go a good way hence. Then she feared, not knowing what he meant, but she durst {i.e., dared} not say him nay, and devoutly committed her to our blessed Lady, and so rode after her husband. Soothly, as they rode forward they found a chapel in their way, and this lady lighted down of her horse and went into the chapel, the knight her husband biding her without; and as she prayed devoutly to Our Lady, suddenly she fell asleep. Then anon the glorious Virgin Mary came out of the chapel in raiment and shape like this knight’s wife in all things, and lighted up on her horse, she being still in the same chapel. This knight knew not but she that came out of the chapel had been his wife, and so went forth his way. And when he was come to the place that was assigned to him, anon the prince of darkness, the devil, with great fierceness hasted him to that place. And when he was nigh it, he began anon to rue and said, ô thou most falsest of men, why hast thou thus eluded {i.e., deluded} and deceived me for so great benefits that I have done for thee? I said to thee that thou shouldst bring me thy wife, and thou hast brought with thee the Mother of God. I would have had thy wife, and thou hast brought the holy Mary. And for the great wrongs that thy wife doth to me, I would have been avenged on her. And thou hast brought this woman that she might punish me and command me to hell. And when this knight heard this, greatly he marveled, and for dread and wonder might not speak one word. Then said the blessed Virgin Mary, by what boldness hast thou presumed, wicked spirit, to annoy or trouble my servant, this man’s wife? This shall not be unpunished. And now with this sentence I bind thee that thou descend down to hell, and hereafter thou presume not to annoy or 3

{“Places” could mean offices (e.g., sheriff), but the more likely sense here is lands, manors.}

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disease {i.e., trouble} any person that to me devoutly prayeth. Soothly, then, this wicked spirit with a great cry voided away, and the knight lighted down and lay him prostrate at Our Lady’s feet, whom Our Lady blamed {i.e., scolded}, and bade him go again to his wife that was in the chapel yet asleep, and that he should cast away all the riches that he had of the devil. Then he came again to his wife as he found her sleeping, and waked her up and told her all thing like as it befell him. And when they came home they cast away all the devil’s riches, and full devoutly they continued in laud and service of our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, the which afterward sent to them both riches and prosperity. . . .

How these two words, Ave Maria, glorified a knight after his death A certain knight that was rich and noble forsook the world and entered into a religion called Cisterciensium.4 And because he knew no letter or books, the monks put to him a master that he might somewhat learn, and so by that occasion to stand among the monks, for they were ashamed that such a noble man should stand among the lay people. And when he had been long time with a master and nothing could learn but these two words, Ave Maria,5 so fast he held those two words that whither ever he went or whatsoever he did, evermore he would say, Ave Maria. Then at the last he died and was buried in the churchyard with others. And lo, out of his grave sprung a fair lily, and every leaf was written with golden letters, Ave Maria. Then they ran all thither for to see so great a sight. And as they digged the earth out of the grave, they found the root of the same foresaid lily springing out of his mouth, whereby they understood with how great devotion he used in his life to say those two words, Ave Maria, for whom our Lord showed so great miracle of worship. . . .

How a devout nun was taught of our Lady to say when she greet her, Ave, benigne Jesu, etc. A certain holy woman was, the which gave herself to prayer and contemplation above all other that were her sisters of the congregation. And it happened on a day as she was fervent in devotion and continually greeted our Lady with saying, Ave Maria, etc., she looked on the image of our Lady that was before her and heard a voice of the image’s mouth saying to her in this wise: what dost thou? Then she said with a meek voice, Lady, do I not well? Then said the voice to her again: yes, but thou mayst do better. Then said she, ô good Lady, what shall I do or say? To whom the voice answered, knowest thou not that whatsoever I have of goodness or worship, I have it of my sweet Son, Jesus Christ? Therefore greet him first, and then me. O good Lady, said she, how shall I so do? Then the voice said to her, say, greetings my Son, in this wise, ave benigne Iesu,6 and afterward say forth, Ave Maria, etc. . . . {I.e., he entered the Cistercian religious order}. {Learning to read in the Middle Ages usually meant learning Latin.} 6 {Literally “Greetings, kind Jesus,” a common opening to the Ave Maria in late medieval England, although never formally part of the liturgy} 4 5

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The miracles of Our Blessed Lad

Of a certain nun called Beatrice that was restored again to the state of grace after that she had lived in the world sinfully A certain nun called Beatrice, full seemly of person and sexton7 of her place, was full devout to Our Lady, Saint Mary, whom a certain clerk, greatly moved through wicked counsel, desired to have. And at the last the same aforesaid nun consented to the foresaid clerk, and to go with him to a certain place after Compline8 to sin both together. And ere she yede {i.e., went} forth, the foresaid nun came to an altar and said to our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, ô good Lady, I have served thee as devoutly as I could; and lo, I resign my keys to thee, for I may no longer bear the temptations of my flesh. And when she had said this, she laid the keys on the altar and went after the clerk. And when he had sinned with her, a few days after he cast her away and forsook her. Then she had not whereof she might live, and {to} go again to her monastery she was ashamed; wherefore she became a strumpet and so lived by the space of 15 years. Soothly, on a day she came to the porter of the gate and asked him and {i.e., if} ever he knew one of the nuns called Beatrice, sometime sexton of the church. He said that he knew her well, and said moreover that she was holy and well-­disposed of a child {i.e., since childhood}, and unto this day hath lived here without any complaint. Truly she understood not his words, and as she was going thence our blessed Lady and Mother of Mercy appeared to her and said, I have ordained one that hath fulfilled thine office for thee this 15 years. Therefore now turn again to thy place and do penance, for no man knoweth of thy default. Soothly, I have made one in thine one person and habit to execute thine office for thee. Then she went in and made thanks to Our blessed Lord, Jesu Christ, and Our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, and by meek confession uttered all things that befell her. [\ T ext: The myracles of oure blessed lady (Westmynster: In Caxtons house, by me Wynkyn de Worde, 1496) (NSTC 17539).

7 {I.e., sacristan, the person responsible for the maintenance and management of a church. This was a position occasionally held by women from at least the fifteenth century.} 8 {The final service in the liturgical day}

9

JOHN ALCOCK (1430–­1500)

Spousage of a virgin to Christ

John Alcock was born in Beverly, Yorkshire, in 1430 and attended the grammar school attached to Beverly Minster. He matriculated at Cambridge University at an unknown date and by 1469 had received his doctorate in civil law, a common pathway for aspirant ecclesiastical administrators. Alcock, who had only minor offices in the 1460s, somehow attached himself to the exiled King Edward IV, whose return to power in 1471 marked the beginning of Alcock’s spectacular ascension up the ecclesiastical hierarchy: bishop of Rochester in 1472, bishop of Worcester in 1476, and finally bishop of Ely in 1486, a rich sinecure provided by the new King Henry VII in recognition of Alcock’s Lancastrian loyalty. Among other noteworthy offices, he was lord chancellor of England, visitor ex officio of Cambridge University, and the official preacher at the baptism of Henry VII’s eldest son, Prince Arthur. Perhaps his most lasting monument was the foundation of Jesus College, Cambridge. But in his own time, Alcock was as famous for his piety as his administrative skills—­a rare combination—­and a series of his works published by Wynkyn de Worde in the 1490s were among the first Christian works printed in the English vernacular by a living author. To put it another way, the text reproduced here allowed English Christians, for perhaps the first time, to read what one of their bishops had to say about Christianity. [\

An exhortation made to religious sisters, often known descriptively as the Spousage of a virgin to Christ, was published around 1497. It is ostensibly addressed to religious sisters, a term sometimes used only for uncloistered religious women but here probably refers more generally to all women members of religious orders. The text describes the consecration of these religious women to a life of virginity, a ceremony that involved something much like a wedding in which they married Jesus Christ. The text has a liturgical quality and might even have been used liturgically, but Alcock also uses the image of a marriage to Christ to structure a more general discussion of the relationship between a good Christian and a 10



John Alcock

good spouse. It should be remembered that, for all that this text purports to be addressed directly to religious sisters, it almost certainly was aimed at a wider readership. Of particular interest is the way that the position of religious women as brides of Christ, owing him wifely duties of obedience, chastity, fidelity, and love, could stand for all mankind (and, of course, the Church itself) in their relationship to Christ. But, at a more mundane level, the Spousage also tells us something of the genuinely subservient position of women in late medieval religious life—­the discussion of the rape of Dinah as her own fault for daring to venture outdoors is particularly telling—­and of the ways that the Catholic Church made virginity the highest form of human life, populating heaven just as mothers populate the earth. [\

Two provisos are necessary. First, the biblical passages in the text are often quite different from the Vulgate, perhaps because Alcock was quoting from memory. Second, while the prose has great beauty and power, the syntax is not always comprehensible. [\ Sources: ODNB; George Bernard, The late medieval English Church: vitality and vulnerability before the break with Rome (New Haven, 2012); J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (London, 1964); V. M. O’Mara, “Preaching to nuns in late medieval England,” in Carolyn Muessig, ed., Medieval monastic preaching (Leiden, 1998); Julie Smith, “An image of a preaching bishop in late medieval England: the 1498 woodcut portrait of Bishop John Alcock,” Viator 21 (1990): 301–­22.

11

JOHN ALCOCK

Spousage of a virgin to Christ

c. 1497

I ask the banns1 betwixt the high and most mighty prince, King of all kings, Son of almighty God and the Virgin Mary in humanity, Christ Jesus of Nazareth of the one party; and A.B.2 of the other party, that if any man or woman can show any lawful impediment, either by any pre-­contract made or corruption of body or soul of the said A.B., that she ought not to be married this day unto the said mighty prince Jesus, that they would according unto the law show it. Good sister, we are here gathered, before Almighty God and all his saints in heaven, in his Church here militant to solemn this noble spousage3 between the said Son of almighty God and you, which spousage must be of your party desired with all your whole heart and free will, not compelled by none of your friends, nor for cause of worldly worship {i.e., honor} nor ease of your body, but only for the love and service ye owe to the said mighty prince, to serve him and obey him and keep his commandments, and all other men and worldly worship renounce and forsake, and him to love above all things, and his precepts to perform, and all other things to do that pertaineth to a good wife. How much be ye bound unto him that will consent that ye be married unto him, so great a prince and almighty, and ye a wretch, his creature, and of a poor lineage. For the common usage is kings to marry together, dukes and earls together, and poor people together, and seldom seen the rich and the poor marry together. And yet this most mighty prince, Lord of heaven and of earth, for the love he beareth unto you, to make you his queen, his Father of heaven to be your father, his mother to be yours, and so by this marriage all your kindred shall be of cousinage by affinity to the Father of heaven, Our Lady, all the angels, with all the whole genealogy of Christ, to which honor and excellence no carnal spousage could 1 {The banns were the public announcement of an intended marriage in the parish church of the betrothed on consecutive Sundays prior to the wedding; they were intended to prevent invalid marriages by giving neighbors an opportunity to object if they knew of any legal impediment to the union.} 2 {A.B., in legal documents, just meant “insert name here.”} 3 {Spousage can refer either to a betrothal or a wedding.}

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exalt you. Therefore if ye continue his faithful and true spouse, committing your mind, your will, and all your works to observe his commandments, your reward shall be as in your jointure and dowry, exceed all rewards that can be thought and may be given unto man. First, sister, if ye will be spoused to this noble prince, and so be determined in your mind, I say these words to you of the Holy Ghost: audi filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam, et obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui {Ps. 45:11}. That is to say, daughter, here see and give humble attendance: if ye will be spoused to this mighty prince, ye must forget and relinquish joy and felicity of this world, and the house of all your generation, your father and mother and all your carnal friends, and ye must follow him in conditions, and leave your old name and conditions, and to be called after his name, his name is Jesus Nazarenus. And so ye must be called Nazarena. It is written: Nazarei candidores nive interpretantur virgulti vel floridi sive custodientes aut separati a mundo vel uncti sive sancti aut consecrati.4 That is to say: ye must be as a young green branch and as a flower and as a keeper of the treasure of your husband and severed from the world as anointed holy and consecrate queen, for these properties among other hath your spouse. First, ye must be as a young green branch, the which loseth his fair beauty when he is severed from the root. The root of all religion is Jesus of Nazareth, that is charity (quia Deus caritas est5). And who so ever is not in charity, he departeth himself from almighty God. So ye must love your spouse Jesus above all things; he must be in your mind, in your soul, in your heart, and in all your works. And of him specially ye must speak, for if ye have any pleasure for to speak of any other things of the world or of any other man, then will he be wroth. For as Saint Gregory sayeth: providendum ergo nobis est, quia intueri non debet quod non licet concupisci.6. . . For he will that ye keep only and entirely unto him your five wits, to have no pleasure for to look upon man or woman, nor to hear of no worldly things, nor speak of no concupiscence, nor handle no contagious things, but only that shall be to his pleasure and service. For as Saint Jerome sayeth, there was never man so jealous of his wife and taketh heed of his {her?} works and deeds as our Lord your spouse will take heed of you. For ye can think no thought but he knoweth it, nor speak no word but he heareth it, nor be in no place but he is there present, nor no thing can deceive him; therefore ye must love him above all things and be in perfect charity with all your sisters and his people and servants. Also Christ Jesus is called flos campi,7 the flower of Nazareth; the beauty of this exceedeth all other virtues and it is so noble a treasure that it cannot be praised, and therefore virginity is honored in almighty God, and Christ, the head and the leader thereof; and the first thing that he did in earth when he became man, he set up his household of virgins and men of chastity for to serve him and his Church here in earth, as he was by virgins, the angels, served in heaven. His mother was and is perpetual virgin. John Evangelist his secretary, a virgin. John the Baptist, a virgin. Jeremy the prophet, a virgin; and angels in heaven, virgins; and innumerable there singing and following the Lamb of God, the second Person, and never {i.e., ever} new songs of joy and glory. The angels of heaven honoreth {The first part of the quotation is from Lam 4:7.} {1 John 4:16: “Because God is love.”} 6 {From St. Gregory the Great, Moralia 21.2: “We must therefore beware, for it is not permitted to look upon what it is not allowed to desire.”} 7 {“Flower of the field,” from Song 2:1} 4 5

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virgins as their brethren and sistern. . . . And therefore Saint Bernard sayeth, what is more full of beauty than is chastity, Quid castitate decorius, que mundum de immundo conceptum semine de hoste domesticum de homine angelum facit.8 The angels worshipped Saint Agnes and clad her in a garment of chastity, crowned Saint Cecily . . . and delivered from death Susanne. And as it is written, Numbers 31: Omnes feminas virgines reservare, alias omnes iubentur interfici;9 that is to say, that where all the people should be destroyed and slain for sin, yet God almighty commanded to spare virgins. And therefore sayeth Saint Anselm: Non est salus nisi quem tu virgo peperisti.10 Saint Margaret had the devil under her feet and bound him, and he cried and said, leave ye, young maid, ye destroy me. And in likewise Saint Julian beat him and put him to great rebuke, and therefore the devil worshipped virginity, as it is read in Tobit the sixth chapter. For right as the devil hath power of all unclean livers, right so he honoreth virgins and feareth them because of the angels. . . . For as matrimony replenished the earth with children, right so a virgin replenished paradise . . . Mothers of children of the world hath great business and sorrow for to bring forth their children; a virgin is in quietness and bringeth forth her children in great joy, as it is written . . . Canticorum secundo: sicut lilium inter spinas, sic amica mea inter filias.11 Virginity is likened unto a lily; the leaves of the lily that conserved the beauty thereof is soberness of meat and drink. . . .

Custos Also ye must be a custos, a keeper of all such things as this day shall be delivered unto you in the name of your Spouse and follow him therein. . . . So ye must keep the treasure of your spouse, Christ, pertaining to his faith, and to have in your remembrance and will to keep the four things that shall be delivered unto you this day: your veil and your mantel, both being of black, and a ring, with a light of wax bearing in your hand; and in keeping of these it shall be showed as ye love your husband. This veil and mantel remembered right well the virgin Saint Agnes when she said, posuit signum in faciem meam et nullum amatorem preter eum admittam.12 That is to say, he hath covered my soul inward and mine head with a veil, that and if I will love any man better than him, I shall go to the color of my veil and that is everlasting death. In likewise she showed that her spouse Christ Jesus had endued her with a garment all set with precious stones: that is to say, with charity, faith, hope, humility, obedience, abstinence, and prayer; and embroidered all these fair virtues in the black garment of her body and soul here knit together; which may every virtuous person daily use and increase, to his reward, by grace and free will that be given unto him if he will seek therefore. And therefore the said Saint Agnes sang and said to all {St. Bernard, De moribus et officio episcoporum, ch. 3: “What is more beautiful than chastity, which makes pure one conceived in sin, makes friends of enemies, and makes angels of men.”} 9 {A paraphrase of Numbers 31:17-­18: “Kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”} 10 {St. Anselm, Oratio 52: “There is no salvation, Virgin, except through him you have brought forth.”} 11 {Song 2:2: “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”} 12 {A passage from a pseudo-­A mbrose text on the passion of St. Agnes, used as an antiphon in the liturgy for the consecration of virgins: “He placed a sign upon my face, and I will admit no lover but him.” See James Borders, “Gender, performativity, and allusions in medieval services for the consecration of virgins,” in Jane Fulcher, ed., The Oxford handbook of the new cultural history of music (Oxford, 2011), 17–­38.} 8

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virgins: Induit me Dominus ciclade auro detexta. (Anulum.)13 Also, I have, by the authority given unto me by Christ Jesus, to deliver unto you this day a ring in token of marriage indissoluble to be made betwixt you and him. For as Saint Paul sayeth, ye must hereafter remember nothing but that is godly; and therefore the said Saint Agnes cried with a great voice against the devil and him that tempted her to uncleanly desires, saying: discite a me pabulum mortis, quia ab alium {sic, for alio} amatore preventa sum.14 . . .

Lumen Also remember the light that ye bring with you, that signifieth Christ Jesus, that is vera lux que illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum.15 Whose faith, by his Church taught you, ye must entirely keep, and see your light go not out, but be burning in your soul and in your mind by the blessed Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and the most blessed life of our savior Christ Jesus; and that ye fall in none earthly sin, heresy, nor errors by any man’s teaching, nor dispute not the rules of your religion; but with all reverence and obedience that ye may, do ye take them, obey them, and observe them. And whatsoever your abbess or the rulers of your religion command you to do, believe it is for the health of your soul and according to your religion; and honor and love them as your father and mother. Ye must be patient among your sisters and suffer them; ye must be meek; ye must eat and drink such meats and drinks as ye be commanded; and when ye have not half slept enough, ye must rise; ye must sing in your course and order with your sisters, and take no heed though your voice be not most sweetest and clear, so ye have a sweet devotion; ye must serve your sisters and wash their feet, for Christ Jesus, to whom ye shall be spoused unto, was obedient to his Father and suffered death; and he, God and man, washed also the feet of his disciples, poor fishers.

Nazarena Also ye must be Nazarena, that is to say, dissevered from the world, as Jesus Nazarenus sayeth himself: regnum meum non est in hoc mundo.16 But though your body be here in this world corporally, your mind and your soul to be with Christ Jesus; and so take the world in all things therein, and say with Saint Paul: the world is to me a pain, and I to the world; my joy is only in Christ crucified.17 So, sister, your pleasure and conversation must only be in the cross of Christ, that is penance, in fasting, prayer, and mortification of your enemy the flesh, and let it not have his will. Keep you within your monastery and depart not therefrom. . . . For right as a fish dieth that is without water, right so a man or woman of religion, being without their cloister, is dead in their souls. Remember the story of the Bible that Dena {i.e., Dinah, in Genesis 34}, Jacob’s daughter, she would not keep her within, not close as she was commanded, but would go forth among young people, and so was corrupt and ravished, and thereof followed infinite manslaughter and murder. Moses 13 {An antiphon from the same source: “The Lord clothes me in a robe woven of gold.” Anulum means ring, probably a reference to yet another antiphon (see below).} 14 {Idem. The text should read Decede: “Depart from me, fuel of death, because I have already given myself to another lover.”} 15 {John 1:9: “the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”} 16 {John 18:36: “My kingdom is not of this world.”} 17 {Gal 6:14}

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being in mount of religion, he spoke with God; without, he spoke but with man. . . . A woman of religion (or a man), being in their cloister in prayer, they speak with God; without, they speak with the devil; and therefore an holy father said, right as an hen that hath eggs leaveth her eggs, shall of them never come chickens, so shall none be good religious man or woman that leaveth the place of religion. . . .

Uncta Also, remember, ye be anointed in your baptism and confirmation, and now to be made perfect Nazarena, Christ’s wife of Nazareth; ye shall be sanctified and consecrate, and so your name to be put in the great calendar among the virgins and spouses of Christ Jesus in heaven. Iesus Nazarenus was unctus oleo leticie pre omnibus partibus suis,18 and that {oil} given unto his manhood to anoint with virtue and grace in this present life, and with everlasting joy, his lovers and servants; and therefore Saint John Baptist sayeth, nos omnes recipimus gratiam in plenitudine eius.19 Nothing we have sufficient of our self, but all cometh of his grace; and therefore, if ye will be anointed with this noble oil of mercy and grace in this present life, and to come to be anointed in everlasting joy, ye must do that was commanded in the Gospel by the wise maidens that should be spoused unto Christ, saying, ite et emite oleum.20 Go and seek unto ye may buy and have this oil of grace; and therefore the noble lady said to all her gentlewomen, as it is written in the Book of all Songs: in odore unguentorum tuorum currimus.21 That is to say, right as an hound that hath found blood, or piercing of a beast stricken, and seeketh and ceaseth not till he find it, so our savior Christ Jesus was wounded and lost blood and pierced of his blessed life in this world, to every man to taste and follow it till he find him. Ye shall not, sister, need to seek far . . . for he sayeth by his prophet David: prope est Dominus omnibus invocantibus eum.22 He is ready to every body when he is called upon. Example thereof: Mary Magdalene; she brought with her ointment of devotion and sought him, and therefore soon she found him. So it is your duty to seek Christ Jesus to whom ye shall wed, neither at Nazareth Bedlem {i.e., Bethlehem} nor Jerusalem, but ye shall find him here, within your own church, the same God and man Christ Jesus; and for your very love and contemplation, go to an altar within your church, or to an image of Our Lady where Gabriel saluted her. Remember the mercy and the love that the Father of heaven bare to all mankind, sent his angel to a young maid; and of her clean blood of virginity, God and man was joined together. Then go to another altar or place that showeth the nativity of Christ, and how that he lieth in great poverty in hay, and betwixt two beasts, and had no comfort but this young maid his mother to be fed of her breast. And so for to go to other places within your church for your devotion and remembrance of his Passion. And specially once, twice, or thrice of the day, that ye seek him in your mind devoutly at the mount of Calvary. That is, that ye shall kneel before the crucifix where his image is made, remembering how he, God and man, that never had offended, but took man’s nature here for the great love and redemption {Paraphrase of Hebrew 1:9: “God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”} {Paraphrase of John 1:16? The Latin means “And of his fullness have we all received grace.”} 20 {Paraphrase of Matthew 25:9. The Latin means “go and buy oil.”} 21 {A paraphrase, used in the liturgy of the Office of Our Blessed Lady, of Song of Songs 1:3: “We run towards you in the odor of your ointments.”} 22 {Psalm 145:18: “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him.”} 18 19

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thereof, and put unto so painful and shameful death in the midst of the world, his mother being present, his hands and his feet nailed unto the tree, his heart stricken through; and yet, in all this pain, his charity was so much that he prayed unto his Father of heaven to forgive all them that so violently and so wrongfully put him to death; and desired of his Father that all mankind should be forgiven of their trespasses, for the offence of our first-­ formed father Adam, and the gates of heaven to be opened to all them that would believe in him. And in like wise to remember some devout place of his Resurrection and blessed Ascension; and how he shall come to make an end of this present world and redeem it per ignem,23 and call you and all mankind to accompt of their demeaunce {i.e., behavior} concerning his faith, and of you how ye have kept your spousage and promise made unto him. And if ye, sister, well and justly and truly observe your name that ye shall be called by after your husband—­as Nazarena, that is to say virgulti, fair branches full of fruits of virtue in your religion, and flowers of virginity, and keeper of commandments of your spouse, despising pleasures and pomp of the world, leaving it unto the foolish maidens of the world, and anoint your soul by holy living, and so be sancta as Christ is sanctus, and consecrate your soul to almighty God, saying unto him with the holy maid and martyr Saint Agnes and Saint Audrey, nihil in terris desidero preter te,24 I desire nothing in this present life but thee Jesus to be my keeper and defender, and to have thee principally in my mind and thought—­and then doubt ye nothing, sisters, but it shall be said unto you and everyone of you, unguentum effusum, nomen tuum; ideo adolescentulae dilexerunt te nimis.25 The angels of heaven, being these fair young maidens and gentlewomen—­for ye bear the name of Nazareth that is their maker and lord—­will make infinite mirth and defend and keep your person and not depart from {you} till they sing this song most blessed that may be said unto you: veni sponsa Christi, accipe coronam quam tibi preparavit in eternum.26 That is to say, come, maid, Nazarene, Christ’s spouse, to present and receive for thy reward the special crown of glory called auriola, that I will not give nor reward with but my special lovers: martyrs, virgins, and preachers. And that ye may so do here that ye may receive this noble crown, I beseech almighty God for his great mercy, Amen. [\ T ext: An Exhortacyon made to relygyous systers in the tyme of theyr consecracyon [Spousage of a Virgin to Christ] (Westminster, c. 1497) (NSTC 287).

{By fire} {Psalm 73:25: “there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.”} 25 {Song of Songs 1:3, used in the liturgy of the Office of Our Blessed Lady: “thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.”} 26 {A standard liturgical text used in the liturgy for the consecration of virgins: “Come, bride of Christ, accept the crown which he has prepared for you in eternity.”} 23 24

17

THE DOCTRINAL OF DEATH

This is the first half of what is ostensibly a late-­medieval manual for priests on the pastoral care of parishioners on their deathbeds. Like so many works of English-­language Christianity in this period, however, there is no doubt that its intended audience was larger than the clergy; it was an example of the ancient genre of the ars moriendi, or “art of dying,” which Christians used to reflect upon and prepare for their own deaths. We may hypothesize, then, that in all the places where The doctrinal of death advises the priest to explain something to the dying man or woman, in practice the new technology of vernacular print effectively performed a pastoral function, ministering to the souls of the first generation of Christian readers who had access to the printed word. The content of the Doctrinal is interesting in part because of its vivid display of the Catholic theology of works and merit: although Christians cannot earn their salvation simply through their own works, as Protestants would later accuse Catholics of holding, nonetheless, in the theological world of the Doctrinal, Christians contribute meaningfully to their salvation, and the Church intercedes to save them through the provision of sacraments in a lifelong and repetitive cycle of sin, satisfaction, and atonement. Death matters, and the deathbed is the great arena of salvation and reprobation where the devil wrestles with the Church for sinners, because the state of the soul at the very moment of death is eternally determinative. The text is also interesting for its insights into the real, social life of Christianity, insofar as the author is constantly concerned with practicalities: is the dying person learned or unlearned, are there any holy relics at hand, can a picture of the Virgin be located before the person dies, and so forth. If the devil is crouched upon dying Christians, tempting them to abandon their faith, then the Church must deploy its own very practical armaments to fight back. But the most fascinating aspect of the Doctrinal is its overwhelming emphasis on pain and suffering as the ordinary condition of human life, and the sense in which this decidedly premodern form of existence—­life without aspirin or antibiotics, without clean water, reliable food, or sturdy shelter for so many people—­required a decidedly premodern 18



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form of Christianity. Death, here, is not merely the end of life: it is normatively imagined as the terminus of a long and excruciating illness, so that the pastoral role of the priest is to help the Christian to embrace pain and find peace with it as a gift from God. Since no illness can be cured without God’s grace, the sacraments of the Church are quite literally medicine, in many cases the most effective form of medicine available. But at the same time, the pain of human existence is the yoke of Christ, a form of fellowship with Christ on the cross, so that the final cure for every Christian’s pain comes in the next world rather than this one. [\ Sources: David Atkinson, The English ars moriendi (New York, 1992); Nancy Lee Beaty, The craft of dying: a study in the literary tradition of the ars moriendi (New Haven, 1970); Duffy, Stripping; Mary Catherine O’Connor, The art of dying well: the development of the ars moriendi (New York, 1942).

19

THE DOCTRIAL OF DEATH 1498

This treatise is called the doctrinal of death and is to be read afore a man or a woman when it seemeth that they be in the article {i.e., moment} of death. Read this, as it followeth, afore the sick person: Ye shall understand that none shall have the kingdom of heaven but such as fighteth for it, and specially against their body {in} the time of temptation and sickness. The soul and the body are of contrary nature and of contrary condition, and betwixt them is continual battle. If your soul take patiently the bodily sickness, and as heartily as it can thank God thereof, for ye have deserved this pains and much more in punishment of sin, then your soul prevails against your flesh and gettest the victory, and in reward thereof ye shall have the crown of glory. Remember how oftentimes your flesh hath drawn your soul after it to sin by delectation; therefore now our Lord hath sent you a time for to recompense for those many offences. Wherefore now let the soul draw the flesh to it and offer it to God as a sacrifice burning with painful sickness in satisfaction of that inordinate pleasure that it hath had in the flesh from the time that it was joined thereto. Patiently and thankfully take the pain, and then the pain is profitable to you, and more sweet in the acceptation of God than ever fleshly pleasure was accept {i.e., pleasing} unto you from the time ye were born; then ye shall have thereby the love of God, remission and forgiveness of sin; increase of grace, and the great help of our Lord at the hour of death; and ye shall have perpetual joy for that ye have so patiently taken this temporal pain for the love of him. Now learn once to have a patient heart, learn meekly to bear the yoke of God, do one principal act for the love of him that bear the cross of most bitterest pain for your love. Remember he assayed your burden, he felt it, he is ready to reward you for it, he hath laid it on your back; then think that ye will bear it, show you {i.e., yourself} his obedient servant; and if ye bear it of love, ye shall find it the more lighter, and ye shall feel that his mercy shall lessen your burden and inwardly refresh you by his grace with joyfulness of spirit, as he sayeth himself: All ye that have labored and have borne great burden for me, 20



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come to me and I shall refresh you. Show yourself now a true child and disciple of our Lord, which sayeth that who will be my disciple he must forsake his fleshly desire and take upon him the cross of tribulation. Now the cross is on your back; now bear it mightily after your Savior. Your flesh desireth health and rest. Ye must forsake these desires and conform your will to the will of God, which knoweth what thing is most to your avail, and by this short pain hath ordained, if ye apply you obediently to take it, that ye shall be delivered thereby from many a sin which ye have long time continued in; and a little pain in this life avoided great pain after this life; and a short pain here recompensed for a long pain there; and by the pain that ye suffer in this life, ye shall not only have forgiveness of sin but ye shall have great joy after this life. . . . The dear beloved souls of our Lord, they had great pain afore they departed out of this life, and they desired so to have, for they knew the profit and fruit which they should have thereby, which they have now and are put in full surety that they never shall have sufferance of pain after this. Remember this blessed fellowship which hath gone afore you, and be glad that ye may be fellowship with them. Trust it verily, ye shall have great comfort of them against your ghostly enemy, if ye joyfully follow them. I wote well your flesh grudgeth with pain, but that shall not lessen your merit, for it is natural to the flesh so to do. The merit is in your soul, that ye think ye have deserved it and have a will to suffer it as long as it pleased God ye shall have it, and say in your soul: Lord, I thank thee for this righteous pain which I suffer; blessed be thou that sends me reason and teaching to take it patiently, thy name be blessed everlastingly. And with all the force that ye may, apply your body to suffer pain like as our Savior applied his body to the cross for you. And when ye feel that ye draw to sickness, have will to say gramercy {i.e., thank you}, my Lord, like if ye received a precious gift of him. And if your pain be so great that ye think not upon thankings at that time, soon after, when ye feel the pain assuaged, then heartily thank him that he will make you partner with him in passion. For as Saint Paul sayeth, like as we are partners with him in passion {i.e., suffering}, so we shall be partners with him in joy and consolation. Remember also the great reward that ye shall have for patiently taking of this pain. For as Saint Paul sayeth, all the pains that we may suffer are not able to have that joy which we shall have for pain, but only by the grace of God, which hath ordained that a little pain well taken here shall have inestimable joy there. Ye shall have God himself for the good labor of your sufferance, and the same glory that he hath. That is to say, ye shall clearly see the same Godhead and blessed divinity that he seeth, and have everlasting glorious fruition with most sweet and burning love of the same, and be in fellowship with his blessed Mother and all the angels and saints of heaven, in mirth and joy, with endless bliss so great that never ear did hear, never eye did see, never heart did think the least part of that joy. O what pain will the damned souls which are now in hell suffer, so that they might avoid that outrage and horrible pain that they have, and everlastingly shall have, if they might avoid that perpetual pain by any temporal pain that they might suffer. If they had license to turn again to this life, all earthly pain should be sweet to them, and all pain of this world should be in manner as no pain to them. . . . Now give good example to those that are about you, that they may see by your meek taking of pain that ye are the faithful child of God, and that they may learn of you likewise to do in time coming, and then your 21



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reward shall be doubled, for ye shall not only then for yourself be rewarded, but also for them which are bettered by you. . . . These pains patiently taken shall deliver you from the most outrage {i.e., outrageous} pain of hell, and ye may so blessedly take them, with giving thankings to our Lord for them, that ye shall never have pain in purgatory, but these pains with the virtue of the sacraments of the Church shall be to you perfect purgation. Our Lord, of his infinite mercy, grant you abundance of his grace so to take your sickness as may be most profitable to your salvation. Amen. After that ye have showed to the sick person how they shall patiently take the sickness to the pleasure of God and their great merit, if ye see that of likelihood it is a deadly sickness and that they be like to depart out of this world, then first of all counsel them to receive the holy sacraments of the Church which they are bound to receive when they are like to die, which are the sacrament of confession, the sacrament of the body of our Lord; and after this, counsel them to receive the sacrament of anealing {i.e., extreme unction}, and say to them this: Ye shall understand that all sickness and pain cometh of sin, for if there had never been sin there should never have been no pain; and the remedy against sin is grace, which our Lord hath ordained to be received by the sacraments of the Church. Therefore the sovereign medicine, both for soul and body, are the sacraments of the Church; wherefore, if it pleased God that ye shall have your health again, ye shall have it the sooner and the better, for without the special help of God, there is no medicine that may help nature. And if it please his grace that ye shall not die at this time, ye shall have the more gracious continuance of life {in} that ye holily dispose you to die. And if it please God to take you out of this life, ye shall go surely armed with his grace and have special help of our Lord and depart like a true Christian man. Also, I counsel you that ye neither desire to go out of this world nay abide in it, but that ye offer you wholly to the will of our Lord, as the obedient child of him which was obedient to the will of his Father when he suffered death for you; and of both, rather either {sic} yourself to die than to live; then ye shall not be deceived, for it is the most surest way. Many a man is deceived the time of their death by hope that they have to continue in this life; for as long as they trust verily to live, they never dispose them perfectly to die, and so death taketh them undisposed, to the damage and hurt of their soul. . . . If ye see that the sick person is like to continue a good space or it come to death, then it is expedient to read afore them some holy matter of the love of our Lord, or of his great mercy, or the commandments of God, or some confessional: that is to say, some book which teached a man how he should confess him, for that shall bring many matters to their mind which peradventure they were never confessed thereof in their life, or some holy prayers to stir them to the more devotion. Also, see that there be plenty of holy water, and that it be ofttimes cast about the house of the sick person. Also, set in the sight of the sick a crucifix, and also an image of Our Lady, if ye can have it, either in picture or in carved work, and oftentimes biddeth them remember the passion of our Savior whereby they shall have remission of sin and special defense from their ghostly enemy. And bid them heartily beseech oftentimes that blessed Mother of mercy to pray for them, and that she will be with them at the hour of death. And also, if he be lettered, say with him the seven psalms, and the litany, and the 22



The Doctrial of deat

psalms of the Passion, or holy anthems {i.e., antiphons} and responses, and hymns of the Trinity or of Our Lady, or of other feasts. Also, see that the holy candle be burning, specially when ye see he draweth nigh to death, and bless him oftentimes with it; and if ye have any holy relics, lay them upon him. And when ye see that he gived up the spirit, cry—­and bid those which are about you cry—­the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, help your servant. Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, by the virtue of thy Passion, help thy servant. Blessed Virgin Mary and mother of mercy, help thy servant. Jesu, have mercy of thy soul. All the court of heaven, we beseech you in the charity of our Lord, pray for his soul. The grace of the Holy Ghost and the merits of Christ’s passion be with thee. Amen. Also, if ye think the time will serve thereto, it is expedient to show to the sick person the temptations with which commonly the devil assailed the soul at that hour of death, that it may be more stronger to resist his malice at that time, for then he is most terse {sic} to tempt them; he wote well if he get them not then, he shall never have them. Wherefore with all his deceit and subtleness he labored to deceive the soul and bring it in desperation, if he may; and specially he will tempt them in their faith, and make them to believe that it is false. And therefore say to them: see that ye be fast in the faith of Christ, for the devil will tempt you therein, and make you to believe, if he can, that the faith that ye have believed on is false, and that ye have been deceived all your life thereby, for he knoweth that the faith is the ground of all virtue, and that no man is saved without the faith. For this cause, say to them: see that ye be fast in the faith of Christ, for your ghostly enemy will now do that he may to make you to forsake your faith; he will say that ye have been deceived all your days in the faith, for it may not be that three persons should be one God. Also, he will say that Christ was not very God and man, and that he was not born of a virgin, and that he is not verily in the sacrament of the altar. Wherefore I exhort you in God, understanding that ye may not be saved without faith, that ye keep fast the faith that ye have taken at the font-­stone, and defy the devil with all his falsehood, and say in your heart ye will die in the faith of Christ, which God hath declared with so many and great miracles proper to himself that he hath showed it true, like as himself is true. . . . It passeth the power of the fiend to compel any soul willfully to err in the faith, and whatsoever temptation comed in your mind contrary to your faith, have will to believe as the Church of God believeth and as our Savior Jesu Christ teached the Church to believe,1 and all the false suggestions of the devil and thoughts contrary to the faith shall nothing hurt you, for there is never sin in the mind damnable except it come of the will, nor in none other power of the soul. Believe faithfully such teaching and preaching as ye have had by the Church, and what so ever cometh contrary to that in your mind, think it is false and cometh of the devil, father of all falsehood. Wherefore I exhort you that, like as ye have begun your life in the perfect faith of the Church, so end it in perfect faith and obedience, for all the weal of your life now hingeth of the end. If they be learned, say the Creed afore them in Latin. If they understand no Latin, say it in English after this form: I believe in God. . . . And if ye think the time shall be 1

{This is the doctrine of implicit faith, systematized by Aquinas in Summa theologica 2.2.2.5.}

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sufficient afore the death, rehearse the Creed diverse times, that the sick may be made strong in the faith, and to confound the devil which loved not to hear the Creed and fled from the sound of the voice, specially when it is said to the intent that it should confound the devil. . . . Remember the profit of the faith; it obtained all things of God profitable to the soul. As he sayeth himself: all things are possible to a faithful soul. [\ T ext: The doctrynalle of dethe (Westminster, 1498) (NSTC 6931).

24

JOHN COLET (1467–­1519)

The sermon of Doctor Colet, made to the Convocation at Paul’s

Reform of the Church is as old as the Church itself, already recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians. Corruption, and vigilance against corruption, are necessary conditions of an institution with one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. And yet it is almost impossible to read calls for reformation in the early sixteenth century without assuming that Reformation, the movement beginning with Martin Luther, is what is really at stake. Early modern Protestants so thoroughly inculcated the historical myth of a late medieval Church groaning under its own weight, rotten to the core and unable to serve the needs of Christian people, that we tend to take literally the jeremiads of the many Catholic churchmen who lamented the corruption of their Church. But similar jeremiads can be found in almost every era and among both Protestants and Catholics; the challenge of reading John Colet’s famous convocation sermon is to try to work out how much of his rhetoric is a Renaissance iteration of an ancient Christian commonplace and how much is a reflection of real crisis. There is, alas, no unambiguous answer. [\

John Colet, Oxford don and then dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, was one of the most important figures of the early English Renaissance. After living in Italy in the early 1490s, Colet brought the ideas and techniques of the Renaissance humanists back to England. He was known first as an educational reformer, encouraging students to have direct contact with classical and Christian sources rather than reading them through the filters of the medieval tradition. Perhaps his most lasting achievement was founding St. Paul’s School, the then-largest grammar school in England, for the encouragement of humanist-­style learning. But Colet was best known as a reformer of the Church, fiercely criticizing its corruptions and offering proposals for its improvement. This reputation comes in part from the sermon that he delivered in the Convocation (i.e., the assembly of the upper clergy) of 25



Religion in Tudor England

the province of Canterbury, probably in 1510, subsequently printed in its original Latin around 1512. Here Colet lambasted the worldliness of the clergy, their preference for wealth and prestige over godliness, and their emphasis on the theological rather than the moral teachings of Christianity; these were all themes closely associated with Colet’s friend Erasmus, who had been his colleague in Oxford for much of the previous decade. [\

At the time of its Latin publication, nothing about this sermon caused a stir; it was unimpeachably orthodox, a humanist spin on an ancient theme, and no one seems to have taken it to imply that the Church of the early sixteenth century was peculiarly corrupt. It was a sermon that, like any good sermon, convicted its auditors of sin and encouraged their reformation; in this case Colet’s auditors were the leaders of the clergy, so he focused particularly on clerical sins. Colet died in 1519, and it was only eleven years later, in the very different atmosphere of 1530 and the early English Reformation, that Colet’s Convocation sermon was anonymously translated into English and published to support the new, far more radical reformist program of the Protestants. Colet was coopted by these new reformers as a Protestant avant la lettre, and his sermon was taken for something it was never intended to be: accurate reportage of the corruption of the late medieval Church. So when we read Colet’s Convocation sermon, we must ask: what did Colet intend his sermon to do, and what is the relationship between his vision of reformation and what later became known as the Reformation? [\ Sources: ODNB; Jonathan Arnold, “John Colet, preaching and reform at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1505–­19,” Historical Research 76, no. 194 (2003): 450–­68; J. B. Gleason, John Colet (Berkeley, 1989); Christopher Harper-­Bill, “Dean Colet’s convocation sermon and the pre-­Reformation Church in England,” History 73, no. 238 (1988): 191–­210; J. B. Trapp, Erasmus, Colet, and More: the early Tudor humanists and their books (London, 1991).

26

JOHN COLET

The sermon of Doctor Colet, made to the Convocation at Paul’s

1512 (preached and Latin ed.; English trans. 1530)

Ye are come together today, fathers and right wise men, to enter council, in the which what ye will do and what matters ye will handle yet we understand not. But we wish that, once remembering your name and profession, ye would mind the reformation of the Church’s matter. For it was never more need. And the state of the Church did never desire more your endeavors. For the Spouse of Christ, the Church, whom ye would should be without spot or wrinkle, is made foul and evil favored. As sayeth Esaias {Isa 1:21}: the faithful city is made an harlot. And as sayeth Hieremias {Jer 3:1}: she hath done lechery with many lovers, whereby she hath conceived many seeds of wickedness, and daily bringeth forth very foul fruit. Wherefore I came hither today, fathers, to warn you that in this your council, with all your mind, ye think upon the reformation of the Church. . . . To exhort you, reverend fathers, to the endeavor of reformation of the Church’s estate, because that nothing hath so disfigured the face of the Church as hath the fashion of secular and worldly living in clerks and priests, I know not where more conveniently to take beginning of my tale than of the apostle Paul, in whose temple ye are gathered together. For he, writing unto the Romans and under their name, unto you sayeth: be you not conformed to this world, but be you reformed in the newness of your understanding, that ye may prove what is the good will of God, well pleasing and perfect. This did the apostle write to all Christian men, but most chiefly unto priests and bishops. . . . In the which words the apostle doth two things. First, he doth forbid that we be not conformable to the world1 and be made carnal. Furthermore, he doth command that we be reformed in the spirit of God, whereby we are spiritual. I, intending to follow this order, I will speak first of confirmation, then after of reformation. Be you not (sayeth he) conformable to this world. The apostle calleth the world the ways and manner of secular living, the which chiefly doth rest in four evils of this world: that is to say in devilish pride, in carnal concupiscence, in worldly covetousness, in secular {In this idiomatic expression, which Colet uses several times, the “not” should be disregarded; he means that we are forbidden to become conformable to the world.} 1

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business. These are in the world, as Saint John the apostle witnesseth in his epistle canonical. For he sayeth: all thing that is in the world is either the concupiscence of the flesh or the concupiscence of the eyes or pride of life. The same are now and reign in the Church, and in men of the Church. . . . And first for to speak of pride of life: how much greediness and appetite of honor and dignity is nowadays in men of the Church? How run they, yea almost out of breath, from one benefice to another, from the less to the more, from the lower to the higher? Who seeth not this? Who, seeing this, sorroweth not? Moreover, these that are in the same dignities, the most part of them doth go with so stately a countenance and with so high looks that they seem not to be put in the humble bishopric of Christ, but rather in the high lordship and power of the world, not knowing nor advertising what Christ the master of all meekness said unto his disciples, whom he called to be bishops and priests. The princes of people (sayeth he) have lordship of them, and those that be in authority have power. But do ye not so; but he that is greater among yo,u let him be minister. He that is highest in dignity, be he the servant of all men. The son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister. By which words our Savior doth plainly teach that the mastery in the Church is none other thing than a ministration; and the high dignity in a man of the Church to be none other thing than a meek service. The second secular evil is carnal concupiscence. Hath not this vice so grown and waxen in the Church as a flood of their lust? So that there is nothing looked for more diligently in this most busy time, of the most part of priests, than that that doth delight and please the senses. They give themselves to feasts and banqueting; they spend themselves in vain babbling; they give themselves to sports and plays; they apply themselves to hunting and hawking. They drown themselves in the delights of this world. Procurers and finders of lusts they set by {i.e., value}. Against the which kind of men Judas the apostle crieth out in his epistle,2 saying: woe unto them which have gone the way of Cain. They are foul and beastly, feasting in their meats; without fear, feeding themselves; floods of the wild sea foaming, foaming out their confusions: unto whom the storm of darkness is reserved for everlasting. Covetousness is the third secular evil, the which Saint John the apostle calleth concupiscence of the eyes; Saint Paul calleth it idolatry. This abominable pestilence hath so entered in the mind almost of all priests, and so hath blinded the eyes of the mind that we are blind to all things but only unto those which seem to bring unto us some gains. For what other thing seek we nowadays in the Church than fat benefices and high promotions? Yea, and in the same promotions, of what other thing do we pass upon than of our tithes and rent? That we care not how many, how chargeful, how great benefices we take, so that they be of great value. O covetousness, Saint Paul justly called thee the root of all evil. . . . of thee cometh these chargeful visitations of bishops, of thee cometh the corruptness of courts and these daily new inventions wherewith the silly {i.e., innocent} people are so sore vexed. . . . of thee cometh the superstitious observing of all those laws that sound to any lucre, setting aside and despising those that concern the amendment of manners. What should I rehearse the rest? To be short, and to conclude at one word: all corruptness, all the decay of the Church, all the offences of the world come of the 2

{I.e., the biblical book of Jude 1:12-­13}

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John Colet

covetousness of priests. According to that of Saint Paul that here I repeat again and beat into your ears: covetousness is the root of all evil. The fourth secular evil that spotteth and maketh ill-­favored the face of the Church is the continual secular occupation wherein priests and bishops nowadays doth busy themselves, the servants rather of men than of God, the warriors rather of this world than of Christ. . . . For our warring is to pray, to read and study Scriptures, to preach the word of God, to minister the sacraments of health, to do sacrifice for the people, and to offer hosts {i.e., sacrifices} for their sins. For we are mediators and means unto God for men, the which Saint Paul witnesseth, writing to the Hebrews: every bishop (sayeth he) taken of men is ordained for men in those things that be unto God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. . . . Without doubt, of {i.e., as a result of} this secularity, and that clerks and priests (leaving all spiritualness) do turmoil themselves with earthly occupations, many evils do follow. First, the dignity of priesthood is dishonored, the which is greater than either the king’s or emperor’s: it is equal with the dignity of angels. But the brightness of this great dignity is sore shadowed when priests are occupied in earthly things, whose conversation ought to be in heaven. Secondarily, priesthood is despised when there is no difference betwixt such priests and laypeople, but according to the prophecy of Ozee {i.e., Hosea}, as the people be, so are the priests. Thirdly, the beautiful order and holy dignity in the Church is confused when the highest in the Church do meddle with vile and earthly things; and in their stead, vile and abject persons do exercise high and heavenly things. Fourthly, the laypeople have great occasion of evils and cause to fall, when those men whose duty is to draw men from the affection of this world, by their continual conversation in this world, teach men to love this world, and of the love of the world cast them down headlong into hell. Moreover, in such priests that are so busied, there must needs follow hypocrisy. For when they be so mixed and confused with the laypeople, under the garment and habit of a priest they live plainly after the lay fashion. Also, by spiritual weakness and bondage {i.e., servile} fear: when they are made weak with the waters of this world, they dare neither do nor say but such things as they know to be pleasant and thankful to their princes. At last, ignorance and blindness: when they are blind with the darkness of this world, they see nothing but earthly things. Wherefore our savior Christ, not without cause, did warn the prelates of his Church: take heed (said he) lest your hearts be grieved {i.e., weighed down [Lat. graventur]} with gluttony and drunkenness, and with the cares of this world. With the cares (sayeth he) of this world, wherewith the hearts of priests being sore charged, they cannot hold and lift up their minds to high and heavenly things. . . . We are also nowadays grieved of heretics, men mad with marvelous foolishness; but the heresies of them are not so pestilent and pernicious unto us and the people as the evil and wicked life of priests, the which (if we believe Saint Bernard) is a certain kind of heresy, and chief of all and most perilous. For that same holy father, in a certain convocation, preaching unto the priests of his time in a certain sermon, so he said by these words: There be many Catholic and faithful men in speaking and preaching, the which same men are heretics in working; for that that heretics do by evil teaching, that same do they through 29



Religion in Tudor England

evil example: they lead the people out of the right way and bring them into error of life. And so much they are worse than heretics, how much their works prevail their words. . . . By which words he showeth plainly to be two manner of heresies: the one to be of perverse teaching, and the other of naughty life. Of which, this latter is worse and more perilous: the which reigneth now in the Church in priests not living priestly but secularly, to the utter and miserable destruction of the Church. Wherefore you fathers, you priests, and all you of the clergy, at the last look up and awake from this your sleep in this forgetful world. And at the last being well awaked, hear Paul crying unto you: be you not conformable unto this world. And this for the first part. Now let us come to the second.

The second part of reformation But be you reformed in the newness of your understanding. The second thing that Saint Paul commandeth is that we be reformed into a new understanding, that we smell those things that be of God. Be we reformed unto those things that are contrary to those I spoke of even now; that is to say, to meekness, to soberness, to charity, to spiritual occupation. That as the said Paul writeth unto Titus: renenging {i.e., disavowing} all wickedness and worldly desires, we live in this world soberly, truly, and virtuously. This reformation and restoring of the Church’s estate must needs begin of you our fathers, and so follow in us your priests, and in all the clergy. You are our heads, you are an example of living unto us. Unto you we look, as unto marks of our direction. In you and in your life we desire to read, as in lively books, how and after what fashion we may live. Wherefore, if you will ponder and look upon our motes, first take away the blocks out of your eyes. It is an old proverb: physician, heal thyself. You spiritual physicians, first taste you this medicine of purgation of manners, and then after offer us the same to taste. The way whereby the Church may be reformed into better fashion is not for to make new laws. For there be laws many enough and out of number; as Salomon sayeth, nothing is new under the sun. For the evils that are now in the Church were before in time past, and there is no fault but that fathers have provided very good remedies for it. . . . Wherefore in this your assembly, let those laws that are made be called before you and rehearsed. Those laws (I say) that restrain vice and those that further virtue. First, let those laws be rehearsed that do warn you fathers that ye put not over-­soon your hands on every man or admit unto holy orders. For there is the well of evils: that the broad gate of holy orders {being} opened, every man that offereth himself is all-­where admitted without pulling back. Thereof springeth and cometh out the people that are in the Church both of unlearned and evil priests.3 It is not enough for a priest (after my judgment) to construe a collect,4 to put forth a question, or to answer to a sophism; but much more a good, a pure, and a holy life, approved manners, meetly {i.e., suitable} learning of holy Scripture, some knowledge of the sacraments. Chiefly and above all thing, the fear of God and love of the heavenly life. 3 {The Latin text of the sermon reads “Hinc scaturit & emanat ista turba que est in ecclesia: & indoctorum & malorum sacerdotum [hence springs and emanates that crowd of unlearned and bad priests which is in the Church]”} 4 {A collect is a short liturgical prayer.}

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John Colet

Let the laws be rehearsed that command that benefices of the Church be given to those that are worthy, and that promotions be made in the Church by the right balance of virtue, not by carnal affection, not by the accepting of persons; whereby it happeneth nowadays that boys for old men, fools for wise men, evil for good, do reign and rule. Let the laws be rehearsed that warreth against the spot of simony.5 The which corruption, the which infection, the which cruel and odible {i.e., hateful} pestilence so creepeth now abroad as the canker evil in the minds of priests, that many of them are not afraid nowadays, both by prayer and service, rewards and promises, to get them great dignities. Let the laws be rehearsed that command personal residence of curates in their churches. For of this many evils grow: because all things nowadays are done by vicars and parish priests: yea, and those foolish also, and unmeet, and often times wicked; that seek none other thing in the people than foul lucre, whereof cometh occasion of evil heresies and ill Christendom in the people. Let be rehearsed the laws and holy rules given of Fathers of the life and honesty of clerks, that forbid that a clerk be no merchant, that he be no usurer, that he be no hunter, that he be no common player, that he bear no weapon. The laws that forbid clerks to haunt taverns, that forbid them to have suspect familiarity with women. The laws that command soberness and a measurableness in apparel and temperance in adorning of the body. . . . Let the laws be rehearsed of the good bestowing of the patrimony of Christ: the laws that command that the goods of the Church be spent not in costly building, not in sumptuous apparel and pomps, not in feasting and banqueting, not in excess and wantonness, not in enriching of kinsfolk, not in keeping of dogs, but in things profitable and necessary to the Church. . . . . . . At the last. Let be renewed those laws and constitutions of fathers of the celebration of councils that command provincial councils to be oftener used for the reformation of the Church. For there never happeneth nothing more hurtful to the Church of Christ than the lack both of council general and provincial. . . . Wherefore, if ye will have the lay people to live after your wish and will, first live you yourself after the will of God. And so (trust me) ye shall get in them whatsoever ye will. . . . You will reap their carnal things and gather tithes and offerings without any striving. Right it is. For Saint Paul writing unto the Romans sayeth: they are debtors and ought to minister unto you in carnal things. First, sow you your spiritual things, and then ye shall reap plentifully their carnal things. For truly, that man is very hard and unjust that will reap where he never did sow, and that will gather where he never scattered. Ye will have the Church’s liberty, and not to be drawn afore secular judges, and that also is right. For it is in the Psalms: touch ye not mine anointed. But if ye desire this liberty, first unloose yourself from the worldly bondage and from the services of men, and lift up yourself into the true liberty, the spiritual liberty of Christ, into grace from sins, 5

{Simony is the sin of selling holy things, specifically ecclesiastical offices.}

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and serve you God and reign in him. And then (believe me) the people will not touch the anointed of their Lord God. . . . Go ye now in the Spirit that ye have called on, that by the help of it ye may, in this your council, find out, discern, and ordain those things that may be profitable to the Church, praise unto you, and honor unto God. Unto whom be all honor and glory forevermore. Amen. [\ T ext: John Colet, The sermo[n] of doctor Colete, made to the conuocacion at Paulis (London, 1530) (NSTC 5550). Checked against: Oratio habita a D. Ioanne Colet decano Sancti Pauli ad clerum in conuocatione. Anno. M.D.xj (Londonn, 1512) (NSTC 5545).

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II

ENGLISH REFORMATION

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SIMON FISH (d. 1531)

A supplication for beggars

We know little of Simon Fish’s early life and education, but we do know that by the mid-­1520s he was a member of Gray’s Inn, one of the four ancient professional associations for barristers in London. He first gained notoriety for his participation in a 1526 Christmas play satirizing Cardinal Wolsey, and soon thereafter he fled to exile in the Netherlands. By the time he returned to England he had fully absorbed the new religion. He had a brief career smuggling illegal religious books into England, including Tyndale’s New Testament, before returning to exile in Antwerp, where Supplication for the beggars was published, probably in 1529. Fish would soon return to England, where he was accused of heresy; according to Thomas More, Fish reconverted to Catholicism, but we have no direct evidence of his views after 1529, and he died of the plague in 1531. [\

John Foxe, our best but not always reliable source for underground Protestant activity in this period, includes two contradictory stories for how the Supplication came into the hands of Henry VIII. In one story, Anne Boleyn presented him with a copy; in the other, two London merchants showed it to the king. In fact, we have no proof that the king saw the book, yet it is clear that many members of the parliament who began in November 1529 had Fish’s work in their minds as they began the legislative process of dismantling the privileges of the clergy. Supplication for the beggars wears its Protestantism lightly; it remains vague enough about doctrine that a sufficiently anticlerical Catholic might choose not to notice its affinities with Luther. Fish’s genius, then, was to turn Henry VIII’s attack on papal jurisdiction into a full-­blown attack on the independence of the clergy, and to blame the clergy for all of England’s real and imagined woes, in a more or less populist idiom. Countless

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Religion in Tudor England

medieval writers had either attacked clerical avarice and lust;1 Fish refashioned this traditional framework into an argument for the king to crush the clergy and transform religion in his realm. By suggesting (based upon exaggerated or invented statistics) that the result would be new economic prosperity for the downtrodden, Fish helped to give the early English Reformation a significant tinge of social activism. [\ Sources: ODNB; William Clebsch, England’s earliest Protestants, 1520–­1535 (New Haven, 1964); Alistair Fox, Literature and politics in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford, 1989); Seymour House, “Literature, drama and politics,” in Diarmaid MacCulloch, ed., The reign of Henry VIII: politics, policy and piety (London, 1995); Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: evangelicals in the early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003).

1 A bitter anticlericalism was a stable of Lollard texts: see, e.g., the 14th century, An A.B.C. to the spiritualte, published in Antwerp c. 1530 (i.e., contemporary with Fish’s Supplication), with an opening verse satire A proper dialogue between a gentleman and a husbandman each complaining to other their miserable calamity through the ambition of the clergy by William Barlow—­perhaps the same William Barlow who became the first Elizabethan bishop of Chichester.

36

SIMON FISH

A supplication for the beggars

1529

To the King, our Sovereign Lord Most lamentably complaineth their woeful misery unto your Highness, your poor daily beadsmen—­the wretched, hideous monsters (on whom scarcely for horror any eye dare look), the foul, unhappy sort of lepers, and other sore people, needy, impotent, blind, lame, and sick, that live only by alms—­how that their number is daily so sore {i.e., greatly} increased that all the alms of all the well-­disposed people of this your realm is not half enough for to sustain them, but that for very constraint they die for hunger.1 And this most pestilent mischief is come upon your said poor beadsmen, by the reason that there is, in the time of your noble predecessors past, craftily crept into this your realm another sort (not of impotent, but) of strong, puissant and counterfeit holy and idle beggars and vagabonds, which since the time of their first entre {i.e., arrival}, by all the craft and wiliness of Satan are now increased under your sight not only into a great number, but also into a kingdom. These are (not the herds, but the ravenous wolves going in herds’ clothing, devouring the flock) the bishops, abbots, priors, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks, canons, friars, pardoners, and summoners. And who is able to number this idle, ravenous sort, which (setting all labor aside) have begged so importunately that they have gotten into their hands more than the third part of all your realm? The goodliest lordships, manors, lands, and territories are theirs. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the corn, meadow, pasture, grass, wolle,2 colts, calves, lambs, pigs, geese, and chickens. Over and besides, the tenth part of every servant’s wages, the tenth part of the wolle, milk, honey, wax, cheese, and butter. Yea, and they look so narrowly upon their profits that the {This long first sentence, including the initial characterization of the authors as the king’s daily beadsmen (i.e., those who pray for the king), and as poor and wretched, is an exaggerated version of a typical Tudor petition, in which the petitioners adopt a lowly position in order to beg the king’s favor.} 2 {Perhaps “wold,” meaning forest land, which from the fourteenth century had been subject to controversial ecclesiastical tithes (see William Eagle, A treatise on the law of tithes, 2 vols. [London, 1830], 1:222–­ 25). The “wolle” in the next sentence, however, probably means wool.} 1

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Religion in Tudor England

poor wives must be countable to them of every tenth egg, or else she getteth not her rites at Easter, but shall be taken as an heretic. Hereto have they their four offering days. What money pull they in by probates of testaments, privy tithes, and by men’s offerings to their pilgrimages and at their first masses? Every man and child that is buried must pay somewhat for masses and dirges to be sung for him, or else they will accuse the dead’s friends and executors of heresy. What money get they by mortuaries, by hearing of confessions (and yet they will keep thereof no counsel), by hallowing of churches, altars, super-­a ltars,3 chapels, and bells, by cursing4 of men and absolving them again for money? What heaps of money gather the pardoners in a year? How much money get the summoners by extortion in a year, by assisting the people to the commissary’s court and afterward releasing the apparance {i.e., person required to appear in court} for money? Finally, the infinite number of begging friars, what get they in a year? Here, if it please your Grace to mark, ye shall see a thing far out of joint. There are within your realm of England three thousand parish churches. And this standing {i.e., assuming} that there be but ten households in every parish, yet are there five hundred thousand and twenty thousand households. And of every of these households hath every of the five orders of friars a penny a quarter for every order: that is, for all the five orders, five pence a quarter for every house. That is, for all the five orders, twenty pence a year of every house. Summa, five hundred thousand and twenty thousand quarters of angels. That is, 260 thousand half-­angels. Summa, 130 thousand angels. Summa totalis, 43 thousand pounds and 333 pounds 6 shillings and 8 pence sterling.5 Whereof not four hundred years past they had not one penny. O grievous and painful exactions thus yearly to be paid, from the which the people of your noble predecessors, the kings of the ancient Britons, ever stood free. And this will they have, or else they will procure him that will not give it them to be taken as an heretic. What tyrant ever oppressed the people like this cruel and vengeable generation? What subjects shall be able to help their prince that be after this fashion yearly polled {i.e., taxed}? What good Christian people can be able to succor us poor lepers, blind, sore and lame, that be thus yearly oppressed? Is it any marvel that your people so complain of poverty? . . . The Greeks had never been able to have so long continued at the siege of Troy, if they had had at home such an idle sort of cormorants to find {i.e., provide for}. . . . The Turk now in your time should never be able to get so much ground of Christendom, if he had in his empire such a sort of locusts to devour his substance. Lay then these sums to the foresaid third part of the possessions of the realm, that ye may see whether it draw nigh unto the half of the whole substance of the realm or not. So shall ye find that it draweth far above. . . . What tongue is able to tell that ever there was any commonwealth so sore oppressed since the world began? And what do all these greedy sort of sturdy, idle, holy thieves with these yearly exactions that they take of the people? Truly, nothing but exempt themselves from the obedience of your Grace. Nothing but translate all rule, power, lordship, authority, obedience, and dignity from your Grace unto them. Nothing but that all your subjects should fall {A small portable altar, often a consecrated slab of stone} {I.e., by excommunication} 5 {The online currency converter Measuring Worth estimates that £1 in 1529 would be the equivalent, in 2012, of either £522.00 (using the retail price index) or £6,400.00 (using average earnings).} 3 4

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Simon Fish

unto disobedience and rebellion against your Grace and be under them. As they did unto your noble predecessor King John, which for because that he would have punished certain traitors that had conspired with the French king to have deposed him from his crown and dignity (among the which, a clerk called Stephen, whom afterward against the king’s will the Pope made bishop of Canterbury, was one) interdicted6 his land. For the which matter your most noble realm wrongfully (alas, for shame) hath stand tributary (not to any kind of temporal prince, but unto a cruel, devilish bloodsupper {i.e., bloodsucker}, drunken in the blood of the saints and martyrs of Christ) ever since. Here were an holy sort of prelates that thus cruelly could punish such a righteous king, all his realm and succession, for doing right. . . . Yea, and what do they more? Truly, nothing but apply themselves by all the sleights they may to have to do with every man’s wife, every man’s daughter, and every man’s maid, that cuckoldry and bawdry should reign over all among your subjects, that no man should know his own child that their bastards might inherit the possessions of every man to put the right-­begotten children clear beside their inheritance, in subversion of all estates and godly order. These be they that by their abstaining from marriage do let {i.e., hinder} the generation of the people, whereby all the realm at length, if it should be continued, shall be made desert and unhabitable. These be they that have made an hundred thousand idle whores in your realm, which would have gotten their living honestly in the sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches illected {i.e., enticed} them to unclean lust and idleness. . . . Where is your sword, power, crown, and dignity become, that should punish (by punishment of death, even as other men be punished) the felonies, rapes, murders, and treasons committed by this sinful generation? Where is their obedience become that should be under your high power in this matter? Is {it} not altogether translated and exempt from your Grace unto them? Yes, truly. . . . . . . What remedy? Make laws against them? I am in doubt whether ye be able. Are they not stronger in your own parliament house than yourself? What a number of bishops, abbots, and priors are lords of your Parliament? Are not all the learned men in your realm in fee with them to speak in your parliament house against your crown, dignity, and commonwealth of your realm, a few of your own learned counsel only excepted? What law can be made against them that may be available {i.e., effectual}? Who is he (though he be grieved never so sore) for the murder of his ancestor, ravishment of his wife, of his daughter, robbery, trespass made, debt, or any other offence, dare lay it to their charge by any way of action {i.e., legal action in the temporal courts}; and if he do, then is he by and by, by their wiliness accused of heresy? Yea, they will so handle him ere he pass that, except he will bear a faggot7 for their pleasure, he shall be excommunicate, and then be all his actions dashed:8 so captive are your laws unto them that no man that they list {i.e., desire} {An interdict is the papal excommunication of an entire land or people.} {“Bear a faggot,” which literally meant to carry a bundle of sticks, refers to the ceremony by which people abjured heresy: to bear a faggot was to admit that in principle you deserved to be burned at the stake and to apologize for your error.} 8 {It was a peculiar feature of English ecclesiastical law that excommunicated persons were barred from bringing actions (i.e., civil suits) in the temporal courts.} 6 7

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to excommunicate may be admitted to sue any action in any of your courts. If any man in our sessions dare be so hardy to indict a priest of any such crime, he hath, ere the year goeth out, such a yoke of heresy laid in his neck that it make him wish that he had not done it.9 Your Grace may see what a work there is in London: how the Bishop rageth for indicting of certain curates of extortion and incontinency the last year in the wardmote inquest.10 Had not Richard Hunne commenced action of praemunire against a priest, he had been yet alive and none heretic at all, but an honest man.11 Did not diverse of your noble progenitors, seeing their crown and dignity run into ruin and to be thus craftily translated into the hands of this mischievous generation, make diverse statutes for the reformation thereof, among which the statute of mortmain was one, to the intent that after that time they should have no more given unto them?12 But what availed it? Have they not gotten into their hands more lands since than any duke in England hath, the statute notwithstanding? . . . O how all the substance of your realm forthwith—­your sword, power, crown, dignity, and obedience of your people—­runneth headlong into the unsatiable whirlpool of these greedy goulafres {i.e., gluttons} to be swallowed and devoured. Neither have they any other color {i.e., reason} to gather these yearly exactions into their hands but that (they say) they pray for us to God to deliver our souls out of the pains of purgatory, without whose prayer (they say), or at least without the pope’s pardon, we could never be delivered thence. Which, if it be true, then is it good reason that we give them all these things, all were it {i.e., even if it were} 100 times as much. But there be many men of great literature {i.e., learning}and judgment that for the love they have unto the truth and unto the commonwealth have not feared to put themselves into the greatest infamy that may be, in abjection of all the world, yea in peril of death, to declare their opinion in this matter: which is that there is no purgatory, but that it is a thing invented by the covetousness of the spirituality only to translate all kingdoms from all other princes unto them, and there is not one word spoken of it in all holy Scripture. They say also that if there were a purgatory, and also if that the pope with his pardons for money may deliver one soul thence, he may deliver him as well without money. If he may deliver one, he may deliver a thousand; if he may deliver a thousand, he may deliver them all, and also destroy purgatory. And then is he a cruel tyrant without all charity, if he keep them there in prison and in pain till men will give him money. . . . Wherefore, if ye will eschew the ruin of your crown and dignity, let their hypocrisy be uttered; and that shall be more speedful {i.e., effective} in this matter than all the laws that may be made, be they never so strong. . . . {The late medieval clergy had won exemption from secular criminal jurisdiction, although only after a fierce battle that cost Thomas a Becket his life; to indict a priest challenged that exemption, and by implication the rights and authority of the Church, and so could result in a countercharge of heresy against the person bringing charges.} 10 {A court held in every ward of the city of London.} 11 {This is a reference to the infamous case of Richard Hunne, a London merchant tailor who between 1511 and 1514 mounted a series of legal challenges to the Church’s authority, for which he was charged with heresy, imprisoned, and subsequently found dead in his cell under suspicious circumstances.} 12 {The statutes of mortmain, passed in 1279 and 1290, were intended to limit gifts of land to the Church.} 9

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Simon Fish

. . . But what remedy to relieve us, your poor, sick, lame and sore beadsmen? To make many hospitals {i.e., almshouses} for the relief of the poor people? Nay, truly. The more, the worse: for ever the fat of the whole foundation hang on the priests’ beards. Diverse of your noble predecessors, kings of this realm, have given lands to monasteries to give a certain sum of money yearly to the poor people, whereof for the ancienty of time they give never one penny. . . . Wherefore, if your Grace will build a sure hospital that never shall fail to relieve us all your poor beadsmen, so take from them all those things. Set these sturdy loobies {i.e., stupid or clownish persons} abroad in the world to get them wives of their own, to get their living with their labor in the sweat of their faces according to the commandment of God, Genesis 3, to give other idle people by their example occasion to go to labor. Tie these holy idle thieves to carts to be whipped naked about every market town, till they will fall to labor—­that they, by their importunate begging, take not away the alms that the good Christian people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people, your beadsmen. Then shall as well the number of our foresaid monstrous sort, as of the bawds, whores, thieves, and idle people, decrease. Then shall the great yearly exactions cease. Then shall not your sword, power, crown, dignity, and obedience of your people be translated from you. Then shall you have full obedience of your people. Then shall the idle people be set to work. Then shall matrimony be much better kept. Then shall the generation of your people be increased. Then shall your commons increase in riches. Then shall the gospel be preached. Then shall none beg our alms from us. Then shall we have enough and more than shall suffice us, which shall be the best hospital that ever was founded for us. Then shall we daily pray to God for your most noble estate long to endure. [\ T ext: Simon Fish, A supplicacyon for the beggers (Antwerp?, 1529) (NSTC 10883).

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WILLIAM TYNDALE (1494–­1536)

An answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue

Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire and educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he proceeded BA in 1512. He was ordained a priest in 1515, then proceeded MA at Magdalen College, Oxford later that same year. In 1516 the great Dutch humanist Erasmus (who had previously been at Magdalen College himself) published his revolutionary new Latin translation of the New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum; this seems to have sparked in Tyndale a desire to produce an English translation, which remained illegal because of the strong association between English Scriptures and Lollard heresy. Before 1523, Tyndale had already been accused of heresy, but whether these accusations implied a connection to Lollardy or that he was already a disciple of Luther, we do not know. In 1523 Tyndale travelled to London, hoping to gain patronage for his biblical translation project from Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, a noted humanist who had collaborated with Erasmus on revisions of his New Testament. But much to Tyndale’s dismay, Tunstall rejected his advances. Without any licit options in England, Tyndale travelled to Germany to pursue his life’s work: the production in 1526 of the first English New Testament translated directly from the original Greek (the Lollard translation had used the Latin Vulgate) and afterwards portions of the Pentateuch and the Book of Jonah translated from the original Hebrew as well. Tyndale also became the most important polemicist of the early English Reformation. Tyndale’s 1528 Obedience of a Christian man was slipped into Henry VIII’s hands by Anne Boleyn and helped convince him that he was head of the Church. Two years later, Tyndale’s Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue provided an authoritative new answer to the great ecclesiological question raised by the break with Rome—­what is a Church if it is not the ecclesia catholica based in Rome? Tyndale argued that a Church is simply a company of Christians gathered together in a particular locale—­like the Church of Corinth in Scripture—­and the Church is therefore simply the body of such companies, “the whole multitude of all them that receive the name of Christ to believe in him” . This was to become a quintessentially Anglican position, as was Tyndale’s interrelated claim that 42



An answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogu

each particular Church was therefore answerable to civil power and derived its worldly authority from law. But we should not make the mistake of seeing Tyndale simply or easily as a prophet of Anglicanism; he wrote at a moment when the future of the English Reformation was unclear, and when many ideas that would later appear radical had not yet lost respectability (and vice versa). And this complex and ambivalent relationship between Tyndale and the official Henrician Reformation would continue. In 1530, Tyndale’s Bible translation was banned by royal proclamation. Yet in 1537, less than a year after Tyndale was burned at the stake by the Imperial authorities, the English government gave official approval to the so-­called “Matthew Bible”—­so called in a stroke of genius by Thomas Cromwell and John Rogers, who invented the fictitious translator Thomas Matthew so as not to rub the king’s nose in the fact that it was the heretic Tyndale’s book he had approved. Tyndale is the single most famous figure of the English Reformation, and it is worth pondering why. Certainly his Bible translation is part of the answer; but on the other hand, vernacular Wycliffe Bibles had circulated previously and were already a marker of rebellion against Rome long before the Reformation. A more complete answer must include the fact that while Tyndale is best known today as a translator of the Bible, in his lifetime he was the great translator of Luther—­both some of his works and more broadly his ideas—­into English. Most English people who encountered Protestantism before the break with Rome did so through Tyndale’s mediation. [\ Sources: ODNB; William Clebsch, England’s earliest Protestants, 1520–­1535 (New Haven, 1964); David Daniell, William Tyndale: a biography (New Haven, 1994); Henry Walter, ed., Tyndale’s works, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1848–­1850); Ralph Werrell, The theology of William Tyndale (Cambridge, 2006).

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WILLIAM TYNDALE

An answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue

1531

William Tyndale to the reader . . .

Our Savior Jesus in the xvi chapter of John, at his last supper when he took his leave of his disciples, warned them, saying, the Holy Ghost shall come and rebuke the world of judgment. That is, he shall rebuke the world for lack of true judgment and discretion to judge . . . so that they think that to be the very service of God which is but a blind superstition, for zeal of which yet they persecute the true service of God. . . . And this same it is that Paul saith in the second chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, how that the natural man that is not born again and created anew with the spirit of God, be he never so great a philosopher, never so well seen in the Law, never so sore studied in the Scripture, as we have examples in the Pharisees, yet he cannot understand the things of the spirit of God; but, saith he, the spiritual judgeth all things and his spirit searcheth the deep secrets of God, so that whatsoever God commandeth him to do, he never leaveth searching till he come at the bottom, the pith, the quick, the life, the spirit, the marrow and very cause why, and judgeth all things. Take an example: in the great commandment, love God with all thine heart, the spiritual searcheth the cause and looketh on the benefits of God, and so conceiveth love in his heart. And when he is commanded to obey the powers and rulers of the world, he looketh on the benefits which God showeth the world through them, and therefore doth it gladly. And when he is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, he searcheth that his neighbor is created of God and bought with Christ’s blood and so forth, and therefore he loveth him out of his heart; and if he be evil, forbeareth him, and with all love and patience draweth him to good, as elder brethren wait on the younger and serve them and suffer them; and when they will not come, they speak fair and flatter and give some gay thing and promise fair, and so draw them and smite them not; but if they may in no wise be helped, refer the punishment to the father and mother, and so forth. And by these judgeth he all other laws of God and understandeth 44



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the true use and meaning of them. And by these understandeth he in the laws of man, which are right, and which, tyranny. If God should command him to drink no wine, as he commanded in the Old Testament that the priests should not when they ministered in the Temple, and forbade diverse meats, the spiritual (because he knoweth that man is lord over all other creatures . . . and that it is not commanded for the wine or meat itself, that man should be in bondage unto his own servant, the inferior creature) ceaseth not to search the cause. And when he findeth it, that it is to tame the flesh, and that he be always sober, he obeyeth gladly, and yet not so superstitiously that the time of his disease he would not drink wine in the way of a medicine to recover his health, as David ate of the hallowed bread, and . . . as the children that died within the eighth day were counted in as good a case as they that were circumcised, which examples might teach us many things, if there were spirit in us. And likewise of the holy day {i.e., the Sabbath}, he knoweth that the day is servant to man, and therefore when he findeth that it is done because he should not be let {i.e., hindered} from hearing the word of God, he obeyeth gladly, and yet not so superstitiously that he would not help his neighbor on the holy day, and let the sermon alone for one day, or that he would not work on the holy day, need requiring it, at such time as men be not wont to be at church, and so throughout all laws. And even likewise in all ceremonies and sacraments, he searcheth the significations and will not serve the visible things. It is as good to him that the priest say mass in his gown1 as in his other apparel, if they teach him not somewhat and that his soul be edified thereby. And as soon will he gape while thou puttest sand as holy salt in his mouth,2 if thou show him no reason thereof. . . . But the world captivateth his wit and about the law of God maketh him wonderful imaginations, unto which he so fast cleaveth that ten John the Baptists were not able to dispute them out of his head. He believeth that he loveth God because he is ready to kill a Turk for his sake, that believeth better in God than he; whom God also commandeth us to love and to leave nothing unsought to win him unto the knowledge of the truth, though with the loss of our lives. He supposeth that he loveth his neighbor as much as he is bound, if he be not actually angry with him, whom yet he will not help freely with a halfpenny but for an advantage or vainglory or for a worldly purpose. If any man have displeased him, he keepeth his malice in and will not chafe himself about it, till he see an occasion to avenge it craftily, and thinketh that well enough. . . . And because the love of God and of his neighbor, which is the spirit and the life of all laws, and wherefore all laws are made, is not written in his heart, therefore in all inferior laws and in all worldly ordinances is he beetle-­blind. If he be commanded to abstain from wine, that will he observe unto the death, as the Charterhouse monks3 had lever {i.e., rather} die than eat flesh: and as for the soberness and chastising of the members will he not look for, but will pour in ale and beer of the strongest without measure, and heat them with spices, and so forth. And the holy day will he keep so straight, that if he {Vestments} {A pinch of salt that had been blessed with an exorcism was put into the mouth of baptismal candidates.} 3 {A charterhouse is a Carthusian monastery. The reference here is to the London Charterhouse, founded in 1371, where Thomas More had considered becoming a monk and had regularly joined the monks in spiritual exercises before committing himself to a secular life in the early 1500s.} 1 2

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meet a flea in his bed he dare not kill her, and not once regard wherefore the holy day was ordained to seek for God’s word—­and so forth in all laws. . . . For if the priest should say mass, baptize, or hear confession without a stole about his neck, he would think all were marred, and doubt whether he had power to consecrate. . . . And in as much as the spiritual judgeth all things, even the very bottom of God’s secrets, that is to say, the causes of the things which God commandeth, how much more ought we to judge our holy Father’s secrets, and not to be as an ox or an ass without understanding. Judge therefore, reader, whether the pope with his be the Church; whether their authority be above the Scripture; whether all they teach without Scripture be equal with the Scripture; whether they have erred, and not only whether they can. . . . Judge whether it be possible that any good should come out of their dumb ceremonies and sacraments into thy soul. Judge their penance, pilgrimages, pardons, purgatory, praying to posts, dumb blessings, dumb absolutions, their dumb pattering and howling, their dumb strange holy gestures with all their dumb disguises, their satisfactions and justifyings. And because thou findest them false in so many things, trust them in nothing but judge them in all things. . . . Mark whether it were ever truer than now, the Scribes, Pharisees, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas and Annas are gathered together against God and Christ. . . . Wherefore it is time to awake and to see, every man with his own eyes, and to judge, if we will not be judged of Christ when he cometh to judge. And remember that he which is warned hath none excuse, if he take no heed. Herewith farewell in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose spirit be thy guide and doctrine thy light to judge withal. Amen.

What the Church is This word church hath diverse significations. First, it signifieth a place or house whither Christian people were wont in the old time to resort at times convenient for to hear the word of doctrine, the law of God, and the faith of our savior Jesus Christ, and how and what to pray, and whence to ask power and strength to live godly. For the officers4 thereto appointed preached the pure word of God only and prayed in a tongue that all men understood. And that people hearkened unto his prayers, and said thereto Amen and prayed with him in their hearts, and of him learned to pray at home and everywhere, and to instruct every man his household. Where now we hear but voices without signification, and buzzings, howlings and cryings, as it were the halloongs of foxes or baitings of bears, and wonder at disguisings and toys whereof we know no meaning. By reason whereof we be fallen into such ignorance that we know of the mercy and promises which are in Christ nothing at all. And of the law of God we think as do the Turks, and as did the old heathen people: how that it is a thing which every man may do of his own power, and in doing thereof becometh good and waxeth righteous and deserveth heaven. Yea, and are yet more mad than that, for we imagine the same of fantasies and vain ceremonies of our own making, 4 {“Officer” was an extremely important and complicated term for Tudor writers, denoting not only holders of formal positions of authority but also, as in the sense of Cicero’s De officiis, all those with public responsibilities.}

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neither needful unto the taming of our own flesh, neither profitable unto our neighbor, neither honor unto God. . . . In another signification it {the term church} is abused and mistaken for a multitude of shaven, shorn, and oiled,5 which we now call the spirituality and clergy. As when we read in the chronicles, King William was a great tyrant and a wicked man unto Holy Church and took much lands from them. . . . So men say of Holy Church. Ye must believe in Holy Church and do as they teach you. Will ye not obey Holy Church? Will ye not do the penance enjoined you by Holy Church? . . . In which all we understand but the pope, cardinals, legates, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, chancellors, archdeacons, commissaries, officials, priests, monks, friars, black, white, pied, grey, and so forth, by (I trow) a thousand names of blasphemy and of hypocrisies, and as many sundry fashions of disguisings. It hath yet, or should have, another signification, little known among the common people nowadays. That is, to wit, it signifieth a congregation, a multitude or a company gathered together in one, of all degrees of people. As a man would say, the Church of London, meaning not the spirituality only (as they will be called for their diligent serving of God in the spirit, and so sore eschewing to meddle with temporal matters) but the whole body of the city, of all kinds, conditions and degrees; and the Church of Bristol, all that pertains unto the town generally. And what congregation is meant, thou shalt always understand by the matter that is entreated of, and by the circumstances thereof. And in this third signification is the Church of God or Christ taken in the Scripture even for the whole multitude of all them that receive the name of Christ to believe in him, and not for the clergy only. For Paul saith, Galatians i, I persecuted the Church of God above measure, which was not the preachers only, but all that believed generally . . . . . . Notwithstanding yet it is sometimes taken generally for all them that embrace the name of Christ, though their faiths be naught, or though they have no faith at all. And sometimes it is taken specially for the elect only, in whose hearts God hath written his law with his Holy Spirit, and given them a feeling faith of the mercy that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Why Tyndale used this word congregation, rather than church, in the translation of the New Testament Wherefore in as much as the clergy, as the nature of those hard and indurate adamant stones {i.e., magnets} is to draw all to them, had appropriate unto themselves the term that of right is common unto all the whole congregation of them that believe in Christ: and with their false and subtle wiles had beguiled and mocked the people, and brought them into the ignorance of the word, making them understand by this word Church, nothing but the shaven flock of them that shore {i.e., shaved, fleeced} the whole world; therefore in the translation of the New Testament where I found this word, ecclesia, I interpreted it by this word congregation. Even therefore did I it, and not of any mischievous mind 5 {A disparaging reference to the Catholic clergy, who were ordinarily beardless and tonsured as a mark of their distinction from lay society, and who were anointed on their hands with holy oil in the rite of ordination into the priesthood}

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or purpose to establish heresy, as Master More untruly reporteth of me in his Dialogue, where he raileth on that translation of the New Testament. ‡ But two things are without law: God and necessity. If God, to show his power, shall shed out his grace more upon youth than upon age at a time, who shall let him? Women be no meet vessels to rule or to preach, for both are forbidden them; yet hath God endowed them with his Spirit at sundry times, and showed his power and goodness with wisdom upon them, and wrought wonderful things by them, because he would not have them despised. We read that women have judged all Israel and have been great prophetesses and have done mighty deeds. Yea, and if stories be true, women have preached since the opening of the new testament. Do not our women now christen and minister the sacrament of baptism in time of need? Might they not, by as good reason, preach also, if necessity required? If a woman were driven into some island where Christ was never preached, might she there not preach him, if she had the gift thereto? Might she not also baptize? And why might she not, by the same reason, minister the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, and teach them how to choose officers and ministers? O poor women, how despise ye them! . . . If only shaven and anointed may do these things, then Christ did them not, nor any of his apostles, nor any man in long time after: for they used no such ceremonies. Notwithstanding, though God be under no law and necessity lawless, yet be we under a law, and ought to prefer the men before the women, and age before youth, as nigh as we can. For it is against the law of nature that young men should rule the elder, and as uncomely as that women should rule the men, but when need requireth. ‡

Whether the apostles left ought unwritten that is of necessity to be believed But did not the apostles teach ought by mouth that they wrote not? I answer, because that many taught one thing, and every man the same, in diverse places and unto diverse people, and confirmed every sermon with a sundry miracle, therefore Christ and his apostles preached an hundred thousand sermons, and did as many miracles, which had been superfluous to have been all written. But the pith and substance in general of everything necessary unto our souls’ health, both of what we ought to believe and what we ought to do, was written, and of the miracles done to confirm it, as many as were needful. So that whatsoever we ought to believe or do, that same is written expressly, or drawn out of that which is written. . . . Some man would ask, how did God continue his congregation from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, and so to Moses, without writing, but with teaching from mouth to mouth. I answer, first, that there was no Scripture all the while, they shall prove when our Lady hath a new son. God taught Adam greater things than to write. And that there was writing in the world long ere Abraham, yea and ere Noah, do stories testify. Notwithstanding, though there had been no writing, the preachers were ever prophets, glorious in doing of miracles, wherewith they confirmed their preaching. And beyond that, God wrote his testament unto them alway, both what to do and to believe, even in 48



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the sacraments. For the sacrifices which God gave Adam’s sons were no dumb puppetry or superstitious Mahometry {i.e., Islamic rites}, but signs of the testament of God. And in them they read the word of God, as we do in books—­and as we should do in our sacraments, if the wicked pope had not taken the significations away from us, as he hath robbed us of the true sense of all the Scripture. The testament which God made with Noah, that he would no more drown the world with water, he wrote in the sacrament of the rainbow. And the appointment made between him and Abraham, he wrote in the sacrament of circumcision. And therefore said Stephen, Acts vii, he gave them the testament of circumcision. Not that the outward circumcision was the whole testament, but the sacrament or sign thereof. For circumcision preached God’s word unto them, as I have in other places declared. But in the time of Moses, when the congregation was increased that they must have many preachers and also rulers temporal, then all was received in Scripture, in so much that Christ and his apostles might not have been believed without Scripture for all their miracles. Wherefore, inasmuch as Christ’s congregation is spread abroad into all the world much broader than Moses, and inasmuch as we have not the Old Testament only but also the New, wherein all things are opened so richly and all fulfilled that before was promised; and inasmuch as there is no promise behind of ought to be showed more, save the resurrection;6 yea, and seeing that Christ and all the apostles, with all the angels of heaven, if they were here, could preach no more than is preached of necessity unto our souls: how then should we receive a new article of the faith without Scripture, as profitable unto my soul, when I had believed it, as smoke for sore eyes? What help it me to believe that our Lady’s body is in heaven? What am I the better for the belief of purgatory? To fear men, thou wilt say. Christ and his apostles thought hell enough. And yet (besides that the fleshly imagination may not stand with God’s word) what great fear can there be of that terrible fire which thou mayst quench almost for three halfpence? And that the apostles should teach ought by mouth which they would not write, I pray you, for what purpose? Because they should not come into the hands of the heathen for mocking, saith M. More. I pray you, what thing more to be mocked of the heathen could they teach than the Resurrection, and that Christ was God and man, and died between two thieves, and that for his death’s sake, all that repent and believe therein should have their sins forgiven them? . . .  . . .

How a true member of Christ’s Church sinneth not, and how he is yet a sinner Furthermore, he that hath this faith cannot sin, and therefore cannot be deceived with damnable errors. For by this faith we be (as I said) born of God. Now, he that is born of God cannot sin, for his seed dwelleth in him, and he cannot therefore sin, because he is born of God (1 John 3), which seed is the Holy Ghost that keepeth a man’s heart from consenting unto sin. And therefore it is a false conclusion that M. More holdeth, how that a man may have a right faith joined with all kinds of abomination and sin. And yet every member of Christ’s congregation is a sinner and sinneth daily, some more and some less. For it is written, 1 John i, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves 6

{I.e., the general resurrection at the Last Judgment}

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and the truth is not in us. . . . And Paul, Rom. vii, saith, that good which I would, that do I not, but that evil which I would not, that do I. So it is not I that do it (saith he) but sin that dwelleth in me. Thus are we sinners and no sinners. No sinners, if thou look unto the profession of our hearts towards the Law of God, on our repentance and sorrow that we have both because we have sinned and also because we be yet full of sin still, and unto the promises of mercy in our savior Christ, and unto our faith. Sinners are we, if thou look unto the frailty of our flesh, which is as the weakness of one that is newly recovered out of a great disease, by the reason whereof our deeds are imperfect. And by the reason whereof also, when occasions be great, we fall into horrible deeds, and the fruit of the sin which remaineth in our members breaketh out. Notwithstanding, yet the Spirit leaveth us not, but rebuketh us and bringeth us home again unto our profession,7 so that we never cast off the yoke of God from our necks, neither yield up ourselves unto sin for to serve it, but fight afresh and begin a new battle. . . .

The manner and order of our election Even so goeth it with God’s elect. God chooseth them first, and they not God, as thou readest, John xv. And then he sendeth forth and calleth them, and showeth them his goodwill which he beareth unto them, and maketh them see both their own damnation in the Law, and also the mercy that is laid up for them in Christ’s blood—­and thereto, what he will have them do. And then when we see his mercy, we love him again, and choose him and submit ourselves unto his laws to walk in them. For when we err not in wit, reason, and judgment of things, we cannot err in will and choice of things. The choice of a man’s will doth naturally and of her own accord follow the judgment of a man’s reason, whether he judge right or wrong. So that in teaching only resteth the pith of a man’s living, howbeit there be swine that receive no learning but to defile it; and there be dogs that rend all good learning with their teeth; and there be pope-­holy, which following a righteousness of their own feigning, resist the righteousness of God in Christ; and there be that cannot attend to hearken unto the truth for rage of lusts, which, when lusts abate, come and obey well enough. And therefore a Christian man must be patient and suffer long to win his brother to Christ; yet he which attendeth not today, may receive grace and hear tomorrow. We see some at their very latter end, when cold fear of death hath quenched the heat of their appetites, learn and consent unto the truth, whereunto before they could give none care for the wild rages of lusts that blinded their wits. And though God’s elect cannot so fall that they rise not again, because that the mercy of God ever waiteth upon them to deliver them from evil, as the care of a kind father waiteth upon his son, to warn him and to keep him from occasions, and to call him back again if he be gone too far: yet they forget themselves oft times, and sink down into trances and fall asleep in lusts for a season. But as soon as they be awaked they repent and come again without resistance. God now and then withdraweth his hand and leaveth them unto their own strength, to make them feel that there is no power to do good but of God only, lest they should be proud of that which is none of theirs. God laid so sore a 7

{I.e., our professing of Christ, by which he means our faith}

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weight of persecution upon David’s back that passed his strength to bear. So that he cried oft out of his Psalms, saying that he had lived well and followed the right way of God in vain. For the more he kept himself from sin, the worse it went with him, as he thought—­ and the better with his enemy Saul, the worse he was. Yet God left him not there, but comforted him and showed him things which before he wist not of, how that the saints must be patient and abide God’s harvest, until the wickedness of ungodly sinner be full ripe, that God may reap it in due season. God also suffered occasions stronger than David to fall upon him and to carry him clean out of the way. . . . How long slumbered he, or rather how hard in sleep was he in the adultery of Bethsabe {i.e., Bathsheba} and in the murder of her husband Uriah? But at both times as soon as he was rebuked and his fault told him, he repented immediately and turned again meekly. Now in all that long time, from the adultery of Bethsabe until the Prophet Nathan rebuked him, he had not lost his faith nor yet his love unto the laws of God, no more than a man loseth his wits when he is asleep. He had forgot himself only and had not maliciously cast off the yoke of God’s commandments from off his neck. There is no man so good but that there cometh a time upon him, when he feeleth in himself no more faith or love unto God than a sick man oft-­times feeleth the taste of his meat which he eateth. And in like manner the apostles of Christ at his passion were astonished and amazed, and in such a storm of temptations for the sudden change from so great glory into so vile and shameful death, that they had forget all the miracles and all the words which he had told them before, how that he should be betrayed and delivered in the same manner unto death. Moreover they never understood that saying of his death because their hearts were alway heavy and overlade {i.e., burdened} with earthly thoughts. For though they saw him raise up other, yet who should raise him up when he were dead, they could not comprehend. Read what thou read canst, and thou shalt find no temptation like unto that from the creation of the world, or so great as it by the hundred part. So that the wonderful sudden change, and the terrible sight of his Passion and of his most cruel and most vile death, and the loss of whom they so greatly loved that their hearts would fain have died with him, and the fear of their own death, and the impossibility that a man should rise again of his own power, so occupied their minds and so astonied them and amazed them that they could receive no comfort, either of the Scripture or of the miracles which they had seen Christ do, nor of the monitions and warnings wherewith he had warned them before, neither of the women that brought them tidings that he was risen. The sword of temptations, with fear, sorrow, mourning and weeping, had deeply pierced their hearts, and the cruel sight had so cumbered their minds, that they could not believe, until Christ himself came, death put off and overcome. Yea, and when they first saw him, they were astonied for wondering and joy together, that thoughts arose in their hearts: alas, is this he or doth some spirit mock us? He was fain to let them feel him and to eat with them, to strengthen their faiths. Howbeit there was none of them that was fallen in his heart from Christ. For as soon as the women brought word, Peter and John ran unto the sepulcher and saw and wondered, and would fain have believed that he was risen and longed for him—­but could not believe, the wound of temptation being greater than that it could be healed with the preaching of a woman without any other miracle. 51



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Josph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, which while he yet lived dared not be aknown of him, as soon as he was dead begged his body and buried him boldly. And the women, as soon as it was lawful to work, prepared their anointments with all diligence. And the hearts of the disciples that went to Emmaus burned in their breasts to hear speak of him. And Thomas had not forsaken Christ, but could not believe until he saw him, and yet desired and longed to see him, and rejoiced when he saw him, and for joy cried out, my Lord, my God. There was none of them that ever failed on him and came so far forth to say, he was a deceiver and wrought with the devil’s craft all this while, and see whereto he is come in the end? We defy him and all his works, false wretch that he was, and his false doctrine also. And thereto must they have come at the last, when fear, sorrow, and wondering had been past, if they had not been prevented and helped in the meantime. Yea, and Peter, as soon as he had denied Christ, came to himself immediately and went out and wept bitterly for sorrow. And thus ye see that Peter’s faith failed not, though it were oppressed for a time. . . .

Whether the pope and his sect be Christ’s Church or no That the pope and his spirits be not the Church may this wise be proved. He that hath no faith to be saved through Christ, is not of Christ’s Church. The pope believeth not to be saved through Christ. For he teacheth to trust in holy works for the remission of sins and salvation: as in the works of penance enjoined, in vows, in pilgrimage, in chastity, in other men’s prayers and holy living, in friars and friars’ coats, in saints’ merits; and the significations put out {i.e., omitted}, he teacheth to believe in the deeds of the ceremonies and of the sacraments ordained at the beginning to preach unto us and to do us service, and not that we should believe in them and serve them. And a thousand such superstitiousnesses setteth he before us, instead of Christ, to believe in; neither Christ nor God’s word, neither honorable to God nor serviceable unto our neighbor nor profitable unto ourselves for the taming of the flesh: which all are the denying of Christ’s blood. Another reason is this: whosoever believeth in Christ, consenteth that God’s law is good. The pope consenteth not that God’s law is good. For he hath forbidden lawful wedlock unto all his, over whom he reigneth as a temporal tyrant with laws of his own making and not as a brother exhorting them to keep Christ’s. And he hath granted unlawful whoredom unto as many as bring money: as through Dutchland every priest paying a gildren unto the archdeacon shall freely and quietly have his whore, and put her away at his pleasure and take another at his own lust. . . . ‡

How this word Church hath a double interpretation This is therefore a sure conclusion, as Paul saith, Rom. ix, that not all they that are of Israel are Israelites, neither because they be Abraham’s seed are they all Abraham’s children, but they only that follow the faith of Abraham. Even so now, none of them that believe with their mouths, moved with the authority of their elders only—­that 52



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is, none of them that believe with M. More’s faith, the pope’s faith, and the devil’s faith, which may stand (as M. More confesseth) with all manner abominations—­have the right faith of Christ or are of his Church. But they only that repent and feel that the Law is good, and have the law of God written in their hearts and the faith of our Savior Jesus, even with the Spirit of God. There is a carnal Israel and a spiritual. There is Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. And Ishmael persecuted Isaac, and Esau Jacob, and the fleshly the spiritual. Whereof Paul complained in his time, persecuted of his carnal brethren; as we do in our time, and as the elect ever did and shall do till the world’s end. . . . And hereby ye see that it is a plain and an evident conclusion as bright as the sun shining, that the truth of God’s word dependeth not of the truth of the congregation. And therefore when thou art asked why thou believest that thou shalt be saved thorough Christ and of such like principles of our faith, answer: thou wottest {know} and feelest that it is true. And when he asketh how thou knowest that it is true, answer: because it is written in thine heart. And if he ask who wrote it, answer: the Spirit of God. And if he ask how thou came first by it, tell him whether by reading in books or hearing it preached, as by an outward instrument, but that inwardly thou wast taught by the Spirit of God. And if he ask whether thou believest it, not because it is written in books or because the priests so preach, answer: no, not now; but only because it is written in thine heart and because the Spirit of God so preacheth and so testifieth unto thy soul. And say, though at the beginning thou wast moved by reading or preaching, as the Samaritans were by the words of the woman, yet now thou believest it not therefore any longer, but only because thou hast heard it of the Spirit of God and read it written in thine heart. And concerning outward teaching, we allege for us Scripture, elder than any Church that was this xiiii hundred years, and old authentic stories, which they had brought asleep, wherewith we confound their lies. Remember ye not how in our own time, of all that taught grammar in England not one understood the Latin tongue? How came we then by the Latin tongue again? Not by them, though we learned certain rules and principles of them by which we were moved and had an occasion to seek further, but out of the old authors. Even so we seek up old antiquities out of which we learn, and not of our Church, though we received many principles of our Church at the beginning, but more falsehood among than truth. It hath pleased God—­of his exceeding love wherewith he loved us in Christ (as Paul saith) before the world was made, and when we were dead in sin and his enemies, in that we did consent to sin and to live evil—­to write with his Spirit ii conclusions in our hearts, by which we understand all things: that is, to wit, the faith of Christ and the love of our neighbors. For whosoever feeleth the just damnation of sin, and the forgiveness and mercy that is in Christ’s blood for all that repent and forsake it, and come and believe in that mercy, the same only knoweth how God is to be honored and worshipped, and can judge between true serving of God in the spirit, and false image-­serving of God with works. And the same knoweth that sacraments, signs, ceremonies, and bodily things can be no service to God in his person, but memorials unto men, and a remembrance of the testament wherewith God is served in the spirit. . . . 53



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Of worshipping, and what is to be understood by the word . . .

God hath created us and made us unto his own likeness, and our Savior Christ hath bought us with his blood. And therefore are we God’s possession of duty and right, and Christ’s servants only, to wait on his will and pleasure, and ought therefore to move neither hand nor foot, nor any other member, either heart or mind, otherwise than he hath appointed. God is honored in his own person when we receive all things, both good and bad, at his hand, and love his Law with all our hearts, and believe, hope, and long for all that he promiseth. The officers that rule the world in God’s stead, as father, mother, master, husband, lord, and prince are honored, when the law which Almighty God hath committed unto them to rule with is obeyed. Thy neighbor that is out of office is honored when thou (as God hath commanded thee) lovest him as thyself, countest him as good as thyself, thinkest him as worthy of any thing as thyself, and comest lovingly to help him at all his need, as thou wouldst be holp thyself, because God hath made him like unto his own image as well as thee, and Christ hath bought him as well as thee. . . . In like manner, if the officer, abusing his power, compel the subject to do that which God forbiddeth or to leave undone that which God commandeth, so he dishonoreth God in withdrawing his servant from him, and maketh an idol of his own lusts, in that he honoreth them above God; and he dishonoreth his brother, in that he abuseth him contrary unto the right use which God hath created him for and Christ hath bought him for, which is to wait on God’s commandments. For if the officer be otherwise minded than this—­the worst of these subjects is made by the hands of him that made me, and bought with the blood of him that bought me, and therefore my brother, and I but his servant only, to defend him and to keep him in the honor that God and Christ hath set him, that no man dishonor him—­he dishonoreth both God and man. And thereto, if any subject think any otherwise of the officer (though he be an emperor) than that he is but a servant only, to minister the office indifferently {i.e., impartially}, he dishonoreth the office and God that ordained it. So that all men, whatsoever degree they be of, are, every man in his room, servants to other, as the hand serveth the foot and every member one another. And the angels of heaven are also our brethren and very servants for Christ’s sake, to defend us from the power of the devils. And finally all other creatures that are neither angels nor man are in honor less than man, and man is lord over them, and they created to serve him, as Scripture testifieth, and he not to serve them, but only his Lord God and his Savior Christ.

Of worshipping of sacraments, ceremonies, images, relics and so forth Now let us come to the worshipping or honoring of sacraments, ceremonies, images, and relics. First, images be not God, and therefore no confidence is to be put in them. They be not made after the image of God nor are the price of Christ’s blood, but the workmanship of the craftsman and the price of money, and therefore inferiors to man. Wherefore, of all right, man is lord over them, and the honor of them is to do man service, and man’s dishonor it is to do them honorable service, as unto his better. Images, 54



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then, and relics, yea and, as Christ saith, the holy day too, are servants unto man. And therefore it followeth that we cannot, but unto our damnation, put on a coat worth an hundred coats upon a post’s back,8 and let the image of God and the price of Christ’s blood go up and down thereby naked. For if we care more to clothe the dead image made by man and the price of silver than the lively image of God and price of Christ’s blood, then we dishonor the image of God and him that made him, and the price of Christ’s blood and him that bought him. Wherefore the right use, office, and honor of all creatures inferiors unto man is to do man service, whether they be images, relics, ornaments, signs, or sacraments; holy days, ceremonies, or sacrifices. And that may be on this manner, and no doubt it so once was: if (for an example) . . . I make a cross in my forehead in a remembrance that God hath promised assistance unto all that believe in him, for his sake that died on the cross, then doth the cross serve me and I not it. And in like manner, if I bear on me or look upon a cross of whatsoever matter it be, or make a cross upon me, in remembrance that whosoever will be Christ’s disciple must suffer a cross of adversity, tribulations, and persecution, so doth the cross serve me and I not it. And this was the use of the cross once, and for this cause it was at the beginning set up in the churches. And so if I make an image of Christ or of anything that Christ hath done for me, in a memory, it is good, and not evil until it be abused. . . . And to kneel before the cross unto the word of God which the cross preacheth is not evil. Neither to kneel down before an image in a man’s meditations, to call the living of the saint to mind for to desire God of like grace to follow the example, is not evil. But the abuse of the thing is evil, and to have a false faith: as to bear a piece of the cross about a man, thinking that so long as that is about him, spirits shall not come at him, his enemies shall do him no bodily harm, all causes shall go on his side even for bearing it about him; and to think that, if it were not about him, it would not be so. . . . This is plain idolatry, and here a man is captive, bond, and servant unto a false faith and a false imagination that is neither God nor his word. . . . And in like manner it is that thousands, while the priest pattereth S. John’s Gospel in Latin over their heads, cross themselves with, I trow, a legion of crosses, behind and before, and with reverence on the very arses, and (as Jack of Napes when he claweth himself) pluck up their legs and cross so much as their heels and the very soles of their feet, and believe that if it be done in the time that he readeth the Gospel (and else not) that there shall no mischance happen them that day, because only of those crosses. And where he should cross himself to be armed and to make himself strong to bear the cross with Christ, he crosseth himself to drive the cross from him, and blesseth himself with a cross from the cross. . . . And as for the riches that is bestowed on images and relics, they cannot prove but that it is abominable, as long as the poor are despised and uncared for and not first served, for whose sakes—­and to find preachers—­offerings, tithes, lands, rents, and all that they have was given the spirituality. They will say, we may do both. May or not may, I see that the one most necessary of both is not done, but the poor are bereaved of the spirituality of all that was in time past offered unto them. . . . 8

{I.e., dress up a stick in costly garments. (Statues were often clothed.)}

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‡

A sure token that the pope is Antichrist And though unto all the arguments and persuasions which he would blind us with to believe that the pope with his sect were the right Church, and that God for the multitude will not suffer them err, we were so simple that we saw not the subtlety of the arguments nor had words to solve them with, but our bare faith in our hearts, yet we be sure and so sure that we can therein not be deceived, and do both feel and see that the conclusion is false and the contrary true. For first, Peter saith, 2 Peter ii, there shall be false teachers among you which shall secretly bring in damnable sects, denying the Lord that bought them, and many shall follow their damnable ways, by whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of, and with feigned words they shall make merchandise over you. Now, saith Paul, Rom. iii, the Law speaketh unto them that are under the Law. And even so this is spoken of them that profess the name of Christ. Now the pope hath x thousand sects cropen {i.e., crept} in, as pied in their consciences as in their coats, setting up a thousand manner of works to be saved by, which is the denying of Christ. And we see many and almost all together follow their damnable ways. And in that Peter said that they shall rail and blaspheme the truth, it followeth that there shall be a little flock reserved by the hand of God to testify the truth unto them, or else how could they rail on it? And it followeth that those railers shall be the mightier part in the world, or else they durst not do it. Now what truth in Christ doth not the pope rebuke and in setting up false works deny altogether? And as for their feigned words, where findest thou in all the Scripture purgatory, shrift, penance, pardon, poena, culpa, hyperdoulia and a thousand feigned terms more? And as for their merchandise, look whether they sell not all God’s laws and also their own, and all sin and all Christ’s merits and all that a man can think. To one he selleth the fault only and to another the fault and the pain too, and purgeth his purse of his money and his brains of his wits, and maketh him so beastly that he can understand no godly thing. . . . . . . They have no love unto the truth, which appeareth by their great sins that they have set up above all the abomination of all the heathen that ever were, and by their long continuance therein, not of frailty but of malice unto the truth and of obstinate lust and self-­will to sin. Which appeareth in two things: the one, that they have gotten them with wiles and falsehood from under all laws of man and even above king and emperor, that no man should constrain their bodies and bring them unto better order, that they may sin freely without fear of man. And on the other side, they have brought God’s word asleep, that it should not unquiet their consciences, insomuch that if any man rebuke them with that, they persecute him immediately and pose him in their false doctrine and make him an heretic and burn him and quench it. . . . . . . Of these and like texts, and of the similitudes that Christ maketh in the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven, it appeareth that, though the Holy Ghost be in the chosen and teacheth them all truth in Christ, to put their trust in him, so that they cannot err therein; yet while the world standeth, God shall never have a Church that shall either persecute, or be unpersecuted themselves any season, after the fashion of the pope. But there shall be 56



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in the Church a fleshly seed of Abraham and a spiritual, a Cain and an Abel, an Ishmael and an Isaac, an Esau and a Jacob, as I have said: a worker and a believer, a great multitude of them that be called and a small flock of them that be elect and chosen. And the fleshly shall persecute the spiritual, as Cain did Abel, and Ishmael Isaac, and so forth, and the great multitude shall persecute the small little flock, and Antichrist will be ever the best Christian man. So now the Church of God is double, a fleshly and a spiritual: the one will be and is not, the other is and may not be so be called, but must be called a Lutheran, an heretic, and such like. Understand therefore, that God, when he calleth a congregation unto his name, sendeth forth his messengers to call generally, which messengers bring in a great multitude, amazed and astonied with miracles and power of the reasons which the preachers make, and therewith be compelled to confess that there is but one God of power and might above all, and that Christ is God and man, and born of a virgin, and a thousand other things. And then the great multitude that is called and not chosen, when they have gotten this faith—­common as well to the devils as them, and more strongly persuaded unto the devils than unto them—­t hen they go unto their own imaginations, saying: we may no longer serve idols, but God that is but one. And the manner of service they fetch out of their own brains and not of the word of God, and serve God with bodily service as they did in times past their idols, their hearts serving their own lusts still. And one will serve him in white, another in black, another in grey, and another in pied. . . . They believe that there is a God; but as they cannot love his laws, so they have no power to believe in him, but they put their trust and confidence in their own works, and by their own works they will be saved, as the rich of this world, when they sue unto great men, hope with gifts and presents to obtain their causes. Neither other serving of God know they save such as their eyes may see and their bellies feel. And of very zeal they will be God’s vicars, and prescribe a manner unto other, and after what fashion they shall serve God, and compel them thereto, for the avoiding of idolatry, as thou seest in the Pharisees. But little flock, as soon as he is persuaded that there is a God, he runneth not unto his own imaginations, but unto the messenger that called him, and of him asketh how he shall serve God. As little Paul (Acts ix), when Christ had overthrown him and caught him in his net, asked, saying: Lord, what wilt thou that I do? And as the multitude that were converted (Acts ii) asked of the apostles what they should do. And the preacher setteth the law of God before them, and they offer their hearts to have it written therein, consenting that it is good and righteous. And because they have run clean contrary unto that good law, they sorrow and mourn, and because also their bodies and flesh are otherwise disposed. But the preacher comforteth them and showeth them the testament of Christ’s blood, how that for his sake all that is done is forgiven, and all their weakness shall be taken in worth until they be stronger, only if they repent and will submit themselves to be scholars and learn to keep this law. And a little flock receiveth this testament in his heart, and in it walketh and serveth God, in the spirit. And from henceforth all is Christ with him, and Christ is his, and he is Christ’s. All that he receiveth, he receiveth of Christ, and all that he doth, he doth to Christ. Father, mother, master, lord, and prince, are christs unto him, and, as Christ, he serveth them with all love. His wife, children, servants, and subjects are Christ unto him, 57



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and he teacheth them to serve Christ and not himself and his lusts. And if he receive any good thing of man, he thanketh God in Christ, which moved the man’s heart. And his neighbor he serveth as Christ in all his need, of such things as God hath lent, because that all degrees {i.e., social ranks} are bought, as he is, with Christ’s blood. And he will not be saved for serving his brethren, neither promiseth his brethren heaven for serving him. But heaven, justifying, forgiveness, all gifts of grace, and all that is promised them they receive of Christ and by his merits freely. And of that which they have received of Christ they serve each other freely, as one hand doth the other, seeking for their service no more than one hand doth of another: each the other’s health, wealth, help, aid, succor, and to assist one another in the way of Christ. And God they serve in the spirit only, in love, hope, faith and, dread. [\ T ext: William Tyndale, An answere vnto Sir Thomas Mores dialoge made by Vvillyam Tindale. First he declareth what the church is, and geveth a reason of certayne wordes which Master More rebuketh in the tra[n]slacion of the newe Testament. After that he answereth particularlye vnto everye chaptre which semeth to haue anye apperaunce of truth thorow all his .iiij. bokes (Antwerp, 1531) (NSTC 24437).

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WILLIAM TRACY (d. 1530),

WILLIAM TYNDALE, AND JOHN FRITH (1503–1533) The testament of Master William Tracy, esquire, expounded both by William Tyndale and John Frith

William Tracy was a prominent Gloucestershire landowner and justice of the peace who was among the first generation of Englishmen to develop a full-­blown Protestant theology. His unusual sophistication, for a layman, may be owed to the fact that he apparently knew his neighbor, the biblical scholar William Tyndale. Shortly before his death in October 1530, Tracy drew up a will in which he subverted both the common medieval practice of so-­called “soul bequests”—­preambles to wills in which people disposed of their souls before disposing of their worldly possessions—­a nd the ubiquitous practice of leaving money for prayers to speed the testator’s soul through purgatory. Tracy instead denounced prayers for the dead and stated that he hoped to be saved only by Christ rather than by any works of his own. His will was refused probate and condemned by ecclesiastical authorities; Tracy was posthumously declared a heretic, his body exhumed and burnt. [\

But Tracy was to have the last word. As news spread of the will’s self-­confident Protestantism, it began to be copied—­in both senses of the word, as scribes secretly made copies for circulation within the Protestant community and as other Protestants made wills of their own using Tracy’s as a model. In 1535, the text was published in Antwerp with commentaries from English Protestant leaders John Frith (who had been burnt for heresy two years earlier) and William Tyndale (who would meet an equally grisly end the following year). New editions were published in 1546, in the context of Henry VIII’s attacks on the doctrine of purgatory, and in 1548, as Protestantism became legal in England for the first time under Edward VI. As a result, Tracy’s will became one of the most influential texts of the English Reformation, serving for more than a century

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as a brief précis of theology and as model for Protestants considering their own mortality and the fate of their souls as they made their last wills and testaments. [\ Sources: ODNB; J. Craig and C. Litzenberger, “Wills as religious propaganda: the testament of William Tracy,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44 (1993): 415–­31.

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WILLIAM TRACY, WILLIAM TYNDALE, AND JOHN FRITH The testament of Master William Tracy, esquire, expounded both by William Tyndale and John Frith

1535

To the reader Thou shalt understand, most dear reader, that after William Tyndale was so Judasly betrayed by an Englishman, a scholar of Louvain whose name is Phillips,1 there were certain things of his doing found, which he had intended to have put forth to the furtherance of God’s word, amongst which was this testament of Master Tracy, expounded by himself, whereunto was annexed the exposition of the same of John Frith’s doing and own handwriting. Which I have caused to be put in print to the intent that all the world should see how earnestly the canonists and spiritual lawyers (which be the chief rulers under bishops in every diocese, in so much that in every cathedral church the dean, chancellor and archdeacon are commonly doctors or bachelors of law) do endeavor themselves justly to judge and spiritually to give sentence according to charity upon all the acts and deeds done of their diocesans, after the example of the Chancellor of Worcester, which, after Master Tracy was buried (of pure zeal and love hardly) took up the dead carcass and burnt it. Wherefore he did it, it shall evidently appear to the reader in this little treatise. Read it therefore, I beseech thee, and judge the spirits of our spirituality, and pray that the spirit of him that raised up Christ may once inhabit them and mollify their hearts and so illumine them that they may both see and show true light and no longer to resist God nor his truth. Amen.

The testament itself

{1}In the name of God. Amen. I, William Tracy of Todington in the county of Gloucester, esquire, make my testament and last will as hereafter followeth. {2}First and before all other things, I commit me unto God and to his mercy, trusting without any doubt or mistrust that by his grace and the merits of Jesus

{Henry Phillips, an Oxford scholar who was paid by Church authorities to infiltrate the English Protestant community in Antwerp and capture Tyndale} 1

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Christ and by the virtue of his passion and of his resurrection I have and shall have remission of my sins and resurrection of body and soul according as it is written, Job xix. I believe that my redeemer liveth, and that in the last day I shall rise out of the earth and in my flesh shall see my savior. This my hope is laid up in my bosom. {3}And as touching the wealth of my soul, the faith that I have taken and rehearsed is sufficient (as I suppose), without any other man’s work or works. My ground and my belief is that there is but one God and one mediator between God and man, which is Jesus Christ, that I do accept none in heaven nor in earth to be my mediator between me and God but only Jesus Christ. All others be but petitioners in receiving of grace, but none able to give influence of grace. And therefore will I bestow no part of my goods for that intent, that any man should say or do to help my soul, for therein I trust only to the promise of God, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned (Mark, the last chapter). {4}And touching the burying of my body, it availeth me not what be done thereto, wherein Saint Austin’s De cura agenda pro mortuis saith that they are rather the solace of them that live than wealth or comfort of them that are departed, and therefore I remit it only to the discretion of my executors. {5}And touching the distribution of my temporal goods, my purpose is by the grace of God to bestow them to be accepted as fruits of faith, so that I do not suppose that my merit be by good bestowing of them, but my merit is the faith of Jesus Christ only, by which faith such works are good according to the words of our Lord, Matt. xxv, I was hungry and thou gavest me to eat, and it followeth that ye have done to the least of my brethren ye have done to me, etc. And ever we should consider the true sentence that a good work maketh not a good man, but a good man maketh a good work, for faith maketh the man both good and righteous, for a righteous man liveth by faith, Rom. i, and whatsoever springeth not out of faith is sin, Rom. xiiij. {6}And all my temporal goods that I have not given or delivered or not given by writing of my own hand bearing the date of this present writing, I do leave and give to Margaret my wife and to Richard my son, which I make my executors. Witness this my own hand the x day of October in the xxii year of the reign of King Henry the VIII.

TyjNow let us examine the parts of this testament, sentence by sentence. First, to commit ourselves to God above all is the first of all precepts and the first stone in the foundation of our faith. That is, that we believe and put our trust in one God, one all true, one almighty, all good, and all merciful, cleaving fast to his truth, might, mercy, and goodness, surely certified and full persuaded that he is our God; yea ours, and to us all true, without all falsehood and guile, and cannot fail in his promises. And to us almighty, that his will cannot be let to fulfill all the truth that he hath promised us. And to us all good and all merciful, whatsoever we have done and howsoever grievously we have trespassed—­so that {i.e., as long as} we come to him the way that he hath appointed, which way is Jesus Christ only. As we shall see followingly, this first clause 62



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then is the first commandment or at the least the first sentence in the first commandment, and the first article of our Creed. And that this trust and confidence in the mercy of God is through Jesus Christ is the second article of our creed, confirmed and testified throughout all Scripture. That Christ bringeth us into this grace, Paul proveth, Rom. v, saying, justified by faith, we are at peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom we have an entering in unto this grace in which we stand, and Eph. iii, by whom, saith Paul, we have a bold entering in through the faith that is in him, and in the second of the said Epistle, by him we have an entering in unto the Father, and a little before in the same chapter, he is our peace. And John in the first chapter, behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, which sin was the bush that stopped the entering in and kept us out, and the sword wherewith was kept the entering unto the tree of life from Adam and all his offspring. . . . . . . Faith justifieth thee: that is, bringeth remission of all sins and seateth thee in the state of grace before all works and getteth thee power to work ere thou couldest work. But if thou wilt not go back again, but continue in grace and come to that salvation and glorious resurrection of Christ, thou must work, and join works to thy faith in will and deed too, if thou have time and leisure; and as oft as thou fallest, set thee on thy faith again, without help of works. And although, when thou art reconciled and restored to grace, works be required, yet is not that reconciling and grace the benefit of the works that follow, but clean contrary: that forgiveness of thy sins and restoring to favor deserve the works that follow. Though when the king (after that sentence of death is given upon a murderer) hath pardoned him at the request of some of his friends, works be required of him that he henceforth keep the king’s laws, if he will continue in his grace’s favor in which he now standeth, yet the benefit of his life proceedeth not of the deserving of the works that follow but of the king’s goodness and favor. . . . ‡ John Frith

There is nothing in this world that is so firm, stable, or godly but that it may be undermined and frowardly wrested of men, and specially if they be void of charity, as it is evident by William Tracy’s testament and last will that he left, against the which many men, and that of long continuance, have blasphemously barked (whether of a godly zeal or of a dazing {i.e., dazed} brain let other men judge). But this I dare boldly profess, that his godly sayings are ungodly handled, which thing I cannot so justly ascribe unto ignorance as unto rancor—­unto the furies I had almost said—­for if they had conferred all things unto the rule of charity, which envieth not, which is not puffed up, which is not stirred to vengeance, which thinketh none evil, but suffereth all things, believeth all things, trusteth all things, and beareth all things {1 Cor. 13}, they would not so headily have condemned those things which might have been full devoutly expounded. Howbeit, they have not only attempted that thing but have proceeded unto such madness that they have taken upon them to strive with dead folks, for it is a most common jest in every man’s mouth that 63



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after the maker of this testament was departed and buried, they took up his body and burnt it, which thing declared their fury, although he felt no fire. Therefore we humbly require our most redoubted prince, with all his nobles and present assembly, that even as all other things do of right depend of their judgment, that even so they would by their discrete advice cure this disease, pondering {i.e., weighing} all things with a more equal balance; so shall this enormous {i.e., outrageous} fact be looked upon with worthy correction, and the condition of the commonwealth shall be more quiet. Mark you therefore what things they are, which they so cruelly condemn. Master Tracy

{The original reprints ¶s 1 and 2 of Tracy’s testament here} Frith

It is marvel, but here be somewhat that they improve {i.e., censure}, for their mind is so intoxicate that there is nothing but they will note it with a black coal, and yet all may be established by the testimony of Scripture. For faith is the sure persuasion of our mind of God and his goodness towards us; and where as is a sure persuasion of the mind, there can be no doubting or mistrust, for he that doubteth is like the flood of the sea which is tossed with winds and carried with violence; and let not that man think that he shall obtain anything of God, Ja{mes} 1. And therefore Saint Austin sayeth, if I doubt, I shall be no holy seed. Furthermore, whereas he looketh, through the grace and merits of Christ, to obtain remission of his sins, surely it is a faithful saying and worthy to be commended, for it is even the same that Peter professed, Act. xv, where he sayeth, unto him do all the prophets bear witness, that through his name as many as believe in him shall receive remission of their sins. Moreover, in that he trusteth through Christ to have resurrection of body and soul, they have no cause to blame him, for thus doth Paul argue, if Christ be risen then shall we also rise; and if Christ be not risen, then shall not we rise; but Christ is risen, for his soul was not left in hell; therefore shall we also rise (whom Christ shall bring with him) and be immortal both body and soul, 1 Cor. xv. And therefore he doth both righteously and godly deduce his resurrection by Christ’s, by whom the Father hath given us all things, or else we should not be. But there are some that gather of his words that he should recount the soul to be mortal,2 which thing, after my judgment, is more subtly gathered than either truly or charitably. For seeing there was never Christian man that ever so thought (no, not the very pagans), what godly zeal or brotherly love was there which caused them so to surmise; for a good man would not once dream such a thing. But I pray you, why should we not say that the soul doth verily rise, which, through Christ, rising from the filth of sin, doth enter with the body into a new conversation of life,3 which they shall lead together without possibility of sinning. We say also of God (by a certain phrase of Scripture) that he ariseth, when he openeth unto us his power and presence; and why may we not say the same thing of the soul which in the mean season seemeth to lie secret and then shall express unto us (through 2 {Luther and, perhaps, Tyndale seem to have held, at least briefly, that soul and body die together and will rise together at the Last Judgment; Frith here denies that Tracy held this view, known as “mortalism.”} 3 {Either (or perhaps both) a new kind of life or a new fellowship}

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Christ) her power and presence in taking again her natural body? Why should ye then condemn these things? There is no man that can receive venom by those words except he have such a spiderous nature that he can turn a honeycomb into perilous poison. Therefore let us look on the residue. Master Tracy

{The original reprints the first sentence of Tracy’s ¶3 here.} Frith

Here he only cleaveth to God and his mercy, being surely persuaded that, according to the testimony of Peter, whosoever believeth in him through his name shall receive remission of sins, Acts xv. Paul also affirmeth that whosoever trusteth in him shall not be confounded, Rom. x. And who can deny but this is most true when it is understood of that faith which is formed with hope and charity, which the Apostle calleth faith that worketh by charity, Galat. v. Now since these things may be expounded so purely, forsooth he uttereth his own envy which would otherwise wrest the mind of the maker of this testament. And as touching the addition of this particle, without any other man’s work or works, it seemeth that he had respect unto the saying of Peter, which declareth that there is no other name under heaven given unto men in which we should be saved, Acts iiii. Besides that St. Paul committeth the power of sanctifying to Christ only, Hebr. ii, where he sayeth both he that sanctifieth (that is to say, Christ) and they that are sanctified (that is to say, the faithful) are all of one (that is God), and surely if we labored to precel {i.e., to surpass} each other in love and charity, we should not condemn this innocent, but we should rather measure his words by the rule of charity, insomuch that if a thing at the first sight did appear wicked, yet should we take it in the best sense, not judging wickedly of our brother but referring that secret judgment unto Christ, which cannot be deceived. And though they be deceived by the pretence of charity, yet therein they may rejoice; and therefore they would be loath to condemn the innocent. But let us pass these things and see what followeth. Master Tracy

{The original reprints the rest of ¶3 here.} Frith

Why look you so sourly, good brethren, why do you not rather give him great thanks, since he hath opened unto you such a proper distinction, by the which you may escape the scholastical snares and mazes? He only deserveth the name of a middler,4 which being God became man to make men gods. And who can by right be called a middler between God and man but he that is both God and man? Therefore since we have such a middler, which in all points hath proved our infirmity (saving only in sin), which is exalted above the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of God, and hath in all things obtained 4

{I.e., mediator, the earliest attested usage according to the OED.}

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the next power unto him of whose impery {i.e., supreme rule} all things depend, let us come with sure confidence unto the throne of grace, Hebr. iiii. All other he calleth petitioners, which receive grace but are not able to impress and pour thereof into any other man, for that doth only God distribute with his finger (that is to say, the spirit of God), through Christ. I marvel that you are angry with him that hath done you such a great pleasure; howbeit, I do ascribe this condemnation rather unto the canonists than unto divines. For the godly divines would never dote so far as to condemn so proper sayings, but peradventure this might move their patience, that he will distribute no portion of his goods for that intent that any man should say or do for the weal of his soul. Are you so sore afraid of your market? Be not afraid, ye have salves enough to supple {i.e., soften} that sore. Ye know that he is not bound under pain of damnation to distribute his goods on that fashion, for then those holy fathers were in shrewd case, which, continuing in long penury, scant left at their departing a half penny. Thou wilt peradventure say that they shall suffer the grievous pains of purgatory. Be it so, yet may they be quenched both with less cost and labor; the pope’s pardon is ready at hand, where both the crime and the pain are remitted at once. And verily there is such plenty of them in all places that I can scantly believe that there liveth any man that is worth an half penny but that he is sure of some pardons in store. And as for this man, he had innumerable. Notwithstanding this distribution is not of necessity (for unto him that is damned it profiteth nothing, and he that is not damned is sure of salvation), why are ye so hot against this man? Are not his goods in his own power? He shall give a reckoning of them unto God and not unto you. Here you may see of how light judgment you have condemned these things. Now let us ponder the residue. Master Tracy

{The original reprints ¶4 here.} Frith

What hath he here offended which rehearseth nothing but the words of St. Austin? If you improve these things, then reprove you St. Austin himself. Now, if you can find the means to allow St. Austin and charitably to expound his words, why do you not admit the same favor unto your brother, specially seeing charity requireth it? Besides that no man can deny but that these things are true, although St. Austin’s authority were of no reputation with you, for if these things were of so great value before God, then Christ had evil provided for his martyrs, whose bodies are commonly cast out to be consumed with fire and wild beasts. Notwithstanding I would be afraid to say that they were anything the worse for the burning of their bodies or tearing of it in pieces. Be therefore charitable towards your brother and ponder his words (which are rather St. Austin’s) somewhat more justly. Master Tracy

{The original reprints ¶s 5 and 6 here.} Frith

There is no man doubteth but that faith is the root of the tree and the quickening power out of which all good fruits spring; therefore it is necessary that this faith be present or else 66



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we should look for good works in vain. For without faith it is impossible to please God, Heb. xi, insomuch that St. Austin called those works that are done before faith, swift running out of the way. Moreover, that our merit cannot properly be ascribed unto our works doth the Evangelist teach us, saying, when ye have done all things that are commanded you, say we are unprofitable servants; we have done but our duty, Luke xvii. By the which saying he doth in a manner fear {i.e., warn} us from putting any confidence in our own works. And so is our glorious pride and high mind excluded. Then where is our merit? Hark what St. Austin saith: the death of the Lord is my merit; I am not without merit as long as that merciful Lord faileth me not, etc. This death of the Lord cannot profit me except I receive it through faith, and therefore he reckoneth right well that the faith in Christ is all his merit—­I mean the faith which worketh through charity: that is to say, faith formed with hope and charity and not that dead historical faith which the devils have and tremble . . . {James 2} . . . . . . Finally, let not that move you where he addeth that a good work maketh not a good man, but rather a good man maketh the work good, for there is no man but he is either good or evil. If he be evil, then can he not do good but evil, for according to Christ’s testimony a rotten tree beareth no good fruit, Matt. vii. And again he saith, how can you say well, seeing you yourselves are evil. Matt. xii. But if he be good, he shall also bring forth good fruit at his season. Howbeit that fruit maketh not the man good: for except the man be first good, he can not bring forth good fruit; but the tree is known by the fruit. And therefore faith as a quickening root must ever go before, which of wicked maketh us righteous and good, which thing our works could never bring to pass. Out of this fountain spring those good works which justify us before men: that is to say, declare us to be very {i.e., verily} righteous; for before God we are verily justified by that root of faith, for he searcheth the heart; and therefore this just judge doth inwardly justify or condemn, giving sentence according to faith. But men must look for the works, for their sight can not enter into the heart, and therefore they first give judgment of works, and are many times deceived under the cloak of hypocrisy. You may see that here is nothing but that a good man may expound it well, albeit the children of this world (which with their wiles deceive themselves, entering so presumptuously into God’s judgment) do seek a doubt where none is. Go ye, therefore, and let charity be your guide, for God is charity; and though our lawyer’s heart would break, yet must you needs judge him a Christian man which saith nothing but that Scripture confirmeth. And verily the judgment of this cause came out of seasons and even ungraciously unto our canonists, for they are clean ignorant of Scripture and therefore condemn all things that they read not in their law. Wherefore we renounce their sentence and appeal unto the divines, which will soon know the voice of their shepherd and gladly admit those things which are allowed by the Scripture whereunto they are accustomed. Thus endeth the Testament of Mr. William Tracy, expounded by J. Frith. [\ T ext: The testament of master Wylliam Tracy esquire, expounded both by William Tindall and Jhon Frith (Antwerp, 1535) (NSTC 24167).

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ELIZABETH TUDOR (1533–­1603)

A godly meditation of the inward love of the Christian soul towards Christ our Lord (by Marguerite de Navarre)

A godly meditation (or as she titled it, The glass of the sinful soul) was Tudor’s 1545 New Year’s gift to her stepmother Catherine Parr, as her own mother had executed when Elizabeth was three. The manuscript, bound in ornamented blue velvet, translates the verse meditation Le miroir de l’âme pécheresse1 of another superbly educated humanist princess, Marguerite d’Angoulême (1492–­1549), queen consort of Navarre, sister of the French king, François I, and perhaps the most influential women in France, despite her conspicuous Reformist sympathies. (The Sorbonne, in fact, condemned the Miroir as heterodox, a ban quickly reversed after the king made his displeasure known.) Author of the celebrated novellas of the Heptameron as well as a considerable body of devotional poetry, Navarre figured prominently in multiple intersecting circles of patronage, politics, friendship, and learning. Correspondents and admirers included Erasmus, Rabelais, Clement Marot, Vittoria Colonna, and Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn is said to have owned a copy of the Miroir, perhaps a gift from its author, with whom Boleyn was in contact during the mid-­1530s.2 It is possible that in translating the Miroir Elizabeth used her mother’s volume.3 When Elizabeth translated the Miroir she was not a queen; given that she had two older siblings, her own life’s likeliest course would have followed Navarre’s to a place next to the throne. In 1544 she and Edward, and perhaps Mary as well, may already have moved into the household of their new stepmother; or Elizabeth, together with Edward, might have still been residing with one of the high-­born ladies who had raised the princess, apparently with both affection and careful provision for her education. By age ten, Elizabeth could read and writein Latin, French, and Italian. Her translation of Navarre is, Prescott concludes, quite accurate. 1 The Miroir was published in 1531, going through eight further editions during Navarre’s lifetime (Ellis 172). 2 On the possible connections between Navarre and Boleyn, see E. Ives, The life and death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2004). 3 Mueller and Scodel have determined that Elizabeth used the Paris edition of 1533 (33).

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For reasons that will quickly become clear, it seems advisable to break with the usual format of these introductions and, rather than continuing with this biographical overview, try to explain why the Glass4 should be in this volume at all. Indeed there were good reasons for excluding it. First, we have, as a matter of editorial principle, passed over translations. Second, in January of 1545 Elizabeth was eleven years old, which makes it unlikely that she either selected the Miroir for her gift translation or could have understood it. Third, although the work had five Tudor editions, it had no discernible impact on subsequent English devotional writing. Even better reasons, however, favored making the Glass a sovereign’s exception. Unlike the other female-­authored (or male-­authored, for that matter) texts in this volume, the Glass engages gender. Although the work’s gender games usually hinge on the peculiarities of French grammatical gender (the soul is female because the French equivalent, âme, is a feminine noun), and although medieval mystics of both sexes image the soul as bride, mother, daughter, and (less often) sister, the voice that speaks in the Glass is clearly that of a woman—­the gender ascription effected by the rapid back-­and-­forth switching between “I” and “soul” as grammatical subject and hence between first-­person and feminine pronouns. Recent scholarship has made a strong case for Navarre’s interest in female spirituality, an interest reflected in the Miroir’s open desire to make something rich and strange out of the everyday fabric of gender roles. The Glass, for all its translator’s youth, seizes on Navarre’s mystical transposition of gendered identity and complicates it by retaining masculine pronouns for “heart” and “spirit”: in French, both are masculine nouns and therefore must take masculine pronouns; in English, however, these words are neuter, so that pronomial gender attaches to the signified rather than the signifier, rendering the interior person—­the composite of heart, spirit, soul—­as both he and she.5 The foregoing points to a second grounds for inclusion: namely, the sheer merit—­ theological and literary—­of the work, with its extraordinary mix of devotional intensity and sparkling metaphoric play. A third and final reason arises from Patrick Collinson’s suggestion that, whatever the preadolescent Elizabeth thought of the Miroir, its brand of Christianity would shape the religion of Queen Elizabeth and, consequently, the evolution of a distinctive “Anglican” style. Elizabeth’s religion, Collinson argues, was rooted in the evangelical humanism of the Navarre and Parr circles, whose affirmation of the “foundational protestant doctrine (and experience) of justification by faith alone” coexisted with a “distinctively pre-­protestant” spirituality.6 Moreover, Collinson’s intuition receives support from a second translation by the young Elizabeth: a 1548 Latin version of an Italian sermon by Bernadino Ochino, the Capuchin monk turned evangelical turned Protestant, and since 1547 a refugee in England. All other Tudor translations of Ochino render his Reformed-­Protestant late writings on predestination and the Roman antichrist. Elizabeth, Although all the printed editions are titled A godly meditation, ever since Marc Shell’s 1993 Elizabeth’s Glass, the work usually goes under this manuscript equivalent of its maiden name. 5 See Ellis, 173–­74. 6 The 1578 Book of Christian prayers, which the Queen almost certainly authorized and may have commissioned, betrays the same distinctive combination of basic Protestantism with 1530s Catholic humanism and pre-­Reformation spirituality . 4

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by contrast, chose a sermon on Christ whose theological tonality sounds like little else in Tudor England except her translation of Navarre’s Miroir.7 We shall return to Ochino. First, however, let us turn to the Glass—­which, it would now seem, may provide a window into the Queen’s religion—­and the senses in which it is and is not a Protestant text. Its Protestant aspects are, in fact, relatively straightforward: the joyous, Tyndale-­like affirmation of God’s free and unconditional forgiveness; the insistence on the radical prevenience of grace, on how even the bare desire for salvation is wrought within by the Spirit, without our cooperation or even consciousness; the sense of catastrophic personal sinfulness with which the Glass opens. Other features of the Glass, however, are distinctly not characteristic of mainstream Tudor Protestantism. The profusion and dazzling fluidity of familial images—­the soul becoming Christ’s wife, but also, with Mary’s permission, his mother, and, since they share the same Father, his sister and sometimes even his daughter—­have analogues in medieval mysticism and in the poetry of Navarre’s (and Ochino’s) admirer, Vittoria Colonna; yet they stand “at the furthest possible remove from Calvin’s use of biblical metaphor” (Ellis 173). English Calvinists rarely portray spiritual inwardness as relationships among persons, at least in part because they tend not to portray spiritual inwardness via images drawn from the saving work of the incarnate Christ. Moreover, despite the acute self-­abasement of the opening, the Glass does not follow the standard Protestant Law-­to-­Gospel format. Halfway through the first chapter, the speaker is already extolling the “godly love” that has made her “of a sinner, thy servant and child” . The Glass knows no Law: it begins in sin and misery, and then, almost at once, God’s gracious light banishes the darkness, and the soul finds herself “rich, wise, and strong” . The middle chapters confess the soul’s post-­conversion lapses into worldliness, sensuality, and doubt, but the failures are narrated in the past tense; the accent falls not on the soul’s perfidy but on the divine love that will not let her go and that “maketh me a new, godly, and joyful creature” . The absence of the Law-­to-­Gospel structure is bound up with the Glass’s startling avoidance of the standard Protestant understanding of the Atonement, in which a meek and gentle Son pays the price of sin with his blood in order to placate the stern and righteous Father, whose justice demands that sin be punished. There is no such Father in the Glass, which never depicts the Crucifixion as appeasing the Father’s wrath, but rather, and consistently, as the revelation of the Father’s love. Nor does the text ever present the relation of Father and Son as a contest between Wrath (or Law or Justice) and Love. Indeed, the speaker often seems not to distinguish Father and Son. The speaker addresses both as “God” and “Lord,” without clarifying which person of the Trinity is meant.8 She eschews father-­child metaphors, with their built-­in connotations of patriarchal authority and human littleness; her preferred parent-­child image presents the soul as Christ’s mother, A similarity noted independently by Mueller and Scodel, 293. On the visual counterparts to this representation of the Trinity—­ i.e., the quite common fifteenth-­and early-­sixteenth-­century portrayal as three nearly-­identical persons (rather than as an older man, younger man, and dove). See the introduction to the primer readings , and John Brainerd MacHarg, Visual representations of the Trinity: an historical survey (Cooperstown, N.Y, 1917), 82. 7 8

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although in general she favors relations of likeness: of Christ and the soul as brother and sister; of the soul and Mary as co-­mothers; of her own elevation into the life of the Trinity as wife, daughter, and queen.9 Redemption, in the Glass, centers on the divine love that embraces and exalts sinners, not on the Son’s propitiation of the Father. How we are to understand these non-­Protestant aspects of Elizabeth’s text has no easy answer. Even to begin to make historical sense of its theological stance, one needs to determine what it resembles—­and the Glass resembles almost nothing in sixteenth-­century English, nor does modern Reformation scholarship provide any clues. The sole discussion of a theological position seemingly close to that of the Glass turned up in Rufus Jones’ 1914 Spiritual reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries. The early “spiritual reformers,” Jones argues, accepted Luther’s teaching on justification by faith in the saving work of Christ, but not “the dogma of a Christ who came to appease an angry God,” affirming instead their “living apprehension of a Christ—­verifiable in experience—­who revealed to them, in terms of His own nature, an eternally tender, loving, suffering, self-­giving God, and who made them see . . . the divine possibilities of human life” (xl). This theology, Jones continues, had roots in northern medieval mysticism and profoundly informed Luther’s early writings, although by 1525 contrary tendencies in Luther’s thought had come to the fore that depended on not seeing God as “in his deepest nature like the self-­ giving Christ.” Rather, for Luther, as for many another Protestant, salvation becomes “a plan by which we escape from the God of justice and wrath and have our dealings with a God who has become merciful because our sin has been balanced off by somebody else’s merit and righteousness” (11). Moreover, whatever the change wrought by the Atonement, in Protestant orthodoxy God is still unquestionably “a mighty Sovereign, meting out to the world strict justice, and holding all sin as flagrant disloyalty and appalling violation of the Law, never to be forgiven until the full requirements of sovereign justice are met and balanced and satisfied.” The spiritual reformers, by contrast, did not regard salvation “as the satisfaction of justice,” but rather as “a personal life-­relationship with a personal God who is and always was eternal Love” (xlvii). Jones’ account of the sixteenth-­century spiritual reformers raises as many questions as it answers. The individual figures he discusses, mostly Germans, have no known links to Marguerite of Navarre. Yet there is some evidence of ties between these German spiritual reformers and the early sixteenth-­century Catholic spirituali who made up the reformist circles of evangelical humanists in France, Italy, and the Low Countries.10 Navarre figured prominently in these circles, as did Vittoria Colonna, the Spanish mystic Juan Valdes, and his friend and follower, Bernadino Ochino. The Ochino sermon that Elizabeth translated as her 1548 New Year’s gift for her newly crowned brother itself points to a link between Jones’ spiritual reformers and 9 In Elizabeth’s manuscript, the Glass begins with a little preface, “To the reader,” that describes the “gift” of faith as that “which causeth a man to be like unto God” (Shell, 113), a claim that Bale 1548, in the interests of Protestant orthodoxy, revises to make the “gift” that “which causeth a man to possess a grace so desired” (B3v). Canceller and Bentley omit the preface altogether. 10 See Eva-­Maria Jung, “On the nature of Evangelism in sixteenth-­century Italy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 14, no. 4 (1953): 511–­27; Elisabeth Gleason, “On the nature of sixteenth-­century Italian Evangelism: scholarship, 1953–­1978,” Sixteenth-­Century Journal 9, no. 3 (1978): 3–­26.

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the Catholic spirituali, for the striking non-­Protestant features of the Glass, the features that Jones sees as characteristic of his northern spiritual reformers, recur in Ochino’s De Christo. For Ochino, “Christ is nothing other than a certain highest and most excellent expression and manifestation—­as much as is in us to bear—­of the goodness of God, of the love, mercy, wisdom and justice, and all of His other perfections.”11 Much work remains to be done on the mystical or “spiritual” strain of evangelical humanism, its bearing on Elizabeth’s religion and, potentially, on the Elizabethan Church. And it should be made clear from the outset that in important respects the Glass differs from the radical spiritualist theologies of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: it does not divide Christians into Christ’s little flock versus the carnal majority of legalists and worldlings but insists on Christ’s love for “every sinner” and that the marriage of Christ and the soul takes place in baptism ; the third and fourth chapters, which describe the soul’s post-­conversion fallings from grace, counter the perfectionist tendencies often associated with spiritualist piety.12 [\

Note on the Text: a photographic reprint of the 1545 gift manuscript can be found in Shell. John Bale oversaw the first printed edition, which he retitled A godly meditation of the Christian soul, adding his own introduction and paratexts (Marburg, 1548; reprinted in 1590). A new version, now called A godly meditation of the inward love of the soul, came out in 1568 (with a second edition in 1580), liberally and lamentably edited by James Canceller, a minor devotional writer.13 Bentley’s 1582 version, the one reprinted here, follows Canceller, but we have added the manuscript readings in the notes at the points where Canceller’s version goes seriously astray. [\ Sources: ODNB; Abigail Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary,” Modern Lanaguage Review 96, no. 1 (2001): 61–­81; Collinson, Elizabethans; Roger Ellis, “The juvenile translations of Elizabeth Tudor,” Translation & Literature 18, no. 2 (2009): 157–­80; Rufus Jones, Spiritual reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries (London, 1914); Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel, eds., Elizabeth I: translations 1544–­1589 (Chicago, 2009); Anne Overell, Italian reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–­c. 1585 (Aldershot, 2008); Anne Lake Prescott, “The pearl of the Valois and Elizabeth I: Marguerite de Navarre’s Miroir and Tudor England,” in Silent but for the Word: Tudor women as patrons, translators, and writers of religious works, ed. Margaret Hannay (Kent, Ohio, 1985), 61–­76: Marc Shell, Elizabeth’s (Lincoln, Neb., 1993); Susan Snyder, “Guilty sisters: Marguerite de Navarre, Elizabeth of England, and the Miroir de l’âme pécheresse, Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1997): 443–­58.

Mueller and Scodel, 309. See David Como, Blown by the Spirit (Stanford, Calif., 2004); Theodore Bozeman, The precisianist strain: disciplinary religion and antinomian backlash in puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004); the Everard readings in Shuger, ed. Religion, 543– ­67. 13 In the preface to the 1580 edition, Canceller acknowledges having “corrected and emended” the “old print,” so the variants clearly do not derive from a revised manuscript (A4r). 11

12

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ELIZABETH TUDOR

A godly meditation of the inward love of the Christian soul towards Christ our Lord

1545 (English trans.; original Marguerite de Navarre, 1531)

The first chapter: of the soul’s slavery by sin, and redemption by Christ his passion Where is the hell full of travail, pain, mischief, and torment? Where is the pit of cursedness out of which doth spring all desperation? Is there any hell so profound that is sufficient to punish the tenth part of my sins, which in number are so many that the infinite swarm of them so shadoweth my darkened senses that I cannot account them neither yet well see them? And I so far am entered among them that I have no power to obtain the true knowledge of the deep dangers of them. I perfectly feel also that the root of sin is so grafted in me that in myself I find none other effect but all is either branch, leaf, or fruit that it bringeth forth in me. And if I look for better, a branch thereof shadoweth mine eyes; and in my mouth doth fall, when I would speak, the bitter fruit of cursed sin. If my spirit be stirred to harken, then the noise of her leaves stoppeth mine ears, and filleth my nostrils with the smell of her flowers. Behold now, therefore, how in pains my soul, a slave and prisoner without light or comfort, lieth crying and weeping, having her feet bound with the chain of concupiscence and her arms fast tied thorough evil use. Who then hath power to help or remedy it? Not I. Neither have I power to cry for succor. And as I can perceive, there is no help of hope for me but by the special grace of God (which of myself I cannot deserve), but by Christ his only Son, whose brightness giveth light to my darkness; whose power, examining my fault, breaketh the veil of ignorance and giveth me clear understanding what thing abideth in me, where I am, and wherefore I labor. He it is whom I have offended; he it is to whom I did obey so seldom. Wherefore it is convenient that my pride be suppressed. With weeping heart and sorrowful sighs, I humbly therefore confess that I am much less than nothing. Before my birth, mire; after, a dunghill . . . under sin by Adam sold, and by the law condemned. For of myself, I never had yet the power to observe one only commandment of God, the force of sin was such in me. . . . For what God would, that could I not will; and what 73



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he would not, I oft times desired to perform—­which thing doth constrain me by importable sorrow, in this weary and raging life, to wish the end of this miserable body through a desired death. Who shall he then be that shall deliver or recover any good for me? Alas, it can be no mortal man. For his power and strength is not such as can deliver me. Who then? The only grace of the almighty God, who never is slack to help the penitent with his mercy. Oh what a master is that, which without deserving will show his mercy on sinners! I served him slothfully, and without ceasing offended him every day; yet is he not slack in helping me. He doth see the evil that I have: what and how much it is, and that I of myself can do nothing that is good. . . . Yet doth he not tarry till I humbly pray him or that (seeing my hell and damnation) I do cry upon him, but his Spirit whurling1 in my heart, greater than I can declare, asketh for me a gift whereof the vertue is unknown to my little power. And this the same unknown gift or whurling2 in my heart doth bring me a new desire, showing the good that I have lost by my sin and {is} given me again thorough his grace and bounty—­that which hath overcome all sin. O my Lord, what grace and goodness is this, which doth put out so many sins? Now may I see that thou art full of all godly love, to make me of a sinner, thy servant and child. Alas, my God, I did not seek thee, but fled and ran away from thee; and here beneath, thou camest down to me, which am nothing but a worm of the earth, all naked. What do I say? A worm? Nay, worse than a worm: full of pride, deceit, malice, and treason. . . . . . . Oftentimes, ô Lord, have I with thee broken covenant; & partly for that my poor soul was too much fed with the evil bread or damnable doctrine of hypocrites, I despised such succor and ghostly physic in God’s word as would have helped me, if I had been willing to look for it. Yet knew I at that time no teacher convenient. For there is neither man, saint, nor angel that can, without thy Spirit, change the heart of a sinner. Alas, good Jesus, thou, beholding my blindness . . . didst open the way of my salvation. O how great is thy goodness and how inestimable the sweetness which thou hast showed therein! Is there any father so natural to the daughter, or brother to the sister, which would ever have done as thou hast done? For thou camest down into hell to succor my soul, where, against thy will, she was, intending3 to have perished, because she did not love thee. Alas, sweet Lord, thou hast loved her, yea even to the very outshedding of thy most precious blood. O charity fervent and incomparable! Nothing slack art thou in love that so lovedst every sinner, yea and also thine enemies, not only in forgiving their offences but also in giving thyself—­for their salvation, liberty, and deliverance—­to the death, cross, travail, pain, and sufferance. . . . {Ms. reads “wailing”; so does Bale 1548. Yet “whurling” may be right; the word means “to make a roaring or rumbling noise” (OED); the previous paragraphs echo Romans 7:14ff., so that the text here may allude to Romans 8:26: “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings [gemitus in the Vulgate] which cannot be uttered” (KJV).} 2 {Ms. reads “the same unknown sigh”; Bale 1548 reads “the same unknowne syghte.”} 3 {Heading in the direction [of perishing]} 1

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The second chapter: of the soul’s affinity with Christ What a thing is it, ô God, that thou hast done so much for me? Thou art not only contented to have forgiven me my sins, but also hast given unto me the right fortunate gift of grace. For it should suffice me (I coming out of such a danger) to be like a stranger used. But thou dost handle my soul, if I durst so say it, as a mother, daughter, sister, and wife—­notwithstanding, my Lord, I am the trespasser, which am not worthy to come near the door of thy right high place, to ask bread where thy dwelling is. Oh what grace is this, that so suddenly thou vouchsafest to draw my soul into such highness that she feeleth herself ruler of my body! She—­poor, ignorant, and lame—­doth find herself with thee rich, wise, and strong, because thou hast written in her heart, the root4 of thy Spirit and holy word, giving her true faith to receive it; which thing made her to conceive thy Son, in believing him to be man, God, Savior, and also the true forgiver of sins. Therefore dost thou assure her that she is mother to thy Son, of whom thou art the only Father. And furthermore, ô my Father, here is a great love of thy well doing, that thy holy Son5 hath taken on him the body of a man & hath mingled himself with our ashes, which thing we may not understand without a most true faith. It hath pleased thee to put him so near us that he did join himself to our flesh; and I, seeing him to be called man, am bold to call him brother. Now sith my soul may say of herself that she is the sister of God, ought she not to have herself assured in him? Yes truly. . . . Then this truth maketh her to feel that there is in thee true paternity. O what honor, what sweetness, and what glory hath the soul which doth always remember that she is thy daughter, and that in calling thee father, she doth thy commandment! What, is there more? Is that all? No, it doth please thee to give her another name, to call her thy wife, and that she again do call thee husband, declaring thereby how thou hast freely manifested the marriage of her. By baptism hast thou made a promise to give her thy goods and riches and to take on thee her sins—­for she hath nothing by heritage but sin of her first father, Adam. All her treasures that she hath of nature are nothing else but sins, which thou hast tied upon the Cross, and paid all her debts with thy goods & lands. Thou hast made her so rich and with so great a jointure endued her that she, knowing herself to be thy wedded wife, doth believe to be quit of all that she oweth, esteeming very little that she hath here beneath. She forsaketh her old father and all the goods that he giveth her, for her husband’s sake. . . . Father, alas, what ought I to think? Shall my spirit be so bold as to take upon him6 to call thee Father? yea, and also our Father, for so hast thou taught in the Pater noster. But to call me daughter, hast thou so said? I pray thee tell me. Alas, yea Lord, when with great sweetness thou saidst, Daughter, lend me thy heart; and again thou saidst, Daughter, thy faith hath saved thee. O my soul, instead of lending, my Lord is ready to give himself wholly unto thee. Receive him then, and do not permit that any creature put him from thee, so that forever {Ms. reads “roll.”} {Ms. reads “here is a great love, for Thou art not slack of welldoing, since Thy son full of divinity.”} 6 {“Him” refers to “my spirit.”} 4 5

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with faithful steadfastness he may love thee with a daughterly love.7 Now my Lord, if thou be my Father, may I think that I may be thy mother? Indeed I cannot well perceive how I should conceive thee that createdst me, but in this matter thou didst satisfy my doubt, when in preaching and in stretching forth thy hands thou didst say, Those that shall do the will of my Father, they are my brethren, my sister, and my mother. I believe then that hearing and reading the words that thou hast taught . . . in believing it and steadfastly desiring to fulfill the same, I conceive thee and bear thee by love. Therefore without any fear I will take upon me the name of a mother. What? Mother of Christ? O sweet virgin Mary, I beseech thee be not angry that I take up such a title. I do neither steal nor usurp anything upon thy privilege, for thou only above all women receivedst of him so great honor that no man can in himself comprehend how he hath been willing to take in thee our flesh: for thou art the mother and perfect virgin. . . . In thy blessed womb thou didst bear him and nourish him; thou didst follow him in his tribulations and also in his teachings. . . . Therefore hast thou been rightfully called full of grace, as one to whom the Lord hath showed abundant favor. . . . Thou also hast had so firm and constant a faith that thou by the Holy Ghost wast filled with all godliness. I will not take upon me therefore to give to thee greater praise than the honor which thy Son and sovereign Lord hath given thee. And as thou art his corporal mother, so art thou thorough faith his spiritual mother; and I, following thy faith with all humbleness, am his spiritual mother also. Alas, my God, the brotherliness that thou hast towards me thorough thy humbleness in calling me sister is great, for thou hast broken the kindred of mine old father, calling me daughter by adoption. Seeing then that we have both one father, I will not fear to call thee my brother. For thou hast so reported it by the wise Solomon in his Canticle, saying, My sister and spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with the sweet look of one of thine eyes, &c. Alas my brother, I wish for nothing else but that in wounding thee, I might find myself wounded with thy love; to that would I give over myself. And likewise, thou dost call me wife, speaking to me these amorous words: Arise my dear dove, and come hitherward my delectable spouse. Wherefore I may say with loving faith, Thou art mine, and I am thine, because thou hast called me thy love and fair spouse. If I be so, such hast thou made me. Alas, doth it please thee to give me such names? Truly they are able to break the heart and cause it to burn through love unspeakable, when it thinketh upon the honor that thou dost unto the soul, which is much greater than it hath deserved. A mother, a mother? Alas, but of what child is it? My God, my son? O Jesus what speech is this! Mother, daughter, sister, and brother. O happy kindred! O what sweetness doth proceed out of that paternity! But what daughterly and reverent fear ought I to have towards him, my father, yea and my creator, my protector, and savior, to be my brother? Alas, here is a great love. I will therefore say with Solomon, Now can my heart no longer refrain, but break in sunder to make room for the same so sweet a brother, so that none other name be written in the 7 {Ms. reads “O my God, instead of lending, he [my heart] is ready to give himself wholly unto Thee. Receive him, then, and do not permit that anybody put him far from Thee: so that forever (with faithful steadfastness) he may love Thee with a daughterly love.” So, too, does Bale. Canceller, probably confused by the gendered pronouns, rewrote.}

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same, but only the name of my brother Jesus, the son of God. None other creature will I give place to, for all the scourging and beating that can be done unto me; keep my heart then, my dear brother and love, and let not thine enemy enter into it.

The third chapter: of the soul’s infidelity or apostasy from God O my sweet father, my child, my brother and spouse, with hands joined, humbly upon my knees I yield thee thanks and praises that it pleaseth thee to turn thy face towards me, converting my heart, and covering me with such grace that thou dost see no more my evils and sins. So well hast thou hidden them that it seemeth thou hast put them in forgetfulness; yea, and also they seem to be forgotten of me which have done and committed them. For faith and love so working in me causeth me to forget them, wholly putting my trust in thee alone. Then my Father, in whom lieth unfeigned love, whereof can I have fear in my heart? I confess that I have done all the evil that one creature can do, and that of myself I am naught. Also, I have offended thee as did the prodigal child, following the foolish trade of the flesh, wherewith I have prodigally spent the substance and abundance of goods which thou here hast given me to use to thy glory; and for the misspending of them, poverty hath taken me and hath withered me away even as hay, and yielded my spirit dead for hunger, compelling me to eat the relief of swine; but in such meats I found very little savor. Then I, seeing my life to be so miserable, did return to thee my father again. . . . Alas, dear Father, what love and zeal is this, that thou wouldst not tarry my coming and prayer, but speedily stretching forth thy hands, receivedst me when I did think thou wouldst not look on me; and so receiving me, instead to have punished me, thou didst assure me of my salvation? . . .  But here is the worst: what manner of mother have I been? For after that I by faith had received the name of a true mother, I became very rude unto thee, my Son; because that after I had conceived and brought thee forth, I left reason; and being subject to my will, not taking heed unto thee, I fell asleep and gave place to my great enemy—­t he which in the night of ignorance (I being asleep) did steal thee from me craftily; and in thy place she did put her child, which was dead. . . .8 Thus did I lose thee, my Son, by mine own fault, because I took no heed to keep thee. Sensuality, my neighbor (I being in my beastly sleep), did steal thee from me, and gave to me her child, which had no life in him, named Sin—­whom I said I would not have, but utterly did forsake him. She affirmed that he was mine own, but I knew him to be hers. . . . For the same which was alive, whom she had taken away, was my child: so apparent was the change between Jesus and sin. But now here is a strange thing: this old woman causeth me to keep this dead child, whom she reporteth to be mine, and so will she maintain. O Solomon, thou true and wise judge, thou hast heard this lamentable process and ordained, to content the parties, that the child should be divided in two parts. The false woman agreeth it should be so, but I remembering him to be mine own son, which was alive, was rather content to leese {i.e., lose} him than to see his body parted in twain. For true and perfect love is never content with the one half of that it loveth. . . . Alas noble Solomon, 8

{1 Kgs. 3:16ff}

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give her the child which is alive. For better it is for me to die than to see my son divided. But my Lord, thou didst better look to it than I. For thou, seeing the anguish that I did suffer and how I rather did forsake my right than to behold such cruelness, thou saidst, This is the true mother, and so caused them to give me my child again, for whom before my heart was sorrowful. O sweet Jesus, thus hast thou proved me, how much I loved thee; yea, and when by sin I had lost thee, yet didst thou return unto me. Alas, how gently dost thou vouchsafe to come again to her, which being let by sin could not keep thee, my sweet child, my sweet son, my helper, my nourisher, of whom I am an humble creature? Do not permit that ever I do leave thee again, for I do repent the time past. . . . O sweet rest of the mother and the son together. My sweet child, my God, only unto thee be the honor and praise. . . . . . .

The fourth chapter: of the entire affection and love of God towards the sinful soul of man I never saw, or else it was kept wondrous secret, that ever any husband would thoroughly forgive his wife after she had him once offended, and did return unto him. There have been many of them which, for to avenge their wrongs, have caused the judges to put them to death. Other, beholding their sins, did not spare their own hands to kill them. Other also, seeing their faults to appear, did send them home again to their own friends. . . . But I do wish that all of this mind should rather help to turn them than to forsake them. And therefore, my God, I can find no man comparable unto thee, for of love thou art the perfect example. Now therefore I confess with lowly heart that I have broken to thee mine oath & promise. Alas, thou hadst chosen me for thy wife and didst set me up in great state and honor. For what greater honor may one have than to be in the place of thy wife, which sweetly taketh her rest so near to thee, and not only in surety of soul and body, but also, of all thy goods, queen, mistress, and lady? . . .  . . . Shall I now tell the truth? O my spouse, I have left thee, forgotten thee, and am run away from thee; I did leave thee for to go at my vain pleasure; I forsook thee and chose me another; yea, I refused thee, the well-­spring of all goodness and faithful promise. I did leave thee. But whither went I? Into a place where nothing was but cursedness. I have left thee, my trusty friend and lover . . . yea, I have forsaken thee, full of beauty, goodness, wisdom, and power; and sought to withdraw me from thy love. I have accepted thy great enemies: that is, the devil, the world, and the flesh, against whom for my sake thou foughtest so sore on the Cross to set me at liberty, which was by them of long time a prisoner and slave. . . . . . . Hast thou suffered that I should be mocked, either yet beaten or killed? Hast thou put me in dark prison or banished me forever, setting naught by me? Hast thou taken away thy gifts and precious jewels again from me, to punish me for my unfaithful fruits? Have I lost my jointure which thou promisedst me, through mine own offence done against thee? Am I accused by thee afore the eternal Father, for a naughty woman? Hast thou forbidden me thy presence, as I have deserved, and that I should never appear in thine house? 78



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O most true husband, pure and perfect friend, the most loving among all lovers! Alas, thou hast done otherwise for me. . . . When I was farthest from thee, both in heart and mind, and directly out of the way, then didst thou lovingly call me back. . . . But when thou, Lord, sawest that thy sweet and gracious calling did not profit me, then beganst thou to cry to me with a loud voice, saying, Come unto me all you which are wearily loden with labor, for I am he that shall plenteously refresh you, and feed you with the bread of life. Alas, sweet Lord, unto all these sweet words would I not hearken, but rather doubted whether it were thou that so spake unto me, or else a fabulous writing that so said. I was so foolish that without love I read thy word. . . . But when I had perused the Prophet Jeremy, I confess that I had, in the reading thereof, fear in my heart and bashfulness in my face. I will tell it, yea, with tears in mine eyes, and all, Lord, for thine honor & to suppress my pride. Thou hast said by that holy prophet: If a woman have offended her husband, and is so left of him for going astray with other: if he thereupon refuseth her, is she not to be esteemed polluted and of no value? {Jer. 3:1}. The law doth consent to put her in the hands of justice or to drive her away, and so never to take her again. Thou hast made a separation between thy bed and mine, saith he unto me, and placed foreign lovers in my room, committing with them fornication; yet for all this, thou mayst return to me again, for I will not always be angry against thee. Lift up therefore thine eyes, and look about thee on every side, and then shalt thou well see into what place thy sin hath lead thee and how filthily thou liest in the earth. . . . And the surplus that Jeremy saith constraineth me to know my wretched life and to wish with sorrowful sighs . . . that my life might have an end, yielding myself condemned and worthy to lie forever in the everlasting fire. The same fear, which proceedeth of thee and not of myself, putteth me rather in hope than in despair as often as I do remember my sin. For as soon as thou knowest my will bowing under thine obedience, then, putting in me a lively faith, thou didst use great clemency, so that after I knew thee to be that same Lord, Master, and King whom I ought to have feared; then found I my fear not quenched, but mixed with love, believing that thou art so gracious, gentle, and sweet, and so pitiful an husband that I, which should rather have hid me than to have showed myself, was not then in fear to go forth and to look for thee; & so seeking, I found thee. But what didst thou then? Didst thou refuse me? No, Lord, but rather hast excused me. Hast thou turned thy face from me? No, for thine eye so sweetly penetrated my heart, that wounding it almost to the death, it did give to me remorse of my sins. Thou hast not put me back with thy hand, but with both thine arms and with a sweet and manly heart, thou didst meet with me by the way, and not once reproving my faults, embracedst me. I could not see in beholding thy countenance that ever thou didst once perceive mine offences. . . . For thou didst hide my fault from everybody in giving me again the part of thy bed and also in showing that the multitude of my sins are so hidden and overcome by thy great victory that thou wilt never remember them more: so that now thou seest nothing in me but the graces, gifts, and vertues which it hath pleased thy free goodness to give me. O charity most precious! I do see well that thy goodness doth consume my lewdness and maketh me a new, godly, and joyful creature. . . . Now have I through thy good grace recovered the place of thy wife. O happy and desired place! O gracious bed! . . . Dost thou receive this unworthy creature, giving her the scepter and crown of thine empire and 79



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glorious realm? Who did ever hear of such a story: as to raise up one so high, which of herself was nothing; and maketh of great value, which of itself was naught? . . . [\ T ext: Thomas Bentley, The monument of matrones conteining seuen seuerall lamps of virginitie, or distinct treatises; whereof the first fiue concerne praier and meditation: the other two last, precepts and examples, as the woorthie works partlie of men, partlie of women; compiled for the necessarie vse of both sexes out of the sacred Scriptures, and other approoued authors (London, 1582) (NSTC 1892). Checked against the facsimile manuscript in Shell and Bale 1548.9

9

{The bibliographic information for these can be found at the end of the introduction .}

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JOHN CALVIN (1509–1564)

A faithful and most godly treatise concerning the most sacred sacrament of the blessed body and blood of our Savior Christ (preface and Engl. trans. by Miles Coverdale)

John Calvin presumably needs no introduction; he was the most important systematic theologian of the Continental Reformation and one of its most important organizers as well, creating out of the Reformed or “Swiss” branch of Protestantism, the faith that would sweep Western Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. Miles Coverdale (1488–­1569) was a Cambridge graduate and Augustinian Friar who crossed over to the Reformers in the mid-­1520s and then went into exile in Antwerp from 1528–­1535, where he completed the first printed Bible in the English language. After five years back in England, he entered a second exile in 1540 in response to the king’s renewed conservative push, and once again he used his exile well, translating numerous texts of the European Reformation into English. During the reign of the Protestant Edward VI, he briefly became bishop of Exeter, before embarking on a third exile in Queen Mary’s reign. He lived so long that he was perhaps the only Englishman who, very improbably, was both a medieval Catholic friar and an Elizabethan puritan. The following brief reading comes from Coverdale’s translation of Calvin’s 1541 Petit traité de la Sainte Cène. This is the only translation from the Continental Reformers included here, but the exception seemed worth making for three reasons. First, Coverdale’s preface offers a lucid statement of the memorialist position on the eucharist. Second, Calvin’s position, set forth in the Treatise itself, is clearly not memorialist: the elements are not “bare and simple figure[s]” but “instruments” that “bring unto us” the verities they represent .1 Calvin’s position, in turn, stands behind most Elizabethan sacramental theologies, which, whatever their nuanced variations, affirm that the outward elements convey as well as signify grace and presence. Third, Coverdale’s preemptive “misreading” of Calvin’s text—­for the preface claims to be explicating Calvin’s view, not contesting it—­is an early instance of the awkward discomfort with Calvinist high sacramentalism that seems to have been fairly widespread among English Calvinists. Hooker’s sacramental theology is thus far closer to Calvin’s than that of Rainolds, Cartwright, or Perkins. 1

This is the position Gerrish terms “symbolic instrumentalism”: see the general introduction .

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A faithful and most godly treatise concerning the most sacred sacrament of the blessed body and blood of our Savior Christ

1541 (preface and English trans., Miles Coverdale, 1548)

{Preface} To all them that profess the Christian name, the translator wisheth mercy from God the Father . . .

. . . As concerning the understanding of the words of Christ, you shall know that the manner of teaching is double, that is to say, by words and by signs. By words we teach when we declare unto the hearers by words the thing that we would they should know. By signs we teach when we do something whereby the beholders may gather our meaning, as Tarquinius Superbus did when he struck off the tops of the highest poppies, declaring thereby that his advice was to have the greatest rulers beheaded. We teach also both by words and by signs when we add unto the words some action to declare and, as it were, to expound the words withal. . . . Even so, good Christian brethren, our Savior Christ, willing to declare to his apostles the wonderful participation that all faithful Christians should have in his body and blood, took bread, which is the chief, and in Scripture counted the only, food of the body of man; and when he had after his accustomed manner given thanks, he blessed—­not crossing the bread with the three hinder fingers, having the forefinger and the thumb fast joined together: no, he made no sign of the cross at all, for to make the sign of the cross was in those days none other than it is now to make the sign of a gallow-­tree. He blessed, therefore, after the manner that the fathers, the prophets, and patriarchs used: that is, he invocated and called upon the name of his Father, desiring him to accomplish invisibly in all his faithful darlings the thing which he intended to declare unto them by the visible sign. Then said he to his apostles, Take ye, eat ye; this is my body, which shall be delivered for you—­not meaning that he had changed the nature of bread into the nature of flesh, making the bread that he held in his hand his natural body; for then had he given unto them a mortal and corruptible body to eat, which thing is so much ungodly that very nature abhorreth it. But he gave them the bread to eat, saying: This is 82



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my body, which shall be delivered for you. . . . By this action have I declared unto you the mystery of the participation you have in me by faith. Use you the same, that this your deliverance by me may never slip out of your mind. We have eaten the lamb, which putteth us in remembrance of the wonderful deliverance out of the captivity in Egypt, which was done more than a thousand years past; so shall you eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of your redemption and deliverance out of the spiritual Egypt and from the spiritual pharaoh, the devil. And when you shall be demanded what you mean by this eating and drinking, you shall say: We were, through the sin and transgression of the first man Adam, made bondmen and captives to the devil, out of which bondage we could by no means be delivered till it had pleased God the Father to send his only-­begotten Son to take our nature upon him, that he might die and be an acceptable sacrifice to pacify the Father’s wrath. Wherefore, the night before he suffered, he declared unto us by these visible signs, what communion we have in him of all that ever he deserved for us. And then he commanded us to use the same, because we should be always put in remembrance of that our redemption and deliverance, none otherwise than Moses did to the Israelites the night before he did, by the wonderful might of God, bring them out of the great captivity wherein they were holden in Egypt. The words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians do teach no less than I have here written. For he saith: So often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you shall declare the death of the Lord till he come. And therefore, whosoever eateth of this bread or drinketh of this cup unworthily, doth eat and drink his own damnation. Here is a plain declaration of the end and purpose of Christ when he instituted this most sacred sacrament: forsooth, to keep in remembrance his most dolorous death and precious blood most plenteously shed upon the cross. And whosoever eateth and drinketh it unworthily—­that is to say, for any other purpose than for the same it was ordained for—­the same eateth and drinketh his own damnation. . . . And this interpretation is no less godly than fruitful. For thereby are the members of Christ put in fear to presume to come to the table of the Lord unless they have first examined and found themselves the true members of Christ, endued and adorned with perfect faith, hope, and charity. . . . As they do offend which neglect and contemn this most holy mystery, esteeming it no better than the common bread wherewith our bodies be fed; so do they also offend which honor it with divine honor, making it thereby an idol of all other most to be abhorred, both for that, as they use it, it is a plain antichrist, spoiling Christ of his victory achieved by the once-­offering of himself for all; and also for that it pulleth the believers thereon from the true adoration of God the Father and maketh them to honor, for the invisible, immense, and eternal God, that visible, measurable, and corruptible bread and wine. . . . It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing at all. ‡

A treatise on the sacrament . . .

{by John Calvin}

Now enter we into that question which hath been so greatly tossed both in time past and in these our days also: how those words are to be understanded, wherein Christ 83



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calleth his body bread, and his blood wine. Which words may easily be opened, if we keep in memory . . . that all the fruit we seek for in the Supper is brought to nought unless Christ be given unto us therein as the foundation and substance of all the whole matter. And if we once grant this thing, then no doubt we shall grant also that there is given unto us nought else but an unprofitable and vain sacrament, if we deny that in it is given unto us the very participation of Christ. . . . Furthermore, if the manner of the communion with Christ be such that we be partakers of all the mercies and benefits which he gat for us by his death, then are we not partakers with the spirit only but with the manhood also, wherein he performed perfect obedience to God the Father to the intent he might pay our debts; although, to say the truth, the one cannot be without the other: for when he giveth himself unto us, he doth it to the intent we should possess him whole. . . . . . . Now if any man would demand of me whether the bread be the body of Christ and the wine his blood, thereto would I answer that the bread and wine are visible signs, representing unto us the body and blood of Christ; and that they be called the body and blood because they be, as it were, instruments whereby the Lord Jesu Christ distributeth them unto us. . . . For notwithstanding that our eyes—­no, nor our wits—­cannot comprehend the communion that we have in the body of Christ, yet is it there openly showed before our eyes. We have in a like thing an example very fit for the purpose: when the Lord would that his Spirit should appear in the baptism of Christ, he showed him under the shape of a dove. John the Baptist . . . saith that he saw the Holy Ghost descending. But if we mark it, we shall find that he saw nought else but a dove, for the substance of the Holy Ghost is invisible. But for that he knew that vision to be no vain figure but the most sure token of the presence of the Holy Ghost, he doubted nothing at all to affirm that he saw him; because he was represented unto him under such sort as he was able to abide. Even so must we say, as concerning the communion that we have in the body and blood of Christ; it is a spiritual mystery, which can neither be seen with the eyes, neither comprehended with the wit. Therefore, as the weakness of our nature requireth, it is set forth with visible figures and signs; but yet under such sort that it is not a bare and simple figure, but joined unto his verity and substance. The bread therefore is not unworthily called the body, forasmuch as it doth not only represent it unto us but also bring unto us the same thing; I can be right well content therefore to grant that the name of the body of Christ be transferred unto the bread, because it is the sacrament and figure thereof. But this one thing will I add, that the sacrament of the Lord ought by no means to be separate from his substance and verity. . . . It is given, I say, of God, the certain and unchangeable Verity. If so be that God can neither deceive nor lie, it followeth that he doth in very deed perform and fulfill all that he doth there signify. . . . And therefore must we needs grant that, if the representation which the Lord giveth in the Supper be no feigned thing, that then the inward substance of the sacrament is annexed to the visible signs; and that in like manner as the bread is distributed in the hand, so is the body of Christ communicate unto us, to the intent we should be partakers thereof. . . . Briefly therefore to define the profit of the Supper: we may say that in it Jesus Christ is offered unto us that we may possess him himself, and in him abundance and plenty of all the 84



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mercies and benefits that the mind can desire. Which thing is an exceeding great help unto us in stablishing our consciences in that trust which we ought to have in him. . . . For that kind of teaching is very dangerous, wherein some men, leaving1 the perfect trust and repentance of the mind, will that all men which be not endued with such things be excluded. For so should all men be excluded, not one man excepted. And to prove that thing to be true, who can boast that he hath no point of diffidence in him, and that he is depraved with no spot of mind or with no kind of weakness? Certes, the children of God have such faith that it is needful for them always to pray unto the Lord that he be present and help their incredulity. . . . Yea, the holiness of our life is such that we must needs pray daily to get remission of sins and grace to amend. . . . And therefore, if that integrity of faith and life be required wherein wanteth nothing at all, the Supper should not be only unprofitable unto all men but also very hurtful. . . . . . . Yea, unless we were weak, subject to diffidence and unperfect life, the sacrament were unprofitable for us, and the institution thereof had not been necessary. Seeing therefore it is the remedy wherewith God would succor our weakness, strengthen our faith, increase our charity, and set us forward in sanctity of life, we ought so much the rather to use it, how much more grievously we feel ourselves oppressed with the magnitude of the disease. Much less ought it to be an impediment unto us. For if we do lay for excuse that we be yet weak in faith and not of life perfect enough, to the intent we may withdraw ourselves from the use of the Supper, it were even like as if a man would abstain from physic because he were sick. . . . . . . Is not this the chief thing that the Lord left with us, that we should celebrate this mystery with perfect and true understanding? . . . But in the Mass it is so far unlike that any doctrine should be intelligibly heard that, contrariwise, all the whole mystery is thought to be profaned unless all things be said and done privily. . . . So that their consecration differeth nothing from a kind of enchantment: for after the manner of an enchanter, they think that with whisperings and divers gestures they bring Christ out of heaven into their hands. Whereby we perceive that the Mass so ordained is rather a manifest and open profanation of the Supper than the observation thereof; and that the peculiar and chief substance of the Supper wanteth, which consisteth in this thing: that the mystery be truly opened to the people and the promises rehearsed with open voice; not that the priest . . . should stilly whisper out an humming that cannot be understand. I call it a play or masking because there is nought else seen but the foolishness and gestures of players, which things would become a play much better than the sacred Supper of the Lord. . . . By this it may easily be perceived wherein those unto whom God hath opened the understanding of his truth ought to differ from the papists. First, they shall be out of doubt that it is abominable sacrilege to count the mass as a sacrifice whereby remission of sins may be obtained; either to repute the priest for a mediator, which may apply the merits of Christ’s passion unto them that buy Masses or be present at the doing of them or do with devotion worship them. But they shall rather believe that the death and passion 1

[Latin, requirentes {i.e., requiring}]

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of Christ is the only sacrifice whereby the ire of God is pacified and perpetual justice gotten unto us; and besides these things, that the Lord Jesus is entered into the celestial sanctuary, that he may there show himself for us, and by the virtue of his sacrifice pray for us. . . . Thirdly, although they ought to be surely persuaded with themselves that the Lord doth in very deed give the same thing that he doth represent, and so, that we do unfeignedly receive the body and blood of Christ; yet shall they not seek it as included under the bread or fastened, as they say, locally unto the visible sign. Much less ought they to honor the sacrament, but to stretch up the mind into heaven, that they may there receive and honor Christ.2 [\ T ext: Miles Coverdale, trans., A treatise on the Lord’s Supper, in Writings and translations of Myles Coverdale, ed. George Pearson (Cambridge, 1844), 422–­66. Checked against A faythful and moost Godlye treatyse concernynge the most sacret sacrament of the blessed body and bloude of oure sauioure Christe, co[m]piled by Iohn Caluyne. (London, c. 1548) (NSTC 4412).

2 {For a fuller statement of this Calvinist understanding of the Eucharist as our rising spiritually to apprehend Christ in glory rather than his coming down in the bread and wine to us, see the conclusion of the first Ante-­Communion prayer in Bentley’s Monument of matrons .}

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The Apology of the Church of England (Latin ed.; English trans., Anne Bacon)

Born in a Devon family of modest means in 1535 Jewel, with the support of a generous uncle, entered Merton College, Oxford, where he found a tutor, friend, and mentor in the young humanist (and future bishop of Norwich) John Parkhurst, with whom Jewel read Scripture, Classics, and Church Fathers. A year after transferring to Corpus Christi in 1539, Jewel received his BA, followed by his MA in 1545, and his BD in 1552.1 In 1547 Italian Protestant exile Peter Martyr Vermigli had come to Oxford at Cranmer’s invitation as regius professor of divinity, and Jewel, who had already moved into the Reformed camp, joined his circle of devoted auditors. The following year he was made reader in humanity and rhetoric; he also took holy orders around this time, becoming vicar of Abingdon in 1551. At Mary’s accession in 1553 Vermigli, like many Oxford Protestants, fled to the Continent. Jewel, however, although expelled from Corpus Christi, initially subscribed to articles affirming the Roman Catholic position on the Eucharist. Soon thereafter, “realizing that his attempt to remain a quiet scholar at Oxford had failed,” Jewel followed Vermigli to Strasbourg. In March of 1555, he accompanied Richard Cox, another future bishop, to Frankfurt, where the English exiles were bitterly divided over whether to use the Book of Common Prayer or adopt the Genevan liturgy (for the latter, see Form of prayers ). Jewel sided with Cox in supporting the former, “exchanging sharp words with William Whittingham and Christopher Goodman.” He wrote gently to both a couple of years later, seeking to mend fences. By that time he had left Strasbourg for Zurich, where Vermigli had been offered the Hebrew professorship. Parkhurst was already in Zurich, and when news of Mary’s death came, both set out for home, Jewel arriving in March 1559. His letters back to Swiss colleagues express concern about the slow pace of reform and dismay over the cross in Elizabeth’s chapel, but “he publicly proved a ready supporter of the reformed Church that was In 1565 Oxford awarded the DD “by special decree.” All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the ODNB. 1

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coming into being,” and by late summer had been nominated bishop of Salisbury, where he remained until his death eleven years later. By all accounts, Jewel was an exemplary preacher and pastor, but also a strong administrator who “insisted on strict conformity to the discipline of the Church.”2 In November 1559, shortly before his consecration, Jewel delivered his famous Paul’s Cross sermon (with repeat performances the following March both at court and Paul’s Cross), challenging the Roman Catholic side to “bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old Doctor or Father, or out of any general council, or out of the holy Scripture, or any one example out of the primitive Church for the space of six hundred years after Christ” in support of communion in one kind, of Scripture read in an unknown tongue, and of other controverted doctrines. This Challenge Sermon laid the groundwork for Jewel’s Apology,3 written in 1560–­ 1561 at Cecil’s behest and with Archbishop Parker’s assistance. Published initially in Latin without Jewel’s name, it was from the beginning intended as a quasi-­official document. The Latin edition came out in early 1562, followed by a mediocre English translation of the same year, which was superseded in 1564 by the superior rendering of Lady Anne Bacon. The work was an instant sensation. Vermigli wrote from Zurich with enthusiastic praise; it was translated into a half-­dozen languages; and Roman Catholic controversialists acknowledged its merit by publishing in quick succession at least forty-­one rejoinders, dragging Jewel into an extended (and unedifying) fray with Thomas Harding, a rising churchman under Mary and now an exile at Louvain. Parker hoped that Convocation would join the Apology to the Thirty-nine articles, and in 1577 Bishop Barnes required all the Durham parishes to have a copy; in 1609 Archbishop Bancroft had a one-­volume edition of Jewel’s Works published and made available to every parish church, as the Apology had become “the model for . . . the theological position that was later called Anglicanism.” [\

The “Anglicanism” of the Apology has multiple facets, the most conspicuous being Jewel’s commitment to the authority of the Church Fathers and the first six Christian centuries, the commitment informing Lancelot Andrewes’ memorable declaration a half-century later that “one canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries and the series of Fathers in that period . . . determine the boundary of our faith.”4 Jewel’s position stands in obvious contrast to the sola Scriptura view of the Elizabethan puritan vanguard,5 but it also differs from the Roman Parkhurst, by contrast, proved a disastrously lax administrator, as his Norwich diocese was overrun by corruption and nonconformity. 3 “Apology” in sixteenth-­century English means defense, almost the opposite of its current meaning. 4 From Andrewes’ 1613 Latin sermon preached at the departure of the newly married Princess Elizabeth to the Palatine, Opuscula quaedam posthuma, Library of Anglo-­Catholic Theology (Oxford, 1852), 91. As in so many other respects, Jewel’s view of the Fathers and Christian antiquity mirrors that of Bullinger and the post-­Zwingli Zurich Reformation; see Gordon, 183, 212. 5 See, e.g., Field’s A view and the passage from Cartwright quoted in Whitgift ; also J. K. Louma, “Who owns the fathers? Hooker and Cartwright on the authority of the primitive church,” The Sixteenth-­Century Journal 8, no. 3 (1977): 45–­59, esp. 47, 53. 2

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Catholic appeals to the Fathers by deinstitutionalizing, as it were, their witness: for Allen, the Fathers’ gifts and graces testify to the indwelling of the Spirit in his Church ; for Jewel, as for Foxe, God does not tie himself to sees, councils, and successions; individuals rather than institutions are sites of presence. Jewel’s insistence throughout that the Church has from the beginning endured periods of strife and corruption, and likewise has time and again undergone “reparation” , lessens the significance of the sixteenth-­century break with Rome. The English Church, Jewel thus avers, has not turned its back on the Western Church of the previous millennium, but only departed “from the errors thereof” . Moreover, albeit Lutherans and Zwinglians disagree, so too, Jewel points out, did Peter and Paul, and yet for all their “mutual discord,” then and now “both sides be Christians, good friends and brethren” . Like the affirmation of continuity, this preference for fraternal concord over doctrinal truth comes to define what was “later called Anglicanism.”6 The Elizabethan Church mounted intermittent drives for external conformity, but these were not doctrinal purges: rather, outward uniformity seemed important because, the hope was, it would bind a range of theological stances into a single national Church.7 Yet for all Jewel’s emergent Anglicanism, the theological outlook of the Apology is scarcely peculiar to England; rather, as Jewel himself remarked of the Thirty-nine articles, the English have “not departed in the slightest degree from the confession of Zurich” (Booty, xlv).8 The Apology’s model of Church-­state relations thus follows the Zurich pattern, which set the Christian magistrate over the clergy (that is, over the exercise of clerical jurisdiction and discipline) in his or her domain,9 whereas Geneva gave considerably more autonomy and power to its clergy. The Zurichers’ position that adiaphora, things having no bearing on salvation one way or another—­t hings like vestments and ceremonies—­fall within the purview of Christian magistrates would play an important role in the Vestiarian Controversy, with Bullinger writing to urge obedience, but it is already implicit in Jewel’s rather tepid endorsement of the nonbiblical ceremonies retained in the Book of Common Prayer .10 The influence of Zurich also makes itself felt in the silence of the Apology concerning issues fundamental to Calvinist belief: above all, predestination. Part two mentions justification by faith, but Jewel gives it only a single paragraph. The commitments that are central to Jewel’s defense, by contrast, are precisely the Erasmian-­humanist ones at the heart of the Zurich Reformation, but also shared across the Reformed spectrum: to the new learning, to vernacular Scripture, to Christian antiquity, Collinson terms Grindal’s rather more irenic and comprehensive vision of the Church than that of the Continental Reformed divines of London’s Stranger churches “Calvinism with an Anglican face,” in Collinson, Godly people (London, 1983), 213–­4 4. 7 See the introductions to the Lambeth articles and Parker’s A brief examination . 8 The early Elizabethan Church and its formularies—­the formularies of what became Anglicanism—­ owed far more to Zurich than Geneva, although that balance shifted over the next three decades. 9 This position is often termed “Erastianism”; Thomas Erastus, a Swiss physician and theologian, belongs to this tradition, but his tract dates from the late 1560s and was not published until 1589. 10 The whole notion of adiaphora is usually credited to Melanchthon, but Euler points out that Bullinger’s formulation of “things indifferent” was a major influence on Anglican doctrine (288). 6

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to the diffusion of knowledge via the new technology of print, to the enfranchisement of a lay readership, and to a platonizing dualism that set spirit over and against matter, and hence tended to mistrust outward religion. For all Jewel’s alleged Anglicanism, he has only contempt for the “salt, water, oil, boxes, spittle” of medieval worship, an Erasmian contempt having less to do with antichrist and idolatry than with materiality (see also Foxe’s fourth question ). Zwingli, the father of the Zurich Reformation, had taken this dualism of matter and spirit to entail that sacraments served merely as visual aids. Under Edward, English sacramental theology tended towards this minimalist position, but in 1549 Calvin and Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, hammered out the Consensus Tigurinus, which reconciled Zurich memorialism with Calvin’s more robust sacramental theology11 along exactly the same lines traced by Jewel: namely, by first upholding the memorialist position and then affirming the Calvinist one.12 One also notes throughout the Apology the humanist commitments, including Jewel’s call for open debate and free rational discussion. Gerard Brandt’s mid-­seventeenth-­century De vreedzame Christen (The peaceable Christian) pays tribute to the irenic latitudinarians of earlier eras; only a few of those he names are sixteenth-­century Protestants, but their number includes Bullinger, Acontius, and (the sole Englishman) Jewel. All three had spent the late 1550s in Zurich. Acontius and Jewel, who both arrived around 1556, would both depart for London in 1559.13 [\ Sources: ODNB; Benedict, Christ’s Churches; John Booty, ed. An apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, Folger Documents of Tudor and Stuart Civilization (Charlottesville, 1963); Carrie Euler, Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531–­1558 (Zürich, 2006); Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002).

See Calvin’s A faithful and most godly treatise . Compare article 7 with articles 11 and 12 of the Consensus Tigurinus. 13 The two clearly knew each other, but nothing indicates that they were particularly close. 11

12

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The Apology of the Church of England

1562 (Latin ed.; English trans., Anne Bacon, 1564)

Part I It hath been an old complaint, even from the first time of the patriarchs and prophets, and confirmed by the writings and testimonies of every age, that the truth wandereth here and there as a stranger in the world, and doth readily find enemies and slanderers amongst those that know her not. Albeit perchance this may seem unto some a thing hard to be believed . . . yet we, which have been exercised in the holy Scriptures, and which have both read and seen what hath happened to all godly men commonly at all times—­what to the prophets, to the apostles, to the holy martyrs, and what to Christ himself; with what rebukes, revilings, and despites they were continually vexed whiles they here lived, and that only for the truth’s sake—­we, I say, do see that this is not only no new thing or hard to be believed, but that it is a thing already received and commonly used from age to age. . . . For since any man’s remembrance, we can scant find one time, either when religion did first grow or when it was settled or when it did afresh spring up again, wherein truth and innocency were not by all unworthy means and most despitefully entreated {i.e., handled}. Doubtless the devil well seeth that so long as truth is in good safety, himself cannot be safe nor yet maintain his own estate. For, letting pass the ancient patriarchs and prophets, who, as we have said, had no part of their life free from contumelies and slanders, we know there were certain in times past which said and commonly preached that the old ancient Jews (of whom we make no doubt but they were the worshippers of the only and true God) did worship either a sow or an ass in God’s stead, and that all the same religion was nothing else but a sacrilege and a plain contempt of all godliness. . . . And, not to make rehearsal of all, for that were an endless labor, who knoweth not after what sort our fathers were railed upon in times past, which first began to acknowledge and profess the name of Christ? how they made private conspiracies, devised secret counsels against the commonwealth, and to that end made early and privy meetings in the dark, killed young babes, fed themselves with men’s flesh, and, like savage and brute beasts, did drink their blood? in conclusion, how that, after 91



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they had put out the candles, they committed adultery between themselves . . . and that they were wicked men without all care of religion and without any opinion of God, being the very enemies of mankind, unworthy to be suffered in the world and unworthy of life? . . . And although the things which they said were not true, yet the devil thought it should be sufficient for him if at the least he could bring it so to pass as they might be believed for true, and that the Christians might be brought into a common hatred of everybody, and have their death and destruction sought of all sorts. Hereupon kings and princes, being led then by such persuasions, killed all the prophets of God, letting none escape: Esay with a saw, Jeremy with stones, Daniel with lions, Amos with an iron bar, Paul with the sword, and Christ upon the cross; and condemned all Christians to imprisonments, to torments, to the pikes, to be thrown down headlong from rocks and steep places, to be cast to wild beasts, and to be burnt: and made great fires of their quick bodies for the only purpose to give light by night. . . . Thus, as ye see, have the authors and professors of the truth ever been intreated. Wherefore, we ought to bear it the more quietly, which have taken upon us to profess the gospel of Christ, if we for the same cause be handled after the same sort; and if we, as our forefathers were long ago, be likewise at this day tormented and baited with railings, with spiteful dealings, and with lies; and that for no desert of our own, but only because we teach and acknowledge the truth. . . . Now, therefore, if it be lawful for these folks to be eloquent and fine-­tongued in speaking evil, surely it becometh not us in our cause, being so very good, to be dumb in answering truly. For men to be careless what is spoken by {i.e., about} them and their own matter, be it never so falsely and slanderously spoken (especially when it is such that the majesty of God and the cause of religion may thereby be damaged), is the part doubtless of dissolute and reckless persons, and of them which wickedly wink at the injuries done unto the name of God. For although other wrongs, yea oftentimes great, may be borne and dissembled of a mild and Christian man, yet he that goeth smoothly away and dissembleth the matter when he is noted of heresy, Ruffinus was wont to deny that man to be a Christian. . . . . . . If so be that Pope Pius were . . . a man that either would account us for his brethren, or at least would take us to be men, he would first diligently have examined our reasons, and would have seen what might be said with us, what against us; and would not in his bull, whereby he lately pretended a council, so rashly have condemned so great a part of the world, so many learned and godly men, so many commonwealths, so many kings and so many princes, only upon his own blind prejudices and fore-­determinations—­and that without hearing of them speak or without showing cause why. But because he hath already so noted us openly, lest by holding our peace we should seem to grant a fault, and specially because we can by no means have audience in the public assembly of the general council, wherein he would no creature should have power to give his voice or to declare his opinion except he be sworn and straitly bound to maintain his authority1. . . for this cause chiefly we thought it good to yield up an account of {Representatives to the Council of Trent had to acknowledge papal supremacy in order to participate in the deliberations.} 1

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our faith in writing, and truly and openly to make answer to those things wherewith we have been openly charged; to the end the world may see the parts and foundations of that doctrine in the behalf whereof so many good men have little regarded their own lives; and that all men may understand what manner of people they be, and what opinion they have of God and of religion, whom the Bishop of Rome, before they were called to tell their tale, hath condemned for heretics . . . only because he heard tell that they did dissent from him and his in some point of religion. . . . Further, if we do show it plainly that God’s holy gospel, the ancient bishops, and the primitive Church do make on our side, and that we have not without just cause left these men, and rather have returned to the apostles and old catholic fathers . . . and if they themselves which fly our doctrine, and would be called Catholics shall manifestly see how all these titles of antiquity, whereof they boast so much, are quite shaken out of their hands, and that there is more pith in this our cause than they thought for; we then hope and trust that none of them will be so negligent and careless of his own salvation but he will at length study and bethink himself to whether part he were best to join him. . . . For where they call us heretics, it is a crime so heinous that, unless it may be seen, unless it may be felt, and in manner may be holden with hands and fingers, it ought not lightly to be judged or believed when it is laid to the charge of any Christian man. . . . But the more sore and outrageous a crime heresy is, the more it ought to be proved by plain and strong arguments, especially in this time, when men begin to give less credit to their words and to make more diligent search of their doctrine than they were wont to do. For the people of God are otherwise instructed now than they were in times past, when all the bishops of Rome’s sayings were allowed for gospel and when all religion did depend only upon their authority. Nowadays the holy Scripture is abroad, the writings of the apostles and prophets are in print, whereby all truth and catholic doctrine may be proved and all heresy may be disproved and confuted. . . . Wherefore, if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be Catholics, why do they not, as they see the Fathers, which were catholic men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us by the divine Scriptures? Why do they not call us again to be tried by them? Why do they not lay before us how we have gone away from Christ, from the prophets, from the apostles, and from the holy Fathers? Why stick they to do it? Why are they afraid of it? It is God’s cause. Why are they doubtful to commit it to the trial of God’s word? . . .  . . .

Part II We believe that there is one certain nature and divine power, which we call God.2 . . . . . . We believe that for our sakes he {i.e., Christ} died and was buried, descended into hell, the third day by the power of his Godhead returned to life and rose again; and that {The confession of faith that follows is largely an orthodox paraphrase of the Nicene Creed; we have reprinted only those passages that bear on Reformation controversies.} 2

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the fortieth day after his resurrection . . . he ascended to the right hand of the Father . . . and that there he now sitteth, and shall sit, till all things be full perfected. And although the majesty and Godhead of Christ be everywhere abundantly dispersed, yet we believe that his body, as St. Augustine saith, must needs be still in one place; and that Christ hath given majesty unto his body, but yet hath not taken away from it the nature of a body; and that we must not so affirm Christ to be God that we deny him to be man; and, as the martyr Vigilius saith, that Christ hath left us as touching his human nature, but hath not left us as touching his divine nature; and that the same Christ, though he be absent from us concerning his manhood, yet is ever present with us concerning his Godhead. . . . We believe that the Holy Ghost, who is the third person in the Holy Trinity, is very God . . . and that it is his property to mollify and soften the hardness of man’s heart when he is once received thereinto, either by the wholesome preaching of the gospel or by any other way; that he doth give men light, and guide them unto the knowledge of God, to all way of truth, to newness of the whole life, and to everlasting hope of salvation. We believe that there is one Church of God, and that the same is not shut up (as in times past among the Jews) into some one corner or kingdom, but that it is catholic and universal, and dispersed throughout the whole world. So that there is now no nation which may truly complain that they be shut forth and may not be one of the Church and people of God; and that this Church is the kingdom, the body, and the spouse of Christ; and that Christ alone is the prince of this kingdom; that Christ alone is the head of this body; and that Christ alone is the bridegroom of this spouse. Furthermore, we believe that there be divers degrees of ministers in the Church, whereof some be deacons, some priests, some bishops; to whom is committed the office to instruct the people and the whole charge and setting forth of religion. Yet notwithstanding, we say that there neither is nor can be any one man which may have the whole superiority in this universal state, for that Christ is ever present to assist his Church, and needeth not any man to supply his room as his only heir to all his substance. . . . For all the apostles, as Cyprian saith, were of like power among themselves, and the rest were the same that Peter was; and that it said indifferently to them all, feed ye; indifferently to them all, go into the whole world; indifferently to them all, teach ye the gospel. . . . And as for the bishop of Rome, who now calleth all matters before himself alone, except he do his duty as he ought to do, except he minister the sacraments, except he instruct the people, except he warn them and teach them, we say that he ought not of right once to be called a bishop, or so much as an elder. For a bishop, as saith Augustine, is a name of labor, and not of honor. . . . And therefore, sithence the bishop of Rome . . . challengeth unto himself an authority that is none of his, besides that he doth plainly contrary to the ancient councils and contrary to the old Fathers, we believe . . . that he hath forsaken the faith and is the forerunner of Antichrist. . . . Moreover, we say that Christ hath given to his ministers power to bind, to loose, to open, to shut. And that the office of loosing consisteth in this point: that the minister should either offer, by the preaching of the Gospel, the merits of Christ and full pardon to such as have lowly and contrite hearts and do unfeignedly repent themselves, pronouncing unto the same a sure and undoubted forgiveness of their sins and hope 94



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of everlasting salvation; or else that the same minister, when any have offended their brothers’ minds with a great offence, with a notable and open fault . . . then, after perfect amendment of such persons, {the minister} doth reconcile them and bring them home again and restore them to the company and unity of the faithful. We say also that the minister doth execute the authority of binding and shutting as often as he shutteth up the gate of the kingdom of heaven against the unbelieving and stubborn persons, denouncing unto them God’s vengeance and everlasting punishment, or else when he doth quite shut them out from the bosom of the Church by open excommunication. Out of doubt, what sentence soever the minister of God shall give in this sort, God himself doth so well allow of it, that whatsoever here in earth by their means is loosed and bound, God himself will loose and bind, and confirm the same in heaven. And touching the keys wherewith they may either shut or open the kingdom of heaven, we with Chrysostom say, They be the knowledge of the Scriptures. . . . Moreover, that Christ’s disciples did receive this authority, not that they should hear the private confessions of the people and listen to their whisperings . . . but to the end they should go, they should teach, they should publish abroad the Gospel . . . that the minds of godly persons, being brought low by the remorse of their former life and errors, after they once began to look up unto the light of the Gospel and believe in Christ, might be opened with the word of God, even as a door is opened with a key. . . . Seeing then the key whereby the way and entry to the kingdom of God is opened unto us is the word of the Gospel and the expounding of the Law and Scriptures, we say plainly, where the same word is not, there is not the key. And seeing one manner of word is given to all, and one only key belongeth to all, we say that there is but one only power of all ministers as concerning opening and shutting. And as touching the bishop of Rome, for all his parasites flatteringly sing these words in his ears, To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven (as though those keys were fit for him alone, and for nobody else), except he go so to work as men’s consciences may be made pliant and be subdued to the word of God, we deny that he doth either open or shut, or hath the keys at all. . . . We say that matrimony is holy and honorable in all sorts and states of persons, in the patriarchs, in the prophets, in the apostles, in holy martyrs, in the ministers of the Church, and in bishops; and that it is an honest and lawful thing (as Chrysostom saith) for a man, living in matrimony, to take upon him therewith the dignity of a bishop. . . . We receive and embrace all the canonical Scriptures. . . . Also that these be the heavenly voices whereby God hath opened unto us his will, and that only in them man’s heart can have settled rest; that in them be abundantly and fully comprehended all things, whatsoever be needful for our salvation . . . that they be the very sure and infallible rule whereby may be tried whether the Church do stagger or err, and whereunto all ecclesiastical doctrine ought to be called to account; and that against these Scriptures neither law nor ordinance nor any custom ought to be heard: no, though Paul his own self, or an angel from heaven, should come and teach the contrary. Moreover, we allow the sacraments of the Church: that is to say, certain holy signs and ceremonies, which Christ would we should use that by them he might set before our eyes the mysteries of our salvation, and might more strongly confirm our faith which we have in his blood, and might seal his grace in our hearts. And these sacraments . . . be certain visible words, seals of righteousness, tokens of grace; and do expressly pronounce that in the Lord’s 95



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Supper there is truly given unto the believing the body and blood of the Lord, the flesh of the Son of God which quickeneth our souls, the meat that cometh from above, the food of immortality, grace, truth, and life; and the Supper to be the communion of the body and blood of Christ, by the partaking whereof we be revived, we be strengthened, and be fed unto immortality; and whereby we are joined, united, and incorporate unto Christ, that we may abide in him, and he in us. Besides, we acknowledge there be two sacraments which, we judge, properly ought to be called by this name: that is to say, baptism and the sacrament of thanksgiving.3 . . . We say that baptism is a sacrament of the remission of sins and of that washing which we have in the blood of Christ; and that no person which will profess Christ’s name ought to be restrained or kept back therefrom; no, not the very babes of Christians, forsomuch as they be born in sin and do pertain unto the people of God. We say that Eucharistia (that is to say, the Supper of the Lord) is a sacrament: that is, to wit, an evident token of the body and blood of Christ, wherein is set, as it were, before our eyes, the death of Christ and his resurrection, and what act soever he did whilst he was in his mortal body; to the end we may give him thanks for his death and for our deliverance; and that by the often receiving of this sacrament, we may daily renew the remembrance of that matter, to the intent we, being fed with the body and blood of Christ, may be brought into the hope of the resurrection and of everlasting life; and may most assuredly believe that the body and blood of Christ doth in like manner feed our souls, as bread and wine doth feed our bodies. To this banquet we think the people of God ought to be earnestly bidden, that they may all communicate among themselves, and openly declare and testify both the godly society which is among them and also the hope which they have in Christ Jesu. . . . . . . We affirm that bread and wine are holy and heavenly mysteries of the body and blood of Christ, and that by them Christ himself, being the true bread of eternal life, is so presently given unto us as that by faith we verily receive his body and his blood. Yet say we not this so, as though we thought that the nature and substance of the bread and wine is clearly changed and goeth to nothing, as many have dreamed in these later times, which yet could never agree among themselves of this their dream. For that was not Christ’s meaning, that the wheaten bread should lay apart his own nature and receive a certain new divinity; but that he might rather change us, and (to use Theophylact’s words) might transform us into his body. . . . And in speaking thus, we mean not to abase the Lord’s Supper, that it is but a cold ceremony only, and nothing to be wrought therein (as many falsely slander us we teach). For we affirm that Christ doth truly and presently give his own self in his sacraments. . . . For although we do not touch the body of Christ with teeth and mouth, yet we hold him fast, and eat him by faith, by understanding, and by the Spirit. . . . And therefore in celebrating these mysteries, the people are to good purpose exhorted before they come to receive the holy Communion to lift up their hearts and to direct their minds to heavenward, because he is there, by whom we must be full fed, and live. . . . How shall I hold him, saith he {Augustine}, which is absent? How shall I reach my hand up to heaven to lay 3

{I.e., the Eucharist, the Greek word for thanksgiving}

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hold upon him that sitteth there? He answereth, Reach hither thy faith, and then thou hast laid hold on him. We cannot also away in our churches with the shows and sales and buying and selling of masses, nor the carrying about and worshipping of bread,4 nor such other idolatrous and blasphemous fondness, which none of them can prove that Christ or his apostles did ever ordain or left unto us. And we justly blame the bishops of Rome, who . . . do not only set before the people the sacramental bread to be worshipped as God, but do also carry about the same upon an ambling horse whithersoever themselves journey, as in old times the Persians’ fire and the relics of the goddess Isis were solemnly carried about in procession, and have brought the sacraments of Christ to be used now as a stage play and a solemn sight . . . . . . Nevertheless we keep still, and esteem, not only those ceremonies which we are sure were delivered us from the apostles, but some others too besides which we thought might be suffered without hurt to the Church of God, because that we had a desire that all things in the holy congregation might (as St. Paul commandeth) be done with comeliness and in good order. . . . . . . Besides, though we say we have no meed at all by our own works and deeds, but appoint all the means of our salvation to be in Christ alone, yet say we not that for this cause men ought to live loosely and dissolutely, nor that it is enough for a Christian to be baptized only and to believe, as though there were nothing else required at his hand. For true faith is lively and can in no wise be idle. . . .

Part III . . .

Where they say, that we have fallen into sundry sects, and would be called some of us Lutherans, and some of us Zwinglians, and cannot yet well agree among ourselves touching the whole substance of doctrine: what would these men have said, if they had been in the first times of the apostles and holy fathers . . . when Paul did so sharply rebuke Peter; when, upon a falling out, Barnabas departed from Paul; when, as Origen mentioneth, the Christians were divided into so many factions as that they kept no more but the name of Christians in common among them . . . when the east part was divided from the west, only for leavened bread and only for keeping of Easter Day, which were indeed no great matters to be strived for. . . . What would these men (trow ye) have said in those days? . . . Whom would they have accounted for heretics, and whom for Catholics? And yet what a stir and revel keep they at this time upon two poor names only of Luther and Zwinglius? Because these two men do not yet fully agree upon some one point, therefore would they needs have us think that both of them were deceived, that neither of them had the gospel, and that neither of them taught the truth aright.

4

{Jewel alludes to the Corpus Christi procession; for a different assessment, see Rites of Durham .}

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But, good God, what manner of fellows be these which blame us for disagreeing? And do all they themselves, ween you, agree well together? Is every one of them fully resolved what to follow? Hath there been no strifes, no debates, no quarrels among them at no time? Why then do the Scotists and the Thomists, about that they call meritum congrui and meritum condigni, no better agree together? Why agree they no better among themselves concerning original sin in the Blessed Virgin? . . .  They were best, therefore, to go and set peace at home rather among their own selves. Of a truth, unity and concord doth best become religion; yet is not unity the sure and certain mark whereby to know the Church of God. For there was the greatest consent that might be amongst them that worshipped the golden calf. . . . Neither because . . . the Christians, upon the very beginning of the gospel, were at mutual discord touching some one matter or other, may we therefore think there was no Church of God amongst them. And as for those persons whom they upon spite call Zwinglians and Lutherians, in very deed they of both sides be Christians, good friends and brethren. They vary not betwixt themselves upon the principles and foundations of our religion, nor as touching God, nor Christ, nor the Holy Ghost, nor of the means of justification, nor yet everlasting life, but upon one only question, which is neither weighty nor great; neither mistrust we, or make doubt at all, but they will shortly be agreed. . . . . . .

Part IV . . .

. . . likewise do these men slander us as heretics, and say that we have left the Church and fellowship of Christ . . . . . . Surely we have ever judged the primitive Church of Christ’s time, of the apostles and of the holy Fathers, to be the Catholic Church; neither make we doubt to name it, Noah’s ark, Christ’s spouse, the pillar and upholder of all truth; nor yet to fix therein the whole mean of our salvation. . . . . . . . . . As touching that we have now done to depart from that Church whose errors were proved and made manifest to the world, which Church also had already evidently departed from God’s word; and yet not to depart so much from itself, as from the errors thereof; and not to do this disorderly or wickedly, but quietly and soberly: we have done nothing herein against the doctrine either of Christ or of his apostles. For neither is the Church of God such as it may not be dusked with some spot or asketh not sometime reparation. . . . . . . Hilarius,5 when things as yet were almost uncorrupt, and in good ease too: Ye are ill deceived, saith he, with the love of walls; ye do ill worship the Church, in that ye worship it in houses and buildings; ye do ill bring in the name of peace under roofs. Is there any doubt but Antichrist will have his seat under the same? I rather reckon hills, woods, pools, marshes, prisons, and quagmires to be places of more safety, for in these the prophets, either abiding of their accord or forced thither by violence, did prophesy by the Spirit of God. . . . 5

{Hilary of Poitiers, mid-­fourth century}

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Bernard, the abbot {of Clairvaux}, above four hundred years past writeth thus . . . It seemeth now, saith he, that persecution hath ceased. No, no. Persecution seemeth but now to begin, even from them which have chief pre-­eminence in the Church. . . .

Part V But here I look they will say, though they have not the Scriptures, yet maychance they have the ancient Doctors and the holy Fathers with them. For this is a high brag they have ever made, how that all antiquity and a continual consent of all ages doth make on their side; and that all our cases be but new and yesterday’s work, and until these few late years were never heard of. Questionless, there can nothing be more spitefully spoken against the religion of God than to accuse it of novelty, as a new come up matter. For as there can be no change in God himself, so ought there to be no change in his religion. . . . . . . But how if the things which these men are so desirous to have seem new be found of greatest antiquity? Contrariwise, how if all the things well-­nigh which they so greatly set out with the name of antiquity . . . be at length found to be but new, and devised of very late? . . . As for our doctrine, which we may rightly call Christ’s catholic doctrine, it is so far off from new that God, who is above all most ancient and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hath left the same unto us in the Gospel, in the prophets’ and apostles’ works, being monuments of greatest age. So that no man can now think our doctrine to be new, unless the same think either the prophets’ faith, or the gospel, or else Christ himself to be new. And as for their religion, if it be of so long continuance as they would have men ween it is, why do they not prove it so by the examples of the primitive Church, and by the Fathers and Councils of old times? . . . They did surely against all reason to begin first with these so bloody and extreme means, if they could have found other more easy and gentle ways. . . . . . . The old fathers Origen and Chrysostom exhort the people to read the Scriptures, to buy them books, to reason at home betwixt themselves of divine matters—­wives with their husbands, and parents with their children. These men condemn the Scriptures as dead elements, and—­as much as ever they may—­bar the people from them. . . . . . . . . . They have often stoutly noised in all corners where they went how all the parts of their religion be very old, and have been approved not only of the multitude, but also by the consent and continual observation of all nations and times. Let them, therefore, once in their life show this their antiquity. . . . Nay, nay, they . . . have not, good Lord, they have not, I say, those things which they boast they have: they have not that antiquity, they have not that universality, they have not that consent of all places nor of all times. And though they have a desire rather to dissemble, yet they themselves are not ignorant hereof: yea, and sometime also they let not to confess it openly. And for this cause they say that the ordinances of the old Councils and Fathers be such as may now and then be altered, and that sundry and divers decrees serve for sundry and divers times of the Church. . . . 99



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. . . They have plucked away from the people the holy Communion, the word of God from whence all comfort should be taken, the true worshipping of God also, and the right use of sacraments and prayer; and have given us of their own to play withal in the meanwhile, salt, water, oil, boxes, spittle, palms, bulls, jubilees, pardons, crosses, censings, and an endless rabble of ceremonies, and, as a man might term with Plautus,6 pretty games to make sport withal. In these things have they set all their religion, teaching the people that by these God may be duly pacified, spirits be driven away, and men’s consciences well quieted. For these, lo, be the orient colors and precious savors of Christian religion. . . . And yet whatever it be, these men cry still that nothing ought to be changed; that men’s minds are well satisfied herewithal; that the Church of Rome, the Church which cannot err, hath decreed these things. For Silvester Prierias7 saith that the Romish Church is the square and rule of truth, and that the holy Scripture hath received from thence authority and credit. . . . Pighius8 also letteth not to say that without the license of the Romish Church, we ought not to believe the very plain Scriptures. . . . . . . But, say they, ye have been of our fellowship, but now ye are become forsakers of your profession, and have departed from us. It is true; we have departed from them, and for so doing we both give thanks to almighty God and greatly rejoice on our own behalf. But yet for all this, from the primitive Church, from the apostles, and from Christ we have not departed. . . . But wherefore, I pray you, have they themselves, the citizens and dwellers of Rome, removed and come down from those seven hills whereupon Rome sometime stood, to dwell rather in the plain called Mars’ Field? They will say, peradventure, because the conduits of water, wherewithout men cannot commodiously live, have now failed and are dried up in those hills. Well then, let them give us like leave in seeking the water of eternal life that they give themselves in seeking the water of the well. For the water, verily, failed amongst them. . . . The needy and poor folk, saith Esay, sought about for water, but nowhere found they any; their tongue was even withered for thirst. Even so these men have broken in pieces all the pipes and conduits, they have stopped up all the springs, and choked up the fountain of living water with dirt and mire. . . . They have brought into the world, as saith the prophet Amos, a hunger and a thirst: not the hunger of bread nor the thirst of water, but of hearing the word of God. With great distress went they scattering about, seeking some spark of heavenly life to refresh their consciences withal; but that light was already thoroughly quenched out, so that they could find none. This was a rueful state; this was a lamentable form of God’s Church. It was a misery to live therein, without the gospel, without light, and without all comfort. . . .

Part VI . . .

They will say to this, I guess: Civil princes have learned to govern a commonwealth and to order matters of war, but they understand not the secret mysteries of religion. If that be so, what is the pope, I pray you, at this day other than a monarch or a prince? . . .  {A Roman comic playwright} {A Dominican theologian and anti-­Protestant controversialist, d. 1527} 8 {Albert Pighius (d. 1542), a Dutch theologian and astronomer} 6 7

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. . . Why, I pray you, may Caiaphas and Annas understand these matters, and may not David and Ezechias do the same? . . . We truly grant no further liberty to our magistrates than that we know hath both been given them by the word of God and also been confirmed by the examples of the very best governed commonwealths. For besides that a Christian prince hath the charge of both tables committed to him by God, to the end he may understand that not temporal matters only, but also religious and ecclesiastical causes, pertain to his office. . . . I say, besides all these things, we see by histories and by examples of the best times, that good princes ever took the administration of ecclesiastical matters to pertain to their duty. Moses, a civil magistrate and chief guide of the people, both received from God and delivered to the people all the order for religion and sacrifices—­and gave Aaron, the bishop, a vehement and sore rebuke for making the golden calf. . . . King David, when the whole religion was altogether brought out of frame by wicked King Saul, brought home again the Ark of God; that is to say, he restored religion again; and was not only amongst them himself as a counselor and furtherer of the work, but he appointed also hymns and psalms, put in order the companies, and was the only doer in setting forth that whole solemn show, and in effect ruled the priests. . . . . . . . . . The Emperor Justinian made a law to correct the behavior of the clergy and to cut short the insolency of the priests. And albeit he were a Christian and a catholic prince, yet put he down from their papal throne two popes, Sylverius and Vigilius, notwithstanding they were Peter’s successors and Christ’s vicars. . . . We truly for our parts . . . have done nothing in altering religion either upon rashness or arrogancy; nor nothing but with good leisure and great consideration. Neither had we ever intended to do it, except both the manifest and most assured will of God opened to us in his holy Scriptures and the regard of our own salvation had even constrained us thereunto. . . . and we are come as near as we possibly could to the Church of the apostles and of the old catholic bishops and Fathers: which Church we know hath hereunto been sound and perfect, and, as Tertullian termeth it, a pure virgin, spotted as yet with no idolatry nor with any foul or shameful fault; and have directed according to their customs and ordinances, not only our doctrine, but also the sacraments and the form of common prayer. . . . But marvelous notable and to very good purpose for these days be Hierom’s words: Whosoever (saith he) the devil hath deceived and enticed to fall asleep . . . those persons doth God’s word awake up, saying unto them, Arise, thou that sleepest; lift up thyself, and Christ shall give thee light. Therefore at the coming of Christ, of God’s word, of the ecclesiastical doctrine—­and of the full destruction of Nineveh and of that most beautiful harlot—­then, then shall the people, which heretofore had been cast in a trance under their masters, be raised up, and shall make haste to go to the mountains of the Scripture; and there shall they find hills: Moses, verily, and Joshua the son of Nun; other hills also, which are the prophets; and hills of the New Testament, which are the apostles and the evangelists. And when the people shall flee for succor to such hills, and shall be exercised in the reading of those kind of mountains, though they find not one to teach them (for the harvest shall be great, 101



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but the laborers few), yet shall the good desire of the people be well accepted in that they have gotten them to such hills, and the negligence of their masters shall be openly reproved. These be Hierom’s sayings, and that so plain as there needeth no interpreter; for they agree so just with the things we now see with our eyes have already come to pass that we may verily think that he meant to foretell . . . the universal state of our time: the fall of the most gorgeous harlot Babylon, the repairing again of God’s Church, the blindness and sloth of the bishops, and the good will and forwardness of the people. For who is so blind that he seeth not. . . . that good men, being awaked, as it were, out of their dead sleep at the light of the Gospel and at the voice of God, have resorted to the hills of the Scriptures, waiting not at all for the councils of such masters? . . . For whereas some use to make so great a vaunt that the pope is only Peter’s successor, as though thereby he carried the Holy Ghost in his bosom and cannot err, this is but a matter of nothing and a very trifling tale. God’s grace is promised to a good mind and to one that feareth God, not unto sees and successions. . . . . . . [\ T ext: John Jewel, The Apology of the Church of England, trans. Anne Bacon (London, 1888). Checked against An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande with a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professed and vsed in the same (London, 1564).

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THE THIRTY-­NINE ARTICLES (1563, 1571)

These articles were originally passed by Convocation (that is, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Parliament) and printed in 1563. They were revised by Convocation in 1571 (some of the more important revisions are noted below) and confirmed by Parliament. The convention that there are precisely thirty-nine of them developed only slowly: the 1563 version actually had thirty-eight unnumbered articles, while the 1571 text numbered forty, of which the final article was a “ratification” of the others. From 1571 onwards, ministers in the Church of England were required to subscribe to these articles as a condition of their ordination, and from 1672–­1824 the Test Act required adherence to the Articles as a condition for holding civil office. The Thirty-nine articles are thus the closest thing England ever had to a “confession” or creedal document, like the Augsburg or the Helvetic Confessions that enforced doctrinal unity in the great Churches of Reformation Europe. The Thirty-­nine articles were largely developed from the Forty-­t wo articles promulgated in the final weeks of Edward VI’s reign in 1553, but with several of the more stridently Reformed articles omitted to avoid offending Lutheran sensibilities and with several others substantially changed. But this outcome was not a foregone conclusion, and the passage of the Articles involved complex negotiations, both amongst the clergy in Convocation and between Convocation and a recalcitrant Queen. Beginning in January 1562 Archbishop Matthew Parker invited the bishops in the upper house of Convocation to propose articles for consideration, with an eye to writing a new doctrinal statement. Dozens of articles were presented, sponsored by a variety of bishops; many of them included elements of what would later become the puritan program for further reform: the elimination of vestments, the banning of music in church services, attacks on images, and so forth. Thanks to the research of David Crankshaw, we now know that many of these

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more radical proposals were supported by the majority of bishops but were prevented from passing into law or being integrated into the Thirty-­nine articles by the Queen herself.1 All doctrinal statements must necessarily decide when to be specific and when to be vague, allowing latitude on some issues and not others, depending upon the needs of the moment. For the most part, the Thirty-­nine articles err on the side of vagueness, not forcing precise distinctions that would have unnecessarily made enemies for the nascent and still very weak Elizabethan Church. On a number of issues, like purgatory, the authority of Scripture, and of course royal authority over the Church, the Articles vigorously rejected Roman Catholicism. On a number of other issues, like the baptism of infants, the legitimacy of private property, and the legitimacy of civil oaths, the Articles rejected Anabaptism with equal energy. But, with a few exceptions, the Articles generally avoided taking firm positions on issues that divided Protestants from one another. Article 17, for instance, presented a version of the theology of predestination that was, at that point, uncontroversial among Protestants: that God elected some individuals in Christ to salvation, before the beginning of the world, of his own free grace. This would become a point of bitter controversy later in the century, with the rise of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, but in the 1560s and 1570s virtually no Protestant would have had difficulty subscribing.2 By contrast, the theological issue regarding predestination that did divide Protestants—­whether God simultaneously predestined some people to damnation, or whether he simply failed to decree their salvation and damned them in response to their works—­article 17 chose to omit altogether, to avoid engendering unnecessary controversy. Article 20 was intended as a straightforward affirmation of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura: that all that was necessary for salvation was contained in Scripture, and the Church should not ordain anything contrary to Scripture. Entitled “Of the authority of the Church,” its purpose was to limit that authority, in keeping with the Protestant program of Christian liberty. Soon after the Articles were passed, however, a series of skirmishes broke out between so-­called puritans, who opposed ceremonialism in the Church, and Archbishop Parker, who sought to enforce uniformity of worship. In this fraught context, the originally uncontroversial article was rendered problematic, and a new first sentence was added—­“The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies and authority in controversies of faith”— that changed it from an article limiting the authority of the Church to an article (ratified as law by Parliament in 1571) establishing the authority of the Church. Here, in other words, we can watch the Church of England slowly coming to maturity. [\ Sources: A comparison of the 1553, 1563, and 1571 Articles can be found in Gerald Bray, ed., Documents of the English Reformation (Minneapolis, 1994), 284–­311. An extremely thorough critical edition of the Thirty-nine articles is in W. J. Torrance Kirby, “The Articles of religion of the church of England (1563/71), commonly called the Thirty-­nine articles,” in Andreas Mühling and Peter Opitz, eds., Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften, Band 2/1:1559–­1563 (Neukirchen-­Vluyn, 2009), 371–­410. 1 David Crankshaw, “Preparations for the Canterbury Provincial Convocation of 1562–­1563: a question of attribution,” in Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger, eds., Belief and practice in Reformation England: a tribute to Patrick Collinson by his students (Aldershot, 1998), 60–­93. 2 Indeed many medieval theologians, including Aquinas, similarly affirm single predestination (see Summa theologica 1.23, and the long extract from Peter Lombard in Dove’s Paul’s Cross sermon ).

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{3} Of the going down of Christ into hell As Christ died and was buried for us, so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell.1

{6} The doctrine of the holy Scripture is sufficient to salvation Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith or be thought requisite as necessary to salvation. By the naming of holy Scripture, we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. . . .

{7} Touching the Old Testament The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore they are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the law given by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth, yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.

{9} Of original or birth sin Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the {On the controversy regarding Christ’s descent into hell, see Peter Milward, Religious controversies of the Elizabethan age: a survey of printed sources (London, 1977), 163–­67.} 1

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offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from his former righteousness which he had at his creation and is of his own nature given to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are baptized,2 whereby the lust of the flesh . . . is not subject to the law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.3

{10} Of free will The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing {i.e., preceding} us, that we may have a good will, and working in us, when we have that good will.

{11} Of the justification of man We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, it is a most wholesome doctrine, and full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

{12} Of good works Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins and endure the severity of God’s judgment, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by the fruit.

{13} Works before justification Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of his Spirit are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the school authors say) deserve grace of congruity, but because they are not done as God has willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

{16} Of sin after baptism Every deadly sin willingly committed after baptism is not sin against the Holy Ghost and unpardonable. Wherefore, the place for penitence is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after baptism. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from {the 1571 version has “regenerated” rather than “baptized.”} {One can get a sense of the underlying debate from the corresponding canon of the Council of Trent (fifth decree concerning original sin): “But this holy synod confesses and is sensible, that in the baptized there remains concupiscence, or an incentive (to sin); which, whereas it is left for our exercise, cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ. . . . This concupiscence . . . the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin. . . .”} 2 3

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grace given and fall into sin,4 and by the grace of God we may arise again and amend our lives. And therefore they are to be condemned which say they can no more sin as long as they live here, or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent and amend their lives.

{17} Of predestination and election Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor. Whereupon such as have so excellent a benefit of God given unto them be called, according to God’s purpose, by his Spirit working in due season, they through grace obey the calling, they be justified freely, they be made sons of God by adoption, they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ, they walk religiously in good works, and at length by God’s mercy they attain to everlasting felicity. As the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God; so for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s predestination is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation or into recklessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation. Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture; and in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.

{19} Of the Church The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome have erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of their faith.

{20} Of the authority of the Church It is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy writ, yet as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.5 4 5

{On perserverance in grace, see Lambeth articles .} {On the crucial first sentence added in 1571, see the introduction to this section.}

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{21} Of the authority of general councils General councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of princes. And when they be gathered together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the spirit and word of God) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.

{25} Of the sacraments Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken {i.e., bring to life}, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in him. There are two sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, baptism and the supper of the Lord. Those five commonly called sacraments, that is to say, confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction, are not to be accounted for sacraments of the gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet have not like nature of sacraments with baptism and the Lord’s supper. In which sort neither is penance, for that it hath not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God. The sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them. And in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome effect and operation. But they that receive them unworthily, purchase to themselves damnation, as Saint Paul saith.

{27} Of baptism Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign and seal of our new birth, whereby, as by an instrument {i.e., a formal document}, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and our adoption to be the sons of God, by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; faith is confirmed and grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

{28} Of the Lord’s supper The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another, but rather it is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death. Insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which we break is a communion of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a communion of the blood of Christ.6 {Another crucial alteration introduced in the 1571 version, this has been changed to “The bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of 6

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Transubstantiation, or the change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood, cannot be proved by holy writ. But it is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, perverteth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.7 The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper after a heavenly and spiritual manner only. But the mean {i.e., means} whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith. The sacrament of the Lord’s supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, nor worshipped. {[The article traditionally numbered 29 did not exist in the 1563 version. It was added in 1571:]

{29} Of the wicked which do not eat the body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s supper The wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine says) the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no way are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing.}

{34} Of the traditions of the Church It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like, for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s word. Whosoever through his private judgment willingly and purposely doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly (that other may fear to do the like) as one that offendeth against the common order of the Church and hurteth the authority of the magistrate and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren. Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that {i.e., as long as} all things be done to edifying.

{37} Of civil magistrates The Queen’s majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction. Where we attribute to the Queen’s majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended, we give not to our princes Christ.” The language of “partaking” potentially allowed for a more conservative reading, permitting some version of Christ’s physical presence, which the language of “communion” had never suggested.} 7 {In 1571 the words “into the substance of Christ’s body and blood” were omitted.}

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the ministering either of God’s word or of sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen doth most plainly testify; but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in holy Scriptures by God himself: that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or no, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers. . . . [\ T ext: Articles. wherevpon it was agreed by the archbysshops and bisshops of both the prouinces, and the whole clergye, in the conuocation holden at London in the yere of our Lord God M.D.lxii accordyng to the computation of the Churche of England, for thauoydyng of the diuersities of opinions, and for the stablyshyng of consent touchyng true religion (London, 1563) (NSTC 10038.3). Checked against Articles . . . for the auoiding of the diuersities of opinions, and for the stablishyng of consent touching true religion (London, 1571).

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Acts and monuments

John Foxe’s Acts and monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs, was among the most important books of the sixteenth century. Foxe had been educated at Oxford, where he took a bachelor’s degree at Brasenose in 1537 and became fellow of Magdalen in 1539. Under pressure from the Catholic majority in the College, he resigned his fellowship in 1545, and it was not until Edward VI took the throne in 1547 that he once again was able to enter the intellectual mainstream, gaining the patronage of key figures at court like William Cecil. Foxe fled into exile early in Queen Mary’s reign, and from the relative safety of Continental Protestant centers like Frankfurt and Basel he learned with horror of the executions of so many of his coreligionists in England. Martyrdom, and specifically the importance of persecution as a mark of the true Church, was Foxe’s obsession even before the Marian burnings began. In 1554, newly arrived in exile, he published his first Latin martyrology, detailing the sufferings of opponents of Rome in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with an eye to constructing a prehistory of Protestantism out of the so-­called heretics of the Middle Ages. In 1559 he published a second Latin martyrology, now detailing the sufferings of witnesses for Protestantism up through 1556, including eyewitness accounts provided by hundreds of informants who knew that Foxe was compiling a history of martyrdoms and were eager to offer information for inclusion in his book. The 1563 first edition of the English work known as Acts and monuments, then, was in reality the third edition, and with so much practice, he was able to produce a work of transcendent significance. [\

Acts and monuments is, in part, a remarkably moving and detailed history of the persecutions of Protestant martyrs in Marian England, including firsthand testimony of those who witnessed the trials and burnings as well as writings smuggled out of prison by the martyrs themselves. But it is also much more: it is a history of the Church from the earliest times to Foxe’s own present, trying to prove with historical evidence that Protestantism 111



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rather than Catholicism is the rightful heir to the primitive Church of the apostles. Martyrdom is the glue that holds this thesis together, for according to Foxe it is always a mark of Antichrist to persecute and of Christians to be persecuted. When the Roman Church lost its way in the Middle Ages, true Christianity was left in the wilderness, to be persecuted by Rome like the early martyrs under the Roman Empire, until the triumphant accession of Queen Elizabeth, like Constantine’s over twelve centuries earlier, restored the Church to its proper ascendancy. The book was also lavishly illustrated, and its gruesome pictures, no less than its gruesome stories, helped to cement the image of Catholic perfidy in English minds for the better part of three centuries. Its stories also, quite literally, grew with the telling: there were three more editions in Foxe’s lifetime and countless editions later, which interpolated new materials on the Marian persecutions, and added later persecutions in places like France and Germany, to continue the narrative up to the present. The work begins with a series of prefaces that lay out the theological vision informing the individual narratives of persecution. It is a vision that bears the sharp impress of the dualism of spirit and flesh, inward and external, at the core of the Reformed tradition. In Foxe this dualism new-­models ecclesiastical history as the apocalyptic struggle between an “almost scarce visible” true Church and its false double, “shining in outward beauty”: between, that is, the little bands of medieval dissidents who resisted the seductions of the Whore and the violence of the Beast, and the rich, violent, and corrupt institutional Church of the papal antichrist. Foxe’s version of sacred history proved massively influential: one recognizes its distinctive images and antitheses in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and, a century later, Milton’s Paradise lost. Yet Foxe’s history, which traces the lineage of the true Church through the byways of sects and heresies, differs from that implicit in Jewel’s appeal to the Catholic Fathers of the first six centuries and differs yet more sharply from Hooker’s defense of the English Church’s unbroken descent from the Church of Christ visible across the ages.1 These divergent historiographies stand behind the controversies roiling the Elizabethan Church: as, for example, whether a surplice should be considered a filthy rag of popery or the traditional garb of Christian clergy. The same flesh/spirit dualism structuring Foxe’s historiography informs the contrasting portraits of true and false worship sketched in the final preface (“The fourth question”), which sets forth with the clarity of brilliant caricature the opposing visions of Christianity that divide Reformed from traditional religion: on the one hand, the “mere spiritual” religion of sola fide—­the belief that Christ died for you, and the peace, joy, and charity that spring from such assurance; on the other, the incarnational piety of ceremony and sacrament, of the corporal apprehended as conduit and manifestation of the holy. For Foxe, as for Milton, the former is “Spirit and Truth,” the latter mere “outward rites and specious forms” (Paradise lost 12.532–­33).2 The deeply traditionalist Rites of Durham, with which this volume concludes, depicts the Reformation in terms of the same two opposing visions, although from the rather different perspective of Catholic nostalgia. 1 See Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant thought, 1600–­1640 (Cambridge, 1995). 2 Although Foxe joined the anti-­vestarian protests of the 1560s, he remained aloof from the presbyterianism of the following decades, which, like Rome, made the external forms of ecclesiastical discipline and governance matters of divine necessity. His last work was dedicated to Whitgift.

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The excerpts from the text itself are two of the best known of the hundreds of martyrdom stories in Acts and monuments, both taken from Queen Mary’s reign. The first is the simultaneous execution of two of the most famous men in Tudor England: Nicholas Ridley, former bishop of London (who had performed Foxe’s ordination as deacon in 1550), and Hugh Latimer, former bishop of Worcester (with whom Foxe had briefly lived after resigning his Oxford fellowship in 1545), both elder statesmen of the English Reformation. The second is the execution of a group of ordinary women on the Isle of Guernsey. Between them, they give some sense of the very different types of martyrdom stories that Foxe told. But these two stories also share a peculiar ghastliness and inhumanity in the details of the executions themselves that made them among the most potent propaganda tools of the later English Reformation. [\ Sources: ODNB; Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas Freeman, Religion and the book in early modern England: the making of John Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” (Cambridge, 2011); John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments Online: www .johnfoxe.org; Christopher Highley and John King, eds., John Foxe and his world (Aldershot, 2002); John King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and early modern print culture (Cambridge, 2006); David Loades, ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 1997).

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Acts and monuments, the prefaces

{From the 1563 edition} . . . To the persecutors of God’s truth, commonly called Papists, another preface of the author.

If any other had had the doing and handling of this so tragical an history, and had seen the mad rage of this your furious cruelty in spilling the blood of such an innumerable sort of Christ’s holy saints and servants as in the volume of this history may appear by you . . . I know what he would have done therein: what vehemency of writing, what sharpness of speech and words . . . he would have used, what exclamations he would have made against you, how little he would have spared you. So I likewise, if I had been disposed to follow the order and example of their doing, what I might have done herein, let your own conjectures give you to understand, by that which you have deserved. And if you think you have not deserved so to be entreated as I have said (& worse than I have done), then see and behold, I beseech you, here in this story the pitiful slaughter of your butchery. Behold your own handiwork; consider the number almost out of number of so many silly & simple lambs of Christ, whose blood you have sought and sucked, whose lives you have vexed, whose bodies you have slain, racked and tormented, some also you have cast on dunghills to be devoured of fowls and dogs, without mercy, without measure, without all sense of humanity. See, I say and behold here present before your eyes the heaps of slain bodies, of so many men and women, both old, young, children, infants, new born, married, unmarried, wives, widows, maids, blind men, lame men, whole men, of all sorts, of all ages, of all degrees. Lords, knights, gentlemen, lawyers, merchants, archbishops, bishops, priests, ministers, deacons, laymen, artificers, yea whole households and whole kindreds together . . . whose wounds yet bleeding before the face of God cry vengeance. For whom have you spared? What country could scape your hands? See therefore, I say; read and behold your acts and facts. And when you have seen, then judge what you have deserved. . . . Peter preaching to the Jews & 114



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Pharisees after they had crucified Christ, cried to them: Delictorum pœnitentiam agite, and turned three thousand at one sermon. So the said Peter saith and writeth still to you, and we with Peter exhort you: Repent. . . . . . . How will you answer to the high Judge to come? Or whether will you flee from his judgment when he shall come? . . . With what face shall ye look upon the Lord, whose servants ye have slain? Or with what hearts will you be able to behold the bright faces of them, upon whom you have sit so proudly here, condemning them to consuming fire? . . . But they were heretics, you will say, and Lutherans, and therefore we burnt them, thinking thereby to do God good service, &c. Of such service-­doers Christ spake before, saying that such should come who, putting his servants to death, should think to do good service to God. And forsomuch as under the pretence of heresy you put them to death, concerning that matter there is and hath been enough said to you by learning, if either learned books or learned sermons could move you. But to this none answereth you better than the martyrs themselves, which in this book do tell you that in the same which you call heresy, they serve the living God. . . . And because you charge them so much with heresy, this would I know: by what learning do you define your heresy? . . . What heresy was in speaking against your transubstantiation—­ before Innocentius the Third did so enact it in his canon, an. 1215? . . . Faith only justifying, in Saint Paul’s time and in the beginning Church, was no heresy—­before of late days the Romish canons had made it heresy. Likewise, if it be heresy not to acknowledge the pope as supreme head of the Church, then Saint Paul was an heretic and a stark Lutheran. . . . Seeing therefore the Lord doth and must prevail, be counseled and exhorted in the Lord: leave off your resisting and yield to the truth, which your own boiling consciences (I am sure) doth inwardly witness and testify—­if, for your own willful standing up on your credit and reputation (as ye think), ye would come to the confession of the same. . . . For see you not daily more and more the contrary part (the Lord’s arm going with them) to grow so strong against you that not only there is no hope, but no possibility, for your obstinate error to stand against so manifest truth? First, learning & all best wits for the most part repugn against you. Most nations and kingdoms have forsaken you, as Germany, Polony, Boheme, Denmark, Suevia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Epirus, and a great part of Grecia. England, Ireland, Scotland; and France, God be glorified, well-­favoredly cometh on, you see, & other mo be like to follow. . . . Moreover, universities and schools in all quarters be set up against you, and youth so trained in the same, that you shall never be able to match them. To conclude, in countries, kingdoms, cities, towns, and Churches Reformed, your errors and superstitious vanities be so blotted out within the space of these forty years in the hearts of men, that their children and youth being so long nouseled in the sound doctrine of Christ, like as they never heard of your ridiculous trumpery, so they will never be brought to the same. And if nothing else will deface you, yet printing only will subvert your doings, do what ye can, which the Lord only hath set up for your desolation. . . . A declaration concerning the utility and profit of this history1

Seeing the world is so replenished with such an infinite multitude of books daily put forth everywhere, I shall seem (perhaps) to take a matter in hand superfluous and needless, at this present time to set out so great a volume as this is. . . . 1

{This preface is also in the 1570, 1576, and 1583 editions.}

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. . . But again on the other side, when I weighed with myself so great an history of so famous doings as this our age daily hath ministered unto us by the patient sufferings of the worthy martyrs, I thought it not to be neglected, that the precious monuments of so many matters and men, most meet to be recorded and registered in books, should lie buried by my fault in the pit of oblivion. . . . Yet above all other things, nothing did so much prick me forward and persuade me to the same as the diligent consideration and special regard of the common utility which every man plentifully may receive by this our history or martyrology, framed chiefly of the English Church. For if we be wont gladly to occupy ourselves in other chronicles that do only entreat upon matters of policy, and do (as a man world say) rejoice to behold therein the divers haps of worldly affairs . . . how much more then is it meet for us to accept and embrace the lives and doings . . . of most mild and constant martyrs, which may serve, not so much to delight the ear as to garnish the life . . . and to instruct the mind in all kind of Christian godliness. For first of all, they give a lively testimony that there is one above which ruleth all, contrary to the opinion of the godless and the whole nest of epicures. Like as one said of Harpalus in times past, that his doings did lively testify that there was no God, because, in suffering of him a great space together, God seemed to neglect all care of reasonable creatures; so contrariwise, in these men we have an assured and plain witness of God: in whose life appeared a certain force of divine nature and in their death a far greater signification, whiles in such sharpness of torments we beheld in them a strength so constant above man’s reach, a readiness to answer, patience in prison, godliness in forgiving, cheerfulness in suffering, besides the manifold sense and feeling of the Holy Ghost, which they learned in many of their comforts, and we by them. . . . And whereas for the most part we become more cunning by reading of profane stories, by this (if we list) we are made the better in our livings, and besides are animated unto like conflicts, if by God’s permission they shall happen hereafter, as men becoming wiser by their doctrine and more steadfast by their example. To be short, they declare to the world what true fortitude is, and a way to conquer, which standeth not in the power of man but in hope of the resurrection to come (and is now, I trust, at hand). . . . For though this world do judge preposterously of things, yet with God, the judge of all men, they are most reputed indeed, not that kill one another with a weapon . . . but they which being constantly killed in God’s cause do retain still an invincible spirit and stomach against the threats of tyrants and injuries of tormentors. These undoubtedly are the true conquerors of the world, at whose hand we learn true manhood, so many as fight under Christ and not under the world. . . . They continued in patient suffering when they had most wrong done unto them and when their very heart bloods did gush out of their bodies. And yet will not we forgive our poor brother the smallest wrong that may be, but are ready for every trifling offense to seek his destruction and cut his throat. They wishing well to all men did of their own accord forgive their persecutors; and therefore ought we, which after a sort are the posterity and children of martyrs, not to degenerate from their former steps, but being admonished by their examples, if we cannot express the same charity toward all men, to imitate it at least ways to our power and strength. Let us give no cause of offense to any man. And if any be given to us, let us overcome it with patience, forgiving and not revenging the same. . . . 116



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{From the 1570 edition2} To the true and faithful congregation of Christ’s universal Church, with all and singular the members thereof, wheresoever congregated or dispersed through the realm of England: A protestation or petition of the author, wishing to the same abundance of all peace and tranquility, with the speedy coming of Christ the Spouse to make an end of all mortal misery.

. . .

. . . As for me and my history, as my will was to profit all and displease none, so if skill in any part wanted to will, yet hath my purpose been simple—­and certs the cause no less urgent also which moved me to take this enterprise in hand. For first, to see the simple flock of Christ, especially the unlearned sort, so miserably abused, and all for ignorance of history, not knowing the course of times and true descent of the Church, it pitied me that part of diligence so long to have been unsupplied in this my country Church of England. Again, considering the multitude of chronicles and storywriters {i.e., historians}, both in England and out of England, of whom the most part have been either monks or clients to the see of Rome, it grieved me to behold how partially they handled their stories. . . . Whereby the vulgar sort, hearing and reading in their writings no other Church mentioned or magnified but only that Church which here flourished in this world in riches and jollity, were drawn also to the same persuasion, to think no other Church to have stand {sic} in all the earth but only the Church of Rome. . . . This partial dealing and corrupt handling of histories, when I considered, I thought with myself nothing more lacking in the Church than a full and a complete history, which . . . should open the plain truth of times lying long hid in obscure darkness of antiquity. . . . For if the things which be first (after the rule of Tertullian) are to be preferred before those that be latter, then is the reading of histories much necessary in the Church to know what went before and what followed after. . . . as by manifest experience we have to see in these desolate latter times of the Church, whenas the bishops of Rome under color of antiquity have turned truth into heresy and brought such new-­found devises . . . as in the former age of the Church were never heard of before, and all through ignorance of times and for lack of true history. For to say the truth, if times had been well searched or if they which wrote histories had without partiality gone upright between God and Baal, halting on neither side, it might well have been found the most part of all this Catholic corruption intruded into the Church by the bishops of Rome—­as transubstantiation, levation and adoration of the sacrament, auricular confession, forced vows of priests not to marry, veneration of images, private and satisfactory Masses . . . the usurped authority and summa potestas of the see of Rome, with all the rout of their ceremonies & weeds of superstition overgrowing now the Church—­a ll these (I say) to be new nothings lately coined in the mint of Rome, without any stamp of antiquity, as by reading of this present history shall sufficiently, I trust, appear. Which history therefore I have here taken in hand, that as other storywriters heretofore have employed their travail to magnify the Church of Rome, so in this history might appear to all Christian readers the image of both Churches, as well of the one as 2

{This preface is also in the 1576 and 1583 editions.}

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of the other: especially of the poor, oppressed, and persecuted Church of Christ. Which persecuted Church, though it hath been of long season trodden under foot by enemies, neglected in the world, nor regarded in histories, & almost scarce visible or known to worldly eyes, yet hath it been the true Church only of God, wherein he hath mightily wrought hitherto in preserving the same in all extreme distresses, continually stirring up from time to time faithful ministers, by whom always hath been kept some sparks of his true doctrine and religion. Now forsomuch as the true Church of God goeth not lightly alone, but is accompanied with some other church or chapel of the devil to deface and malign the same, necessary it is therefore the difference between them to be seen, and the descent of the right Church to be described from the Apostles’ time. Which hitherto in most part of histories hath been lacking, partly for fear, that men durst not, partly for ignorance, that men could not, discern rightly between the one and the other—­who beholding the Church of Rome to be so visible and glorious in the eyes of the world, so shining in outward beauty, to bear such a port, to carry such a train and multitude, and to stand in such high authority, supposed the same to be only the right Catholic mother. The other, because it was not so visibly known in the world, they thought therefore it could not be the true Church of Christ. Wherein they were far deceived. For although the right Church of God be not so invisible in the world that none can see it, yet neither is it so visible again that every worldly eye may perceive it. For like as is the nature of truth, so is the proper condition of the true Church: that commonly none seeth it but such only as be the members and partakers thereof.3 And therefore they which require that God’s holy Church should be evident and visible to the whole world seem to define the great synagogue of the world rather than the true spiritual Church of God. In Christ’s time, who would have thought but the congregation and councils of the Pharisees had been the right Church, and yet had Christ another Church in earth besides that, which, albeit it was not so manifest in the sight of the world, yet was it the only true Church in the sight of God. Of this Church meant Christ, speaking of the temple which he would raise again the third day. And yet after that the Lord was risen, he showed not himself to the world but only to his elect, which were but few. The same Church after that increased and multiplied mightily among the Jews, yet had not the Jews eyes to see God’s Church, but did persecute it till at length all their whole nation was destroyed. After the Jews, then came the heathen emperors of Rome, who, having the whole power of the world in their hands, did what the world could do to extinguish the name and Church of Christ. Whose violence continued the space of iii hundred years. All which while the true Church of Christ was not greatly in sight of the world, but rather was abhorred everywhere. And yet notwithstanding, the same small seely flock so despised in the world, the Lord highly regarded and mightily preserved. For although many then of the Christians did suffer death, yet was their death neither loss to them nor detriment to the Church, but the more they suffered, the more of their blood increased. In the time of these emperors, God raised up then in this realm of Britain divers worthy teachers and witnesses. . . . In whose time the doctrine of faith without men’s {This is not special pleading, given that the same holds in every field: only someone who knows mathematics can see whether a particular mathematical theorem is true.} 3

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traditions was sincerely preached. After their death and martyrdom, it pleased the Lord to provide a general quietness to his Church, whereby the number of his flock began more to increase. . . . All this while about the space of four hundred years, religion remained in Britain uncorrupt, and the word of Christ truly preached, till about the coming of Austin4 and of his companions from Rome, many of the said Britain preachers were slain by the Saxons. After that began Christian faith to enter and spring among the Saxons after a certain Romish sort, yet notwithstanding somewhat more tolerably than were the times which after followed, through the diligent industry of some godly teachers which then lived amongst them. . . . who though they erred in some few things, yet neither grossly nor so greatly to be complained of in respect of the abuses that followed. . . . During the which meantime, although the bishops of Rome were had here in some reverence with the clergy, yet had they nothing as yet to do in setting laws touching matters of the Church of England; but that only appertained to the kings and governors of the land. . . . And thus the Church of Rome, albeit it began then to decline apace from God, yet during all this while it remained hitherto in some reasonable order, till at length after that the said bishops began to shoot up in the world through the liberality of good princes. . . . Then riches begot ambition, ambition destroyed religion, so that all came to ruin. . . . And yet in this time also, through God’s providence, the Church lacked not some of better knowledge & judgment to weigh with the darkness of those days. . . . And thus hitherto stood the condition of the true Church of Christ, albeit not without some repugnance and difficulty, yet in some mean state of the truth and verity, till time of Pope Hildebrand, called Gregory VII, which was near about the year 1080, and of Pope Innocentius III in the year 1215, by whom all together was turned upside down, all order broken, discipline dissolved, true doctrine defaced, Christian faith extinguished. Instead whereof was set up preaching of men’s decrees, dreams, and idle traditions. And whereas before truth was free to be disputed amongst learned men, now liberty was turned into law, argument into authority. Whatsoever the bishop of Rome denounced, that stood for an oracle of all men to be received without opposition or contradiction; what soever was contrary, ipso facto it was heresy, to be punished with faggot and flaming fire. . . . And thus have these hitherto continued, or reigned rather, in the Church the space now of four hundred years and odd; during which space, the true Church of Christ, although it durst not openly appear in the face of the world, oppressed by tyranny, yet neither was it so invisible or unknown but by the providence of the Lord some remnant always remained from time to time. . . . 5 . . . Let us now proceed further as we began, deducing this descent of the Church unto the 1501 year. In which year the Lord began to show in the parts of Germany wonderful tokens and bloody marks of his Passion. . . . By the which tokens, almighty God (no {St. Augustine of Canterbury, who arrived in Britain in 597} {Among this late medieval remnant, Foxe names Joachim of Fiore, the Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Lollards, Marsilius of Padua, Robert Groseteste, William of Ockham, Buridan, Dante, Tauler, Petrarch, Nicholas Orem, Michael Cesena, Matthew Paris, Gower, Chaucer, Valla, and Hus.} 4 5

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doubt) presignified what grievous afflictions and bloody persecutions should then begin to ensue upon his Church for his Gospel’s sake, according as in this history is described. Wherein is to be seen what Christian blood hath been spilt . . . what torments devised, what treachery used against the poor flock and Church of Christ, in such sort as since Christ’s time greater hath not been seen. And now by revolution of years, we are come from that time of 1501 to the year now present, 1570. In which the full seventy years of the Babylonical captivity draweth now well to an end, if we count from the first appearing of these bloody marks above mentioned. Or if we reckon from the beginning of Luther and his persecution, then lacketh yet xvi years. Now what the Lord will do with this wicked world or what rest he will give to his Church after these long sorrows, he is our Father in heaven; his will be done in earth as seemeth best to his divine majesty. In the meantime let us, for our parts, with all patient obedience . . . glorify his holy name and edify one another with all humility. And if there cannot be an end of our disputing and contending one against another, yet let there be a moderation in our affections. And forsomuch as it is the good will of our God that Satan thus should be let loose among us for a short time, yet let us strive in the mean while what we can to amend the malice of the time with mutual humanity. They that be in error, let them not disdain to learn; they which have greater talents of knowledge committed, instruct in simplicity them that be simple. No man liveth in that commonwealth where nothing is amiss. But yet because God hath so placed us Englishmen here in one commonwealth, also in one Church, as in one ship together, let us not mangle or divide the ship, which being divided perisheth; but every man serve in his order with diligence, wherein he is called. . . . No storm so dangerous to a ship on the sea as is discord and disorder in a weal public. What countries and nations . . . what cities, towns, and houses discord hath dissolved, in stories is manifest; I need not spend time in rehearsing examples. The Lord of peace, who hath power both of land and sea, reach forth his merciful hand to help them up that sink, to keep them up that stand, to still these winds and surging seas of discord and contention amongst us: that we professing one Christ, may in one unity of doctrine gather ourselves into one ark of the true Church together, where we continuing steadfast in faith may at the last luckily be conducted to the joyful port of our desired landing place by his heavenly grace. To whom both in heaven and in earth be all power and glory, with his Father and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen. . . . To all the professed friends and followers of the pope’s proceedings: four questions propounded6

. . . The fourth question

. . . Whether the religion of Christ be mere spiritual, or else corporal? If ye affirm it to be corporal, as was the old religion of the Jews, consisting in outward rites, sacrifices, and ceremonies of the Law, then show, if ye can, what any one outward action or observation 6

{This preface is also in the 1576 and 1583 editions.}

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is required in Christian religion by the Scripture as necessary in a Christian man for remission of sins & salvation, save only the two sacramental ceremonies of outward baptism and of the Lord’s Supper? Howbeit neither these also as they are corporal: that is to say, neither the outward action of the one nor of the other conferreth remission of sins nor salvation, but only are visible shows of invisible and spiritual benefits. And furthermore, if our God whom we serve be spiritual, how can his religion and service be corporal, as we are taught by the mouth of our Savior, saying, God is a spirit and therefore they that worship him, must worship in spirit and verity, &c. Joh. 4. Now if ye grant (as ye must needs) this our Christian religion to be spiritual, and not a corporal religion, then show, if ye can, any one point of all these things which ye strive7 for so much with us, to be spiritual—­but {rather, they are} altogether corporal and extern matters and ceremonial observations, nothing conducing to any spiritual purpose: as your outward succession of bishops, garments, vestures, gestures, colors, choice of meats, . . . numbering of beads, gilding and worshipping images . . . fasting in Lent, keeping Ember days, hearing Mass and divine service, seeing and adoring the body in form of bread, receiving holy water and holy bread, creeping the cross, carrying palms, taking ashes, bearing candles, pilgrimage-­going, censing, kneeling, knocking, altars, superaltars, candlesticks, pardons. . . . To imagine a body where they see no body (and though he were their present to be seen, yet the outward seeing and touching of him—­of itself, without faith—­conduceth no more than it did to the Jews). At Rogation days: to carry banners, to follow the cross, to walk about the fields. After Pentecost: to go about with Corpus Christi play. . . . In sickness: to be anealed, to take his rights. After his death: to have funerals and obits said for him, and to be rung for at his funeral. . . . All which things above recited, as they contain the whole summary and effect of all the pope’s Catholic religion, so are they all be corporal exercises, consisting in the extern operation of man. Which if they can make a perfect right catholic Christian, then may it be said that men may be made perfect Christians by flesh and blood, without any inward working of faith or of the Holy Ghost. For what is in all these but that flesh and blood of his strength is able to accomplish, though no inward strength or motion of the Holy Ghost did work. But now the order of our religion and way of salvation consisteth not in such corporal or outward things as these, but in other more higher and more spiritual gifts, which far exceed the capacity of flesh and blood: of the which gifts, the chiefest and only mean cause that saveth man and remitteth sins is his faith in Christ. Which faith I thus define: for a man to believe by the blood-­shedding of Jesus the Son of God, his sins to be forgiven, God’s wrath to be pacified, and himself to be justified perfectly from all accusations that can be laid unto him, &c. . . . Moreover besides this faith, many other things are incident also to the doctrine of our salvation, albeit as no causes thereof, but either as sacraments and seals of faith, or as declarations thereof, or else as fruits and effects following the same. So baptism and the Supper of the Lord be as testimonies and proofs that by our faith only in Christ we are justified, that as our bodies are washed by water and our life nourished by bread and wine, 7

{Stain, corrected to “strive” in 1583}

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so by the blood of Christ, our sins be purged and the hunger of our souls relieved by the death of his body. Upon the same faith riseth also outward profession by mouth as a declaration thereof. Other things also, as fruits and effects, do follow after faith: as peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, invocation, patience, charity, mercy, judgment, and sanctification. For God, for our faith in Christ his Son, therefore giveth into our hearts his holy Spirit of comfort, of peace, and sanctification, whereby man’s heart is moved to a godly disposition to fear God, to seek him, to call upon him, to trust unto him, to stick to him in all adversities and persecutions; to love him, and for his sake, also to love our brethren, to have mercy and compassion upon them, to visit them if they be in prison, to break bread to them if they be hungry, and if they be burdened to ease them, to clothe them if they be naked, and to harbor them if they be houseless (Mat. 25), with such other spiritual exercises of piety and sanctification as these. Which therefore I call spiritual, because they proceed of the Holy Spirit and Law of God, which is spiritual. And thus have ye a Catholic Christian defined, first after the rules of Rome, and also after the rule of the Gospel. Now confer their antitheta together, & see whether of these is the truer Christian: the ceremonial man after the Church of Rome or the spiritual man with his faith and other spiritual fruits of piety following after the same. And if ye say that ye mixt them both together, spiritual things with your corporal ceremonies, to that I answer again that, as touching the end of remission of sins and salvation, they ought in no case to be joined together, because the mean cause of all our salvation and remission is only spiritual, and consisteth in faith, and in no other. And therefore upon the same cause I come to my question again as I began: to ask whether the religion of Christ be a mere spiritual religion; and whether in the religion of Rome, as it is now, is any thing but only mere corporal things required to make a Catholic man. And thus I leave you to your answer. [\ T ext:8 The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes of thynges passed in euery kynges tyme in this realme, especially in the Church of England principally to be noted: with a full discourse of such persecutions, horrible troubles, the sufferyng of martyrs, and other thinges incident, touchyng aswel the sayd Church of England as also Scotland, and all other foreine nations, from the primitiue tyme till the reigne of K. Henry VIII (London, 1570).

8

The bibliographic information for the 1563 edition is given at the end of the following reading.

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Acts and monuments

1563

{The martyrdoms of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer} The behavior of Doctor Ridley at his supper the night before his suffering

The night before he suffered, his beard was washed and his legs, and as he sat at supper the same night at Mr. Irish’s (who was his keeper) he bade his hosts, and the rest at the board to his marriage. For (saith he) tomorrow I must be married, and so showed himself to be as merry as ever he was at any time before. And wishing his sister at his marriage, he asked his brother, sitting at the table, whether she could find in her heart to be there or no. And he answered, yea, I dare say with all her heart; at which word, he said he was glad to hear of her so much therein. So at this talk Mistress Irish wept. But Master Ridley comforted her, and said: O, Mistress Irish, you love me not now, I see well enough. For in that you weep, it doth appear you will not be at my marriage, neither is content therewith. Indeed you be not so much my friend as I thought you had been. But quiet yourself. Though my breakfast shall be something sharp and painful, yet I am sure my supper shall be more pleasant and sweet, etc. When they arose from the table, his brother offered him to watch all night with him. But he said, no, no, that you shall not. For I mind (God willing) to go to bed, and to sleep as quietly tonight as ever I did in my life. So his brother departed, exhorting him to be of good cheer and to take his cross quietly, for the reward was great, etc. The behavior of Doctor Ridley and Master Latimer at the time of their death

Upon the north side of the town, in the ditch over against Bailey {i.e., Balliol} College the place of execution was appointed. And for fear of any tumult that might arise to let {i.e., prevent} the burning of them, my Lord Williams was commanded by the Queen’s letters, and the householders of the city, to be there assistant, sufficiently appointed. And when everything was in a readiness, the prisoners were brought forth by the mayor and bailiffs. Master Ridley in a fair black gown, such as he was wont to wear when he was bishop, with 123



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a tippet of sables about his neck, nothing undressed. Master Latimer in a poor Bristol frieze1 frock, all worn, with his buttoned cap and a kerchief on his head, all ready to the fire, a new long shroud hanging over his hose down to his feet; which at the first sight stirred men’s hearts to rue upon them, beholding on the one side the honor they sometime had; on the other, the calamity whereunto they were then descended. Master Doctor Ridley, as he passed towards Bocardo {i.e., Oxford’s prison}, he looked up where Master Cranmer did lie, and belike he would have seen him at the glass window, to have spoken unto him. But then Master Cranmer was busy with Friar Soto and his fellows, disputing together, so that he could not see him through that occasion. Then Master Ridley, looking back, espied Master Latimer coming after. Unto whom he said: Oh, be ye there? Yea (said Master Latimer), have after,2 as fast as I can follow. So he following a pretty way off, at length they came both to the stake, one after the other, where first Doctor Ridley entering the place, marvelous earnestly holding up both his hands, looked towards heaven, etc., and with a glimpse of his eye a side espying Master Latimer, with a wondrous cheerful look ran unto him, and embraced and kissed him, and, as they that stood near reported, comforted him, saying: be of good heart brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it. With that, went he to the stake, kneeled down by it, kissed it, most effectuously {i.e., fervently} prayed; and behind him Master Latimer kneeled, as earnestly calling upon God as he. After they arose, the one talked with the other a little while, till they which were appointed to see the execution removed themselves out of the sun. What they said, I can learn of no man. Then Doctor Smith began his sermon to them upon this text of Saint Paul in the 8th Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians: Si corpus meum tradam igni, charitatem autem non habeo, nihil inde vtilitatis capio. Which is thus much in English: If I yield my body to the fire to be burnt, and have not charity, I shall gain nothing thereby. Wherein he alleged that the goodness of the cause, nor the holiness of the person, should not be judged by the order of the death, which he confirmed by the examples of Judas and of a woman in Oxford that of late hanged herself, for that then they and such-­like (as he or two or three other recited) might be adjudged righteous which desperately sundered their lives from their bodies, as he feared that those men that stood before him would do. But he cried still to the people to beware of them, for they were heretics and died out of the Church. And on the other side, he declared their diversity in opinions: as Lutherans, Oecolampadians, Zwinglians, of which sect they were, and that was the worst. But the old Church of Christ and the Catholic faith believed far otherwise. At which place they lifted up both hands and their eyes to heaven, as it were calling God to witness of the truth. The which countenance they made in many other places of his sermon whereas they thought he spoke amiss. He ended with a very short exhortation to them, to recant and come home again to the Church, and save their lives and souls, which else were condemned. His sermon was scant in all a quarter of an hour. Doctor Ridley said unto Master Latimer: will you begin to answer the sermon, or shall I? Master Latimer said: begin you first, I pray you. I will, said Master Ridley. Then the wicked sermon being ended, Doctor Ridley and Master Latimer kneeled down upon 1 2

{A coarse woolen cloth} {An untranslatable idiom; the sense is “I’m game” (also untranslatable)}

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their knees towards my lord Williams of Tame (the vice-­chancellor of Oxford) and diverse other commissioners appointed for that purpose, which sat upon a form {i.e., a bench} there by. Unto whom Master Ridley said: I beseech you, mylord, even for Christ’s sake, that I may speak but two or three words. And whilst my Lord bent his head to the mayor and vice-­chancellor, as it appeared, to know whether he might give him leave to speak, the bailiffs and Doctor Marshall, vice-­chancellor, ran hastily unto him, and with their hands stopped his mouth, and said: Master Ridley, if you will revoke your erroneous opinions and recant the same, you shall not only have liberty so to do, but also the benefit of a subject, that is, have your life. Not otherwise? said Master Ridley. No, quod Doctor Marshall. Therefore if you will not do so, then there is no remedy but you must suffer for your deserts. Well (quod Master Ridley) so long as the breath is in my body, I will never deny my Lord God and his known truth; God’s will be done in me. And with that he rose up, and said with a loud voice: well, then, I commit our cause to almighty God, which shall indifferently {i.e., impartially} judge all. To whose saying, Master Latimer added his old posy: well, there is nothing hid but it shall be opened. And he said he could answer Smith well enough, if he might be suffered. Incontinently {i.e., at once} they were commanded to make them ready, which they with all meekness obeyed. Master Ridley took his gown and his tippet and gave it to his brother-­in-­law Master Shepside, who all his time of imprisonment, although he might not be suffered to come to him, lay there at his own charges to provide him necessaries, which from time to time he sent him by the sergeant that kept him. Some other of his apparel that was little worth, he gave away; other the bailiffs took. He gave away besides diverse other small things to gentlemen standing by, and diverse of them pitifully weeping: as to Sir Henry Lee he gave a new groat, and to diverse of my Lord Williams’ gentlemen some napkins, some nutmegs, and raisins of ginger,3 his dial {i.e., watch}, and such other things as he had about him, to every one that stood next {to} him. Some plucked the points of his hose. Happy was he that might get any rag of him. Master Latimer gave nothing, but very quietly suffered his keeper to pull off his hose and his other array, which to look unto was very simple. And being stripped into his shroud, he seemed as comely a person, to them that were there present, as one should lightly see. And whereas in his clothes he appeared a withered and crooked, silly {i.e., frail, pitiful} old man, he now stood bolt upright, as comely a father {i.e., a venerable elder} as one might lightly behold. Then Master Ridley, standing as yet in his truss,4 said to his brother: it were best for me to go in my truss still. No (quod his brother), it will put you to more pain, and the truss will do a poor man good. Whereunto Master Ridley said: be it, in the name of God, and so unlaced himself. Then, being in his shirt, he stood upon the aforesaid stone, and held up his hands, and said: O, heavenly Father, I give unto thee most hearty thanks for that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee, even unto death. I beseech thee, Lord God, take mercy upon this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies. Then the smith took a chain of iron, and brought the same about both Doctor Ridley and Master Latimer’s middles. And as he was knocking in a staple, Doctor Ridley took

3 4

{I.e., racines, pieces of ginger root (OED)} {“A close-­fitting body-­garment or jacket” (OED)}

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the chain in his hand and shaked the same, for it did gird in his belly, and looking aside to the smith, said: good fellow, knock it in hard, for the flesh will have his course.  Then his brother did bring him gunpowder in a bag, and would have tied the same about his neck.5 Master Ridley asked what it was. His brother said, gunpowder. Then said he, I take it to be sent of God; therefore I will receive it as sent of him. And have you any, said he, for my brother, meaning Master Latimer? Yea, sir, that I have (quod his brother). Then give it unto him, said he, betime, lest you come too late. So his brother went and carried of the same gunpowder unto Master Latimer. The meantime, Doctor Ridley spoke unto my Lord Williams, and said: my Lord, I must be a suitor unto your lordship in the behalf of diverse poor men, and especially in the cause of my poor sister. I have made a supplication to the Queen’s majesty in their behalves. I beseech your Lordship, for Christ’s sake, to be a mean to her Grace for them. My brother here hath the supplication, and will resort to your lordship to certify you hereof. There is nothing in all the world that troubleth my conscience (I praise God), this only excepted. While I was in the see {i.e., diocese} of London, diverse poor men took leases of me, and agreed with me for the same. Now, I hear say, the bishop that now occupieth the same room will not allow my grants unto them made, but, contrary unto all law and conscience, hath taken from them their livings and will not suffer them to enjoy the same. I beseech you, my Lord, be a mean {i.e., intercessor} for them; you shall do a good deed, and God will reward you. Then brought they a faggot kindled with fire and laid the same down at Doctor Ridley’s feet. And when he saw the fire flaming up toward him, he cried with a wonderful loud voice: in manus tuas, Domine commendo spiritum meum; Domine recipe spiritum meum;6 and after repeated this latter part often in English: Lord, Lord, receive my spirit. Master Latimer crying as vehemently on the other side: O, Father of heaven, receive my soul, who received the flame—­a s it were, embracing it. After, as he had stroked his face with his hands, and (as it were) bathed them a little in the fire, soon died, as it appeared, with very little pain or none. But Master Ridley, by reason of the evil making of the fire unto him—­because the wooden faggots were laid about the gorse and over-­ high built—­the fire burned first beneath, being kept down by the wood. Which, when he felt, he desired them for Christ’s sake to let the fire come unto him. Which, when his brother-­in-­law heard, but not well understood, intending to rid him out of his pain (for the which cause he gave attendance), as one in such sorrow not well-­advised what he did, heaped fagots upon him {so} that he clean covered him, which made the fire more vehement beneath, that it burned clean all his nether parts before it once touched the upper, and that made him leap up and down under the faggots and often desire them to let the fire come unto him, saying: I cannot burn. Which indeed appeared well; for after 5 {This was intended as a merciful provision, hastening what would otherwise be a slow and painful death.} 6 {“Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit, Lord receive my spirit.” The first part was spoken by Christ at his crucifixion, Luke 23:46; the second part was spoken by St. Stephen at his martyrdom, Acts 7:59. Note that the famous words of Latimer to Ridley at their execution—­“Be of good comfort Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out”—­were not recorded in the 1563 edition of Foxe. They first appear in the 1570 edition, presumably because in the interim someone told Foxe about Latimer’s final words to Ridley.}

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his legs were consumed, by reason of his struggling through the pain (whereof he had no release, but only his contentation in God), he showed that side towards us clean, shirt and all untouched with the flame.7 Yet in all this torment he forgot not to call unto God still, having in his mouth: Lord, have mercy upon me, intermeddling this cry, let the fire come unto me, I cannot burn. In which pains he labored till one of the standers-­by, with his bill {a long-­handled weapon}, pulled off the faggots above, and where he espied the fire flame up, he wrested himself unto that side. And when the flame touched the gunpowder, he was seen stir no more, but espied burning on the other side by {i.e., next to} Master Latimer. Which, some said, happened by reason that the chain loosed. Others said that he fell over the chain by reason of the poise {i.e., weight} of his body and the weakness of the nether limbs. Some say that, before he was like to fall from the stake, he desired them to hold him to it with their bills. Howsoever it was, surely it moved hundreds to tears in beholding the horrible sight. For I think there was none that had not clean exiled all humanity and mercy, which would not have lamented to behold the fury of the fire so rage upon their bodies. Signs there were of sorrow on every side. Some took it grievously to see their deaths, whose lives they held full dear. Some pitied their persons, that thought their souls had no need thereof. His brother moved many men, seeing his miserable case: seeing, I say, him compelled to such infelicity that he thought then to do him best service when he hastened his end. Some cried out of {i.e., against} fortune to see his endeavor, who most dearly loved him and sought his release, turn to his greater vexation and increase of pain. But whoso considered their preferments in time past, the places of honor that they sometime occupied in this commonwealth, the favor they were in with their princes, and the opinion of learning they had in the university {where} they studied, could not choose but sorrow with tears to see so great dignity, honor, and estimation, so necessary members sometime accounted, so many godly virtues, the study of so many years, such excellent learning to be put into the fire and consumed in one moment. Well, dead they are, and the reward of this world they have already. ‡

The martyrdom of three woman and an infant at Guernsey Among all and singular histories touched in this book before, as there be many pitiful, diverse lamentable, some horrible and tragic; so is there none almost to be compared to this cruel and furious fact of the homicidal papists done in the Isle of Guernsey, as in this story here following is comprehended. The case is thus. The 27th day of May, anno 1556 in the Isle of Guernsey, which is a member of England, in a place there called St. Peter Port, was a naughty woman named Vincent {sic} Gosset, who, being evilly disposed, went (the said day) to the house of one Collas Conron, of the town aforesaid, at about ten of the clock at night, and took the key of the said house (which was under the door). And thereby entering in, she went into a chamber toward the street, where she, espying a cup of silver within a cupboard, took it 7 {The “us” here is an artifact of the process by which Foxe compiled and reedited the testimony of informants; Foxe himself was not present at the execution, nor at most of the executions he described, but the rhetorical force of the narration is to place the reader at the scene.}

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away, and so conveyed herself out of the house again. Now after this evil act thus done, the naughty woman (whether by counsel or by what occasion I cannot tell) brought the said cup to one Paratine Massey, a very honest woman dwelling in the said town, and desired to lend her six shillings and five pence the same. Now when the said Paratine understood her suit, she suspected the cup to be stolen and therefore did refuse to take it. Nevertheless, understanding (as it doth appear) the rightful owner thereof, bethinking with herself what to do, in the end she took it to deliver again the next morning to him to whom it did appertain, and gave her for her necessity six shillings. In the meantime the said Collas Conron missed his cup, whereupon immediately he touched {i.e., accused} the said Vincent Gosset for the deed; and upon due examination thereof, she confessed the truth, desiring to have one to go with her, and she would fetch the said cup unto him again. Then was there sent with her one Collas le Lontre: unto whom the said good Paratine delivered the cup right gladly, and so was it brought unto the said Conron, without knowledge of the king’s officers,8 again. After which things so done, the day following, the said officers were informed of the premises {i.e., the foregoing} by one Nicholas Carye, constable of St. Peter Port; which, understanding a truth thereof, assembled justices to enquire of that and other evil deeds done by the said Vincent Gosset at times before. In which sitting, the said constable did relate to the justices that he found a certain vessel of tin in the house where the said Paratine dwelled with her mother Katherine Cawches and her sister Guillemin Gilbert, which vessel, he said, had no mark; and that also there was an eared dish of tin, which mark was put out and therefore thought it the more suspicious. Which report, when the justices heard, they immediately committed the said Katherine Cawches, Paratine Massey, and Guillemin Gilbert to prison in the castle, and so took an inventory of all such their goods and movables as they could find within the said town of St. Peter Port. And the said women, seeing this injury done to them, after a time made supplication to the justices to have justice administer{ed} unto them: videlicet {i.e., that is to say}, if they have offended the law, then to let them have the law; if not, beseeching to grant them the benefit of subjects, etc. Which supplication put up, thereupon were they appointed to come to their answer the 5th day of June in the year aforesaid. Upon which day, after strait examining of the matter, and the honest answering of the cause by the said good women, at the last they submitted them to the report of their honest neighbors that they were no thieves nor evilly-­disposed persons, but lived truly and honestly as became Christian women to do, the false and untrue report of their accusers notwithstanding. So the cause being thus debated, after the inquiry made by the king’s officers, they were found by their said neighbors not guilty of that they were charged with but had lived always as honest women among them, saving to the commandments of holy Church they had not been obedient, etc. Now when the justices heard that, they sent those prisoners to the castle again—­whereas the said Vincent Gousset, being plainly attainted of felony and for the same condemned, was notwithstanding (after she was whipped and her ear nailed to the pillory) banished out of the Isle, and had the liberty of her body without further punishment. So cruel adversaries were they to the truth, that theft was more bolstered and maintained by them than those that professed the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ or {Queen Mary’s husband Philip, although usually thought of as Philip II of Spain, was also king of England.} 8

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seemed to bear any good will that way. But to return to our matter again: the first day of July next, following the examining of the said good women, the lieutenant, bailiff, and jurats {i.e., aldermen} of the said place wrote their letters under their signs to the dean and curates of the said Isle, of the information that was given of them, and of the desire they had they should proceed with them,9 the tenor of which letter hereafter followeth. A letter sent from the lieutenant, bailiff and jurats of Saint Peter Port to the dean and curates of the Isle of Guernsey Master Dean, and justices in your court and jurisdiction, after all amiable recommendations,10 pleaseth you to know that we are informed by the deposition of certain honest men, passed before us in manner of an inquiry, in the which inquiry Katherine Cawches and her two daughters have submitted themselves for cause of crime. Wherefore we have been informed that they have been disobedient to the commandments and ordinances of the Church in condemning and forsaking the mass and the ordinances of the same, against the will and commandment of our sovereign lord the king and the queen. Wherefore we send you the said matter, for as much as the matter is spiritual, because that they may proceed after your good discretions and as briefly as you can possibly, and also that it pertain to your office, recommending you to God, the which give you grace to do that pertaineth to the right and justice. Written the first day of the month of July, the year of our Lord 1556. After which letter, the said women were commanded to come before the said justices again; and there, they present, were enquired of their faith in the ordinances of the popish Church; which before the justices and the assistance {i.e., bystanders} made answer that they would obey and keep the ordinances of the king and queen and the commandments of the Church, notwithstanding that they had said and done in the time of King Edward the Sixth in showing obedience to his ordinances and commandments. After which answer they were sent again to prison until they had an answer of their letter from the dean and his justice. During which time the dean and curates did make an information {i.e., accusation} and inquiry of the said women, and did deliver it to the bailiff and jurats, in condemning and reputing them for heretics—­the women never hearing of any information, neither were they ever examined at any time before of their faith and religion in the presence of the dean and curates aforesaid. Whereupon, when the said bailiff and jurats did know that the said dean and curates had not examined the said women of their faith, {they} would not sit in judgment on that day, but ordained that the said women should come first before the said dean and curates to be examined of their faith. And so the officers, at the commandment of the said justices, did fetch and present them before the said dean and curates. The which thing was accomplished and done, and they examined separately, and then incontinently after were sent again to prison. Then the 9th day of the said month of July in the year aforesaid, after the examination above specified, before Elyer Gosselin, bailiff, in the presence of Thomas Devick, 9

{I.e., of the lay authorities’ desire that the ecclesiastical authorities should take over the case} {This is just a florid salutation.}

10

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Piers Martine, Nicolas Cary, John Blondel, Nicolas De Lysle, John Leverchaunt, John Le Febvre, Piers Bonnamy, Nicolas Martine, John De la March, jurats; Sir Jacks Amys, dean, and the curates did deliver before justice, under the seal of the dean and under the signs of the curates, a certain act and sentence that Katherine Cawches and her two daughters are found heretics, and as such they repute them, and hath delivered them to justice to do execution according to the sentence, of the which the tenor followeth. Anno domini millesimo, quingentesimo quinquagesimo sexto, die vero xiii mensis Iulii apud ecclesiam divi Petri in portu maris insula promotor. per nos dominum decanum inquisitio facta fuit de fide catholica, et super sacramenta ecclesiastica, videlicet super sacramentm Baptismi, confirmationis, poenitentiae, ordinis, Matrimonii, Eucharistiae, et extremae unctionis, nec non super ceremonias ecclesiae, ac de veneratione et honoratione beatae Mariae et sanctorum, de Missa et eius efficacia, et de ceremoniis ecclesiae, videlicet Katherinae Cawches eiusdemque duarum filiarum Guilleminae et Parotinae nuncupatarum, et harum tam coniunctim quam separatim et via iuris. Et quamvis pluries ad veniam petendam, et ad delicta sua cognoscenda hortavimus et invitamus, quae quidem praedicta omnino negaverunt et negant, quod locutae fuerunt aliquod verbum inane, inhonestum, ociosum, et vanum contra fidem catholicam, sacramenta ecclesiae et alias ceremonias ecclesiae. Quapropter auditis negationibus praedictarum, et attestationibus et depositionibus testium per nos visis, consideratis, et bene ponderatis, et per opiniones Curatorum et vicariorum ibidem assistentium super easdem Katherinam et Parotinam, nec non et Guilleminam crimine haereticas invenimus et reputamus. Quapropter coram vobis domino Ballivo omnino remittimus ut antea remissimus. Thomas le Coll de mandato, Iohn Alles, Guilielmus Panquet, Petrus Tardise, et Iohannes Manatiel.11 When this was done, commandment was given to the king’s officers to go to the castle to fetch the said women to hear sentences against them in the presence aforesaid. And they, appearing before them, said in the ears of all the audience that they would see their accusers and know them that had deposed against them, because they might make answers to

11 {“In the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and fifty six, being the thirteenth day of the month of July, at the church of St. Peter Port, on the sea island [of Guernsey] an inquisition was made by our promoter, appointed by us, the Lord Dean, concerning the Catholic faith and sacraments of the Church—­ that is to say concerning the sacrament of baptism, confirmation, penance, ordination, matrimony, the eucharist, and extreme unction, as well as concerning church ceremonies, and the veneration and honor due to the blessed Mary and the saints; the Mass and its efficacy; and the ceremonies of the Church—­namely, of Katherine Cawches and her two daughters, named Guillemin and Parotine, both jointly and separately, and by way of law. And although a number of times we invited and exhorted them to confess their fault and seek pardon, they denied all knowledge of the above, and denied that they had spoken a single empty, dishonest, idle, or vain word against the Catholic faith, the sacraments of the Church and other Church ceremonies. Therefore, having heard these denials; and having seen, considered, and carefully weighed the testimony and depositions of witnesses; and having heard the opinions of the curates and vicarsour assessors, we find and judge Katherine, Parotine, and also Guillemin guilty of the crime of heresy. Therefore, Sir Bailiff, we send them to you, as we have done before. Thomas le Coll (by order), John Alles, William Panquet, Peter Tardise, and John Manatiel.” (The editors would like to thank Andy Kelly of UCLA for his assistance with the ecclesiastical Latin.)}

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the sayings and personages and to have their libel accordingly.12 For they knew not to have offended the majesties of the king and queen nor of the Church, but entirely would obey, observe, and keep the ordinances of the king and queen and of the Church as all good and true subjects are bound to do. And for any breach of the king and queen’s laws that they had done, they required justice. Nevertheless, {despite} all their reasons and allegations, the said poor women were condemned, and adjudged to be burnt until they were consumed into ashes, according to a sentence given by Elyer Gosselin, bailiff, of the which sentence the tenor hereafter followeth. The effect of the sentence in English

The 17th day of the month of July 1556. Elyer Gosselin, bailiff, in the presence of Thomas Devick, Piers Martine, Nicholas Cary John Blondel, Nicholas Delishe, John Le Marchaunt, John Le Feaver, Piers Bonamy Nicholas Martine and John Delamarch, jurats, Katherine Cawches, Paratine Massey, and Guillemin Gilbert (the said Paratine and Guillemin, daughters to the said Katherine) are all condemned and judged this day to be burned until they be consumed to ashes in the place accustomed, with the confiscation of all their goods, movables, and heritages to be in the hands of the king and queen’s majesties, according and after the effect of a sentence delivered in justice, by Master Dean and the curates the 14th day of the month of July in the year aforesaid in the which they have been proved heretics. After which sentence pronounced, the said women did appeal unto the King and Queen and their honorable counsel, saying that against reason and right they were condemned, and for that cause they made their appeal; notwithstanding, they could not be heard, but were delivered by the said bailiff to the king and queen’s officers to see the execution done on them, according to the said sentence. At the time that the said good poor women were burning in the fiery flames about them, the womb of the said Paratine, she being great with child, broke with the heat of the said fire, and thereby issued forth of her body a goodly man child, which was taken up and handled by the cruel tormentors, and after they threw most spitefully the same child into the fire again, where it was burned with the silly mother, grandmother, and aunt, very pitifully to behold. O, cruel papists, that ever such a foul murder upon earth should be committed. The Lord himself will revenge it, no doubt, to your perpetual shame, although in this world neither the complaint was greatly regarded nor the cause condignly pondered nor the cruel murder as yet revenged, etc. Thus, these three good and godly women, with the poor infant, ended their lives, unjustly condemned and cruelly murdered by the bloody, furious, and fiery papists. And forsomuch, peradventure, as the story, for the horrible strangeness of the fact, will be hardly believed of some, but rather thought to be forged or else amplified of us, therefore, for the 12 {They ask to know the names of those who deposed against them—­a right mandated by ecclesiastical law—because they needed this information to draw up their response (libel) to the charges: e.g., a witness might turn out to be a local drunk, a personal enemy, or a known troublemaker.}

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discharge of our credit herein, be it notified and known to the readers hereof that here is nothing in this present history set forth otherwise than hath been faithfully related; yea, and penned of the Guernsey men themselves, and the brother to the said two sisters, who, being a party also of the same tragedy, with certain other attesters and inhabitants of the said Isle, presented up of late their supplication to the queen’s commissioners concerning that matter. Which supplication of theirs, for the more evidence of the thing, we have hereto annexed as followeth. To the right honorable and the queen’s highness’ most gracious commissioners for the hearing and determining of matters of religion and causes ecclesiastical Most lamentably and woefully complaining, showeth unto your gracious and honorable lordships, your poor and humble orator Mathew Cauches, of the Isle of Guernsey, that where Jacques Amy Clarke, Dean of the Isle aforesaid, assisted by the curates there, against all order, law, and reason, by color of a sentence of heresy pronounced against Katherine Cauches, the sister of your honors’ said suppliant, and Paratine and Guillemin, her two daughters, did cause the same Katherine, being a poor widow, and her said two daughters most cruelly to be burned; although the said persons, ne {i.e., not} any of them did hold, maintain, or defend anything directly against the ecclesiastical laws then in place under the reign of the late Queen Mary, but in all things submitted themselves obediently to the laws then in force; and yet the cruelty of the said Dean and his accomplices in perpetrating such murder as aforesaid, raged so far that, whereas, whilst the said persons did consume with violent fire, the womb of the said Paratine being burned, there did issue from her a goodly man child, which by the officers was taken up and handled, and after in a most despiteful manner thrown into the fire, and there also with the silly mother most cruelly burnt. In tender consideration whereof, and for so much as this bloody murder was not in due order of any law or in any manner according to justice, but of mere malicious hatred, as the true copy of the whole proceedings in this matter by the said Dean and his accomplices, here ready to be shown to your honors, will make very plain and manifest. It may therefore please your good and gracious lordships, of the zeal that you bear to justice, and for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, to have due consideration in justice of such horrible murder, so cruelly committed as aforesaid, according to the right demerit thereof. And that it may please your honorable lordships to order and decree also, that all the goods of all the said parties, by pretense aforesaid wrongfully taken as confiscate, may be delivered to your said poor beseecher, to whom of right they do belong. And your honors’ said suppliant will daily pray to God for your long preservation, to his glory and your everlasting health. This foresaid supplication was presented by the said Guernsey men to the Queen’s high commissioners the year last past, 1562, who, sitting the same time upon the cause, found the matter probable, and took such order therein that the Dean was committed there to prison and dispossessed of all his livings. And after, the matter being returned again down to the said country further to be examined and decided, what order therein was taken concerning that willful and cruel 132



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murder I am not yet certain. But I trust that either man’s law will find out that wicked murder and innocent’s blood, or else this I know: that God’s high justice and revenging hand will not suffer that guiltless blood and detestable fact to escape unrevenged, except greater repentance come. [\ T ext: John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and decribed the great persecutions [and] horrible troubles, that haue bene wrought and practised by the Romishe prelates, speciallye in this realme of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande, vnto the tyme nowe present (London, 1563) (NSTC 11222).

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III

CEREMONIES

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JOHN KNOX, WILLIAM WHITTINGTON, ET AL. The form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments, &c., used in the English congregation at Geneva

1556

The volume’s liturgical and presbyterian-­polity core was drafted in early 1555 by the committed Calvinists among the Marian exiles in Frankfort, including their minister, John Knox, but found a cool reception and was never used there. In March Knox left for Geneva, and by October many of his Frankfort supporters had followed. The Anglo-­ Genevan congregation, which began regular worship that November, used this liturgy, with Calvin’s blessing, for the remaining five years of its existence. In 1556 Knox’s fellow exile William Whittingham revised it for publication under the title The form of prayers, adding a preface to “our brethren in England,” a confession of faith, Calvin’s catechism, and a sheaf of private devotions. Knox brought the volume back to Scotland, where, renamed the Book of Common Order, it became the standard liturgy in the Church of Scotland from c. 1560–­1645. When in 1567 the London authorities discovered the earliest known separatist cell, its members confessed to using The form of prayers for their worship, and the volume seems often to have been adopted by other separatist groups and by the English merchant congregations in the Low Countries.1 In 1584 and again in 1586 MPs presented bills in the House of Commons that would have replaced the Book of Common Prayer with a revised version of The form of prayers (and episcopacy with presbyterianism). Although most godly parishes seem to have used a stripped-­down version of the Book of Common Prayer, The form of prayers remained the puritan gold standard; in the early 1640s it came out in three successive editions, and only fell to the wayside after transmitting its ideal of worship to the Westminster Directory.2 [\

1 Walter Travers and Thomas Cartwright used it during their stints as chaplain to the Merchant Adventurers. 2 There were four Geneva editions of The form of prayers between 1556 and 1561; editions for the English market appeared in 1584, 1586, 1587, and 1602, and then again in 1641, 1642, and 1644 (Maxwell, 72–­73).

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Whittingham’s prefatory epistle reveals that the book was conceived from the beginning as a replacement (if and when the exiles returned) for the Book of Common Prayer, because, according to the epistle’s deuteronomic reading of public disaster as divine punishment—­ and despite its glowing praise of Edward VI’s reign—­the “negligence” in reforming the Edwardian Prayer Book “was not the least cause of God’s rods light[ing]3 upon us.” Like the Confession of Faith and baptismal liturgy that follow, the epistle depicts true religion as “a state of non-­popery” (Lake, 47); anything the papists have abused must be abolished. The Confession of Faith, an elaboration of the Creed, throughout insists on Reformed purity rather than semper et ubique catholicity. Whittingham, that is, consistently foregrounds doctrines peculiar to the Genevan Reformation. Moreover, he treats the sacraments within an explicitly predestinarian framework, making it perhaps overly obvious that, with respect to the elect, the sacrament acknowledges a done deal; and with respect to those “ordained . . . as vessels of wrath to damnation,” it likewise can make no difference. The pastoral as well as theological nightmare of reprobate baptism does not, however, weigh on The form of prayers, which radiates throughout the triumphalist confidence of the little band of persecuted saints by whom and for whom it was written. The baptismal liturgy merits a fuller discussion. Whereas both the Reformed and Book of Common Prayer Communion service follow the basic outlines of the Roman Mass, Calvin’s baptismal service, which The form of prayers adapts, bears no resemblance to either the medieval Catholic rite or other Protestant ones. Moreover, much the same is true for the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal liturgy, which from 1552 on differs widely from the medieval Catholic and the Calvinist alike.4 Both the Calvinist and Prayer Book liturgies represent a drastic break with the medieval rite, which, as the sixteenth century well knew, was largely a patristic one, many of its features going back to the fourth century or earlier. The Reformation liturgies are only intelligible against the background of this medieval rite, which is far too complicated to describe properly, but for present purposes, a rough outline should suffice to get across the general idea: Insufflation (blowing upon child to exorcise devil); crossing (making the sign of the cross) & naming; prayer; salt in mouth; more crossing; triple exorcisms; more crossing and prayer; another exorcism; Gospel reading; anointing of ears & lips with spittle; godparents recite prayers and Creed; signing (making the sign of the cross) of infant on the right hand; litany; benediction of font; triple infusion of oil and chrism; triple renouncing of Satan; unction on breast & back; triple profession of faith; desire of baptism; baptism by triple immersion; signing infant with chrism; giving newly-­baptized a white robe (chrysom) and taper; priest exhorts godparents.5 The 1552 and 1559 Book of Common Prayer retain only a single crossing and a single renunciation of Satan; The form of prayers retains nothing. That the Protestant versions are simpler than the medieval would be expected. More surprising is how fundamentally the

I.e., landing, alighting They all, of course, share the single sentence required for a valid baptism (“N., I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”). 5 The full text is reprinted in Maskell, 1:3–­38. 3 4

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Anglo-­Genevan rite differs from that in the Book of Common Prayer,6 and how widely the Book of Common Prayer rite in turn diverges from the medieval Catholic one. None of the salient features of the Anglo-­Genevan baptismal rite has a counterpart in the Book of Common Prayer. These features include the predestinarian frame; the confessionalization of Christian identity whereby the “doctrine necessary for a true Christian,” which parents must teach their little ones, is neither Creed nor Commandments, but instead justification by faith and hatred of “papistry” ; the father’s takeover of the godparents’ role (the godmother disappearing altogether, a godfather permitted if the father unavailable); and the distinctive Reformed theology of baptism, fashioned to deal with the obvious problem of squaring infant baptism with the new centrality of faith, which makes baptism the New Testament counterpart of circumcision: as Abraham’s descendants were, as infants, received into the covenant between God and his people, so baptism represents adoption into the family of God by virtue of God’s covenant promise to “not only be our God, but also the God and Father of our children” . Rather than effecting or signifying inward regeneration, baptism affirms that the children of the faithful, by virtue of God’s promise to their parents, are themselves within the covenant. That the father carries his child to the font reinforces the liturgical metaphors of filiation and paternity that construe baptism as ratifying the infant’s place in the solidarities of God’s family, not as its incorporation into the mystical body of Christ. The baptismal liturgy in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (unchanged from 1552) bespeaks very different theological instincts. Its bricolage of medieval fragments intermingled with portions of a Lutheran service scarcely feels traditional, although key elements of the old rite (e.g., the godparents, the renunciation of Satan, the promises made in the infant’s name) are still in place. From the opening evocation of Noah’s Ark and the Red Sea, the language is heavy with Scriptural imagery and allusion, yet the distinctive circumcision and covenant analogies of the Calvinist rite are conspicuously absent;7 moreover, none of the biblical images is sufficiently dominant to function as a doctrinal core. The prayers preceding the baptism, prayers which Cranmer took from an ancient Mozarabic rite, ask that the sacrament endue the child with “heavenly vertues,” yet given that the Book of Common Prayer liturgy does not elsewhere speak of baptism as infusing virtues and graces—­a patristic but not a typical Protestant view—­one hesitates to put too much weight on the doctrinal claim. Yet the Book of Common Prayer’s language does consistently hint at the traditional Augustinian position that all the baptized receive the grace of regeneration, although not all will in the end be saved.8 Knox’s burial service needs little comment. Its radical departure from both pre-­ Reformation and Book of Common Prayer rites should be evident. The silent procession of the congregation to and from the grave could have been deeply moving in its austere 6 There are actually significant differences between Calvin’s baptismal rite and the Anglo-­Genevan, rithe as well, as indicated in the notes to the text . 7 Calvin’s baptismal liturgy, published in 1542, was presumably available to Cranmer. Zwingli and Bullinger likewise “found circumcision to be a particularly important type of baptism” (Donald McKim, ed., The Westminster handbook to Reformed theology, 13–­14, 81); see also the Heidelberg Catechism, q. 74. 8 E.g., the priest’s final prayer of thanks, “that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit,” echoes the Augustinian position that baptism truly effects that which it signifies.

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solemnity. Collinson suspects that such minimalist funerals would “have been to the taste of most Elizabethan puritan ministers” (370). Yet in 1533 the Strasbourg magistrates protested that the dead were now treated like slabs of meat (schier viehisch) (Maxwell, 56). Lex orandi, lex credendi is an ancient Christian maxim, which, roughly speaking, means that a people’s faith is most clearly visible in its worship—­as opposed to its doctrinal formulae. The maxim highlights the importance of the Anglo-­Genevan form of prayers for our understanding of the Elizabethan puritan movement. Moreover, the maxim, if true, also calls into question Collinson’s widely accepted thesis that the differences between puritans and conformists had more to do with “theological temperature” than any “fundamental principle” (26–­27); or as Dewey Wallace put it, what distinguished puritans was “the intensity with which they held and promoted” the “uncompromisingly Protestant” vision that they and conformists shared (28–­29). The divergence of the Anglo-­Genevan and Prayer Book liturgies bespeaks profoundly different intuitions about God and grace and Christian community, about our relation to the dead and to the past, about the role of fathers and sacraments. It points, that is, to fundamental differences between, to quote Collinson once again, “English puritanism and what we are almost forced, in spite of the anachronism, to call Anglicanism” (26). [\ Sources: John Henry Blunt, ed., The annotated Book of Common Prayer (London, 1907); Arthur Cochrane, ed., Reformed confessions of the sixteenth century (London, 1966; repr. Louisville, Ky., 2003); Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; Walter Copinger, A treatise on predestination, election, and grace (London, 1889); Duffy, Stripping; J. D. C. Fisher, Christian initiation: the Reformation period, intro. by Maxwell Johnson (London, 1970; repr. Chicago, 2007); William Maskell, Monumenta ritualia ecclesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1882); William Maxwell, John Knox’s Genevan service book, 1556 (Edinburgh and London, 1931; repr. Westminster, 1965); Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in rhyme (Aldershot, 2008); Dewey Wallace, Puritans and predestination: grace in English Protestant theology, 1525–­1695 (Chapel Hill, 1982); H. G. Wood, “Baptism (later Christian),” in vol. 2 of James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of religion and ethics, 13 vols. (New York, 1908–­1926).

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JOHN KNOX, WILLIAM WHITTINGTON, ET AL. The form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments, &c., used in the English congregation at Geneva

1556

To our brethren in England and elsewhere which love Jesus Christ unfeignedly, mercy and peace:1 It is more evident and known to all men than well considered and thankfully received of many, with what great mercies and especial graces God endued our country of England in these latter days, when from idolatry he called us to the knowledge of his Gospel . . . sending us a King most godly, learned, zealous, wise, and such one as never sat in that royal chair before: God’s word universally spread over all the land, repentance preached, Christ’s kingdom offered, sin rebuked . . . yet it came to pass, and this day that is verified on us, which the Lord reproved Israel for, saying, I have stretched forth my hands all the day long unto a people that believeth not, but rebelleth against me, and walk after their own imaginations. . . . The which unkindness and contempt, would God we could as earnestly repent as we now feel the lack of these accustomed mercies. . . . For the false prophets are sent forth with lies in their mouths to deceive England; and the scarcity of God’s word is so great that, although they seek it from one sea coast to another, yet they cannot find it, but as men affamished devour the pestiferous dung of papistry to the poisoning of their own souls. Let us therefore, brethren, turn wholly to the Lord by repentance, fasting, and prayer, earnestly beseeching him to receive us once again to his favor, who willeth not the death of a sinner but his amendment. . . . Beware then ye harden not your hearts against this merciful Lord and tempt him as the stubborn Jews did, whom he therefore delivered up into their enemy’s hands to perish with the sword, hunger, and pestilence. For God will not be mocked. . . . Do you not remember that idolaters have no portion in the kingdom of God but are thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where their {sic} worm shall never die? . . .  . . . 1

{The preface is usually ascribed to Whittingham.}

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We, therefore . . . do present unto you which desire the increase of God’s glory and the pure simplicity of his word, a form and order of a reformed Church, limited within the compass of God’s word—­which our Savior hath left unto us as only sufficient to govern all our actions by, so that whatsoever is added to this word by man’s device, seem it never so good, holy, or beautiful, yet before our God, which is jealous and cannot admit any companion or counselor, it is evil, wicked, and abominable. . . . . . . . . . Farewell, dear brethren, and let us all pray to our loving God that he would be merciful unto us, restore his holy word, comfort and strengthen his children, and finally confound Satan, Antichrist, and all his enemies. At Geneva, the 10 of February, anno 1556

The Confession of our faith, which are assembled in the English congregation at Geneva I believe and confess my Lord God eternal, infinite, unmeasurable, incomprehensible, and invisible; one in substance and three in person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who, by his almighty power and wisdom hath not only of nothing created heaven, earth, and all things therein contained, and man after his own image, that he might in him be glorified, but also by his fatherly providence governeth, maintaineth, and preserveth the same, according to the purpose of his will. I believe also and confess Jesus Christ the only Savior and Messias, who being equal with God, made himself of no reputation, but took on him the shape of a servant and became man in all things like unto us (sin except) to assure us of mercy and forgiveness. For when through our father Adam’s transgression we were become children of perdition, there was no means to bring us from that yoke of sin and damnation but only Jesus Christ our Lord; who giving us that by grace which was his by nature, made us (through faith) the children of God. Who when the fullness of time was come, was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary (according to the flesh), and preached in earth the gospel of salvation, till at length, by tyranny of the priests, he was guiltless condemned under Pontius Pilate, then president of Jewry, and most slanderously hanged on the cross betwixt two thieves as a notorious trespasser, where taking upon him the punishment of our sins, he delivered us from the curse of the Law. And forasmuch as he, being only God, could not feel death, neither, being only man, could overcome death, he joined both together, and suffered his humanity to be punished with most cruel death: feeling in himself the anger and severe judgment of God, even as if he had been in extreme torments of hell; and therefore cried with a loud voice, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!2 Thus of his free mercy, without compulsion, he offered up himself as the only sacrifice to purge the sins of all the world, so that all other sacrifices for sin are blasphemous and derogate from the sufficiency hereof. . . . . . . Moreover, I believe and confess the Holy Ghost, God equal with the Father and the Son, who regenerateth and sanctifieth us, ruleth and guideth us into all truth, persuading {On this Calvinist theology of the crucifixion, see Perkins, A golden chain ; Allen, Purgatory .} 2

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most assuredly in our consciences that we be the children of God, brethren to Jesus Christ, and fellow heirs with him of life everlasting. Yet, notwithstanding, it is not sufficient to believe that God is omnipotent and merciful, that Christ hath made satisfaction, or that the Holy Ghost hath this power and effect, except we do apply the same benefits to ourselves which are God’s elect. I believe therefore and confess one holy Church, which (as members of Jesus Christ, the only head thereof) consent in faith, hope, and charity, using the gifts of God, whether they be temporal or spiritual, to the profit and furtherance of the same. Which Church is not seen to man’s eye, but only known to God, who, of the lost sons of Adam, hath ordained some as vessels of wrath to damnation, and hath chosen others as vessels of his mercy to be saved—­which also, in due time, he calleth to integrity of life and godly conversation, to make them a glorious Church to himself. But that Church which is visible and seen to the eye hath three tokens or marks whereby it may be discerned. First, the word of God contained in the Old and New Testament, which, as it is above the authority of the same Church and only sufficient to instruct us in all things concerning salvation, so is it left for all degrees of men to read and understand. For without this word, neither Church, council, or decree can establish any point touching salvation. The second is the holy sacraments, to wit, of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; which sacraments Christ hath left unto us as holy signs and seals of God’s promises. . . . The third mark of this Church is ecclesiastical discipline, which standeth in admonition and correction of faults. The final end whereof is excommunication, by the consent of the Church determined, if the offender be obstinate.3 And besides this ecclesiastical censure, I acknowledge to belong to this Church a political magistrate,4 who ministreth to every man justice, defending the good and punishing the evil; to whom we must render honor and obedience in all things which are not contrary to the word of God. And as Moses, Hezekiah, Josiah, and other godly rulers purged the Church of God from superstition and idolatry, so the defense of Christ’s Church appertaineth to the Christian magistrates against all idolaters and heretics, as papists, anabaptists, with such like limbs of Antichrist, to root out all doctrine of devils and men, as the Mass, purgatory, limbus patrum, prayer to saints, and for the dead; freewill; distinction of meats, apparel, and days; vows of single life; presence at idol service; man’s merits, with suchlike which draw us from the society of Christ’s Church, wherein standeth only remission of sins purchased by Christ’s blood . . . and lead us to vain confidence in creatures and trust in our own imaginations. The punishment whereof, although God often times deferreth in this life, yet after the general resurrection, when our souls and bodies shall rise again to immortality, they shall be damned to inquencheable fire.5 And then we, which have forsaken all man’s wisdom to cleave unto Christ, shall hear that joyful voice, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit ye the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world, and so shall {Contrast with Hooker, Laws 6.3.1 .} {The 1556 Latin reads “Praeterea sub hac ecclesiae societate complector & politicos magistratus” (25).} 5 {Yet both Thomas Cartwright and John Whitgift hold that doctrinal errors, such as the Greek Church’s belief in free will, do not invariably, or perhaps even usually, lead to damnation (Whitgift, Defense ); there seems to have been a range of opinions, and some inconsistency, regarding the level of doctrinal correctness God required for salvation.} 3 4

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go triumphing with him in body and soul to remain everlasting in glory, where we shall see God face to face, and shall no more need one to instruct another, for we shall all know him, from the highest to the lowest: to whom, with the Son and the Holy Ghost, be all praise, honor, and glory, now and ever. So be it. ‡

The order of baptism First note, that forasmuch as it is not permitted by God’s word that women should preach or minister the sacraments, and it is evident that the sacraments are not ordained of God to be used in private corners as charms or sorceries, but left to the congregation, and necessarily annexed to God’s word as seals of the same:6 therefore the infant which is to be baptized shall be brought to the church on the day appointed to prayer and preaching, accompanied with the father and godfather.7 So that after the sermon, the child being presented to the minister, he demandeth this question: Do you present this child to be baptized, earnestly desiring that he may be ingrafted in the mystical body of Jesus Christ? The answer.—­Yes, we require the same. The minister proceedeth Then let us consider, dearly beloved, how Almighty God hath not only made us his children by adoption and received us into the fellowship of his Church, but also hath promised that he will be our God and the God of our children unto the thousand generation. Which thing, as he confirmed to his people of the Old Testament by the sacrament of circumcision, so hath he also renewed the same to us in his New Testament by the sacrament of baptism, doing us thereby to wit that our infants appertain to him by covenant and therefore ought not to be defrauded of those holy signs and badges whereby his children are known from infidels and pagans.8 Neither is it requisite that all those that receive this sacrament have the use of understanding and faith, but chiefly that they be contained under the name of God’s people, so that remission of sins in the blood of Christ Jesus doth appertain to them by God’s promise. Which thing is most evident by Saint Paul, who pronounceth the children begotten and born, either of the parents being faithful, to be clean and holy. . . . Neither yet is this outward action of such necessity that the lack thereof should be prejudicial to their salvation, if that, prevented by death, they may not conveniently be presented to the Church.9 But we (having respect to that obedience which Christians {On baptism by midwives, see Whitgift, Defense .} {As in other Reformed baptismal liturgies, the mother has no role and there is no godmother (Maxwell 114). The 1559 Book of Common Prayer rite includes godparents of both sexes but not the biological parents.} 8 {This paragraph paraphrases a portion of the opening exhortation in Calvin’s baptismal liturgy (Fisher 115).} 9 {Roman Catholic doctrine made baptism necessary for salvation; see Whitgift, Defense .} 6 7

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owe to the voice and ordinance of Christ Jesus, who commanded to preach and baptize all without exception) do judge them only unworthy of any fellowship with him, who contemptuously refuse such ordinary means as his wisdom hath appointed to the instruction of our dull senses. Furthermore, it is evident that baptism was ordained to be ministered in the element of water, to teach us that, like as water outwardly doth wash away the filth of the body, so inwardly doth the vertue of Christ’s blood purge our souls from that corruption and deadly poison wherewith by nature we were infected: whose venomous dregs, although they continue in this our flesh, yet by the merits of his death are not imputed unto us, by cause the justice of Jesus Christ is made ours by baptism. Not that we think any such virtue or power to be included in the visible water or outward action (for many have been baptized, and yet never inwardly purged), but that our Savior Christ, who commanded baptism to be ministered, will, by the power of his Holy Spirit, effectually work in the hearts of his elect (in time convenient) all that is meant and signified by the same. And this the Scripture calleth our regeneration, which standeth chiefly in these two points: in mortification, that is to say, a resisting of the rebellious lusts of the flesh; and in newness of life, whereby we continually strive to walk in that pureness and perfection wherewith we are clad in baptism. And although we in the journey of this life be encumbered with many enemies which in the way assail us, yet fight we not without fruit. For this continual battle which we fight against sin, death, and hell is a most infallible argument that God the Father, mindful of his promise made unto us in Christ Jesu, doth not only give us motions and courage to resist them, but also assurance to overcome and obtain victory. Wherefore, dearly beloved, it is not only of necessity that we be once baptized, but also it much profiteth oft to be present at the ministration thereof; that we being put in mind of the league and covenant made betwixt God and us, that he will be our God and we his people, he our Father and we his children, may have occasion as well to try our lives past as our present conversation, and to prove ourselves, whether we stand fast in the faith of God’s elect, or contrariwise have strayed from him through incredulity and ungodly living; whereof, if our consciences do accuse us, yet by hearing the loving promises of our heavenly Father (who calleth all men to mercy by repentance), we may from henceforth walk more warily in our vocation. Moreover, ye that be fathers and mothers may take hereby most singular comfort to see your children thus received in to the bosom of Christ’s congregation, whereby you are daily admonished that ye nourish and bring up the children of God’s favor and mercy, over whom his fatherly providence watcheth continually. . . . Wherein if you be negligent, ye do not only injury to your own children . . . but also heap damnation upon yourselves, in suffering his children, bought with the blood of his dear Son, so traitorously (for lack of knowledge) to turn back from him. Therefore it is your duty with all diligence to provide that your children in time convenient be instructed in all doctrine necessary for a true Christian: chiefly that they be taught to rest upon the justice of Christ Jesus alone and to abhor and flee all superstition, papistry, and idolatry. Finally, to the intent that we may be assured that you the father and the surety consent to the performance hereof, declare here, before God and the face of his congregation, the sum of that faith wherein you believe and will instruct this child. 145



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Then the father or, in his absence, the godfather shall rehearse the articles of his faith;10 which done, the minister exhorting the people to pray, saith in this manner, or such-­like, kneeling: Almighty and everlasting God, which of thy infinite mercy and goodness hast promised unto us that thou wilt not only be our God, but also the God and Father of our children: we beseech thee, that as thou hast vouchsafed to call us to be partakers of this thy great mercy in the fellowship of faith, so may please thee to sanctify with thy Sprit and to receive in to the number of thy children, this infant, whom we shall baptize according to thy word, to the end that he, coming to perfect age, may confess thee only the true God, and whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ, and so serve him and be profitable unto his Church in the whole course of his life, that after this life be ended, he may be brought as a lively member of his body unto the full fruition of thy joys in the heavens, where thy Son our Christ reigneth, world without end. In whose name we pray as he hath taught us: Our Father, &c. When they have prayed in this sort, the minister requireth the child’s name, which known, he saith: N., I baptize thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And as he speaketh these words, he taketh water in his hand and layeth it upon the child’s forehead; which done, he giveth thanks as followeth: Forasmuch,11 most holy and merciful Father, as thou dost not only beautify and bless us with common benefits like unto the rest of mankind, but also heapest upon us most abundantly rare and wonderful gifts, of duty we lift up our eyes and minds unto thee, and give thee most humble thanks for thy infinite goodness, which hast not only numbered us amongst thy saints but also of thy free mercy dost call our children unto thee, marking them with this sacrament as a singular token and badge of thy love. Wherefore, most loving Father, though we be not able to deserve this so great a benefit (yea, if thou wouldst handle us according to our merits, we should suffer the punishment of eternal death and damnation), yet for Christ’s sake we beseech thee that thou wilt confirm this thy favor more and more towards us, and take this infant into thy tuition and defense, whom we offer and present unto thee with common supplications, and never suffer him to fall to such unkindness whereby he should lose the force of this baptism,12 but that he may perceive thee continually to be his merciful Father, through thy Holy Spirit working in his heart, by whose divine power he may so prevail against Satan, that in the end obtaining the victory, he may be exalted into the liberty of thy kingdom. ‡

Of burial The corpse is reverently brought to the grave, accompanied with the congregation, without any further ceremonies; which being buried, the minister goeth to the church, if it be {The Apostles’ Creed (Maxwell, 118)} {Maxwell finds no counterpart to this prayer in the other Reformed baptismal liturgies (120).} 12 {On the tendency of strict double predestinarians at times to speak as though one could resist grace, see Lake, Moderate puritans, 151–­53.} 10 11

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not far off, and maketh some comfortable exhortation to the people touching death and resurrection. [\ T ext: The form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments, &c., used in the English congregation at Geneva, and approved by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin. (Geneva, 1556). Corrected against The works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1860); Ratio et forma pvblice orandi Devm, atqve administrandi sacramenta, et caet. Anglorvm ecclesiam, quae Geneuae colligitur, recepta / cum iudicio & comprobatione D. Iohannis Caluini (Geneva, 1556).

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ANTHONY GILBY (1510–­1585)

To my loving brethren that is troubled about the popish apparel, two short and comfortable epistles

Born in Lincolnshire, Gilby attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, graduating BA by 1532 and MA in 1535. He was apparently a relatively young convert to Protestantism. Little is known about his early career, but by the 1540s he was a close friend and colleague of more radical evangelicals like Hugh Latimer and John Hooper, as well as author of both biblical commentaries (those on the prophets Micah and Malachi, in full jeremiad) and polemics (including an attack on the Catholic bishop Stephen Gardiner written early in Edward VI’s reign). He fled into exile during Mary’s reign, first at Frankfurt, where he sided with the more radical “Knoxians,” against the more conservative “Coxians,” in the so-­called “Troubles at Frankfurt,” the first great debate between English Protestants over what would soon become a flashpoint of controversy: use of the Book of Common Prayer. He was also involved with the major translation project of the era, the so-­called Geneva Bible, which would become infamous for its radical marginal notes. Upon his return to England after the accession of Elizabeth, Gilby obtained the patronage of Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, one of the most zealously Protestant members of the peerage. Due to Huntingdon’s patronage, Gilby was installed as lecturer at the church of Ashby-­ de-­la-­Zouch in Leicestershire, where he remained for a quarter-century, using this small market town as a base for the evangelization of large swathes of the Midlands. A lecturer he was essentially a hired preacher rather than a minister of the sacraments or reader of the liturgy; hence he could avoid wearing the “popish apparel” to which he so vehemently objected. [\

Gilby’s book excerpt here against “popish apparel,” parts of which may have been written by others, comes from the so-­called vestments controversy, the first internal crisis of English Protestantism and the debate that led to the invention of the term “puritan” to refer to Gilby and his allies. To briefly summarize a very complex affair: the Book of Common Prayer required ministers to wear certain vestments, or clerical attire, when 148



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performing their duties; the most controversial of these was the surplice, a white tunic traditionally worn by priests, which represented the purity of the clergy. Many Protestant ministers, however, objected to being required to wear the surplice. While they generally admitted that the use of vestments was “indifferent” (adiaphora, in Greek)—­neither required nor forbidden by God—­and thus (all other things being equal) left to human discretion, they argued that to be forced to wear the surplice infringed upon their Christian liberty. Moreover, they also argued that the surplice itself, being a holdover from Roman Catholicism, perpetuated Catholic idolatry, encouraging parishioners to think that the English clergy remained a sacrificing priesthood rather than a preaching ministry. The government and Church hierarchy, however, led by Archbishop Parker, insisted that because vestments were indifferent, the Church could require their use to maintain order: it was seemly and appropriate that all ministers wear the same vestments, and ministers were bound by conscience to obey the commands of their sovereign and the letter of the law. In 1566 this disagreement came to a head when Parker required the London clergy to agree to wear the surplice; some three dozen refused and were deprived of their benefices, the first time that the Church of England forcibly excluded its radical wing.1 It was in this context that “puritan” came into use as a term of opprobrium for ministers who seemed so fixated on purity and conscience that they were willing to forsake their parishes over so small a matter as the shirt on their backs; these so-­called puritans shot back, reasonably enough, that if wearing the surplice were really so small a matter, then there was no reason why the government should not let them choose whether they could conscientiously wear it. This controversy over adherence to the Book of Common Prayer, and similar ones concerning other liturgical requirements, would remain at the center of the division between puritans and conformists for more than a century. [\ Sources: Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; John Craig, “The growth of English puritanism,” in John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge companion to Puritanism (Cambridge, 2008); William Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation: the struggle for a stable settlement of religion (Cambridge, 1968); Norman Jones, The birth of the Elizabethan age: England in the 1560s (Oxford, 1993); J. H. Primus, The vestments controversy (Kampen, 1960); Bernard Verkamp, The indifferent mean: adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1554 (Athens, 1977).

1

By the end of 1566, however, all but eight had conformed.

149

ANTHONY GILBY

To my loving brethren that is troubled about the popish apparel, two short and comfortable epistles

1566

To all my faithful brethren in Christ Jesu and to all other that labor to weed out the weeds of popery, peace in the Lord Jesu be with you, and make you perfect in all good works to do his will, working in you that which is pleasant in his sight, through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . My good fathers and dear brethren, who are first called to the battle to strive for God’s glory and the edification of his people against the Romish relics and rags of Antichrist, I doubt not but that you will courageously and constantly in Christ . . . labor to raze out all the dregs and remnants of transformed popery that are crept into England by too much lenity of them that will be named the Lords of the clergy. What is he, that hath the zeal of God’s glory before his face, that will not join both in prayer and in suffering with you in so good a cause, that is so much for God’s glory and the edification of God’s Church in the pure simplicity of Christ’s word and sacraments, wherein our enemies and persecutors are strangely bewitched, I wot not by what Circe’s cup, that they do make such a diversity betwixt Christ’s word and his sacraments that they cannot think the word of God safely enough preached and honorably enough handled, without cap, cope, surplice; but that the sacraments, the marrying, the burying, the churching of women, and other church service, as they call it, must needs be decored {i.e., decorated} with crossing, with capping, with surplicing, with kneeling, with pretty wafer cakes, and other knacks of popery. O Paul, that thou were alive! Thou durst tell those politic gentlemen that there hath been too much labor bestowed upon them in vain. Thou durst say unto them, as thou did to the Corinthians, that they eat not the Lord’s Supper, but ply a pageant of their own to blind the people and keep them still in superstition, far from the simplicity of Christ’s Supper. But how many silly souls is there that doth believe verily that they have an English Mass, and so put no difference between truth and falsehood, between Christ and antichrist, between God and the devil. They are strangely bewitched, I say, that thus 150



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will bind their English priesthood and sacraments, but much more enchanted that can find no garments to please them but such as have been polluted openly with popish superstition and idolatry. But most of all in this point shall their madness appear to all posterities, that they make these antichristian rags . . . a cause without which there is no holy ministry in Christ, so that this shall make an English priest, be he never such a dolt or unlearned in the knowledge of the Scripture, as we have very many; and without these Romish relics, not Paul himself shall be admitted (as one of them did blaspheme, and the rest of them in effect do affirm). . . . A straw for popish policy! We have the word of God to warrant us to root out all monuments of superstition and idolatry, and are charged to abhor them, to account them accursed, and to defy them, and to detest them as monstrous clouts. They have not the word of God for them. . . . They talk of obedience and concord, but there is no obedience against the Lord, no nor concord to be desired but where glory and verity is preserved—­else better to have all the world in hurly-­burlies, and heaven and earth to shake, than one iota of God’s glory should decay (so far forth as in us lieth). We have their {i.e., the English bishops’} own laws and proclamations to root out all monuments of superstition and idolatry; and their own words are contrary to their doings. It should appear that they repent their reformation proclaimed, as did the Israelites. . . . That wolf Winchester1 and bloody butcher Bonner2 fought once against many godly men for the ground of this gear, and they had all the power of the realm serving their lusts, but behold how the Lord in short time overthrew them all, to give us courage to go forward. The Lord forgive us; we are too slack and negligent in heavenly things: this monster Bonner remaineth and is fed, as papists say, for their sakes; and it must be granted; it is for some purpose—­a lthough he be a traitor and an enemy to the crown and realm, and both to God and man, which burned God’s holy Testament, murdered his saints and his servants.3 But what the Lord requireth to be done with false prophets it is manifest: we have both the law of God and man for us.4 But we are answered: nay, you yourselves shall be compelled to turn your coats and caps, and get you into his liveries, and to be like him in your garments. O Elias, that thou livedst or that thy spirit were amongst us, thou wouldst say, with the Prophet Sophonias {i.e., Zeph 1:8}, that God will visit the wearers of this idolatrous garments or strange apparel. Thou wouldst say that things dedicated once to idolatry is not indifferent. Thou wouldst say, reverence to the sacrament is wrought by doctrine and discipline, and not by popish and idolatrous garments. . . . But the papists triumph and glory in their assemblies that the hot gospellers shall be driven to their doltish attires. For the Lord’s sake, let us never give them any cause of joy, though we should die for it. Moses would not yield one hoof of a beast in God’s business; he would not leave the loop unmade, nor make a button or a clasp more or less.5. . . For by the same authority may

{Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester under Queen Mary} {Edmund Bonner, bishop of London under Queen Mar.} 3 {It remained a point of contention that the surviving persecutors from Queen Mary’s reign were not themselves prosecuted but were left alive and at least sometimes well treated by the Elizabethan regime.} 4 {They are to be put to death. Deut. 13:1-­5} 5 {Exod. 26:5-­6} 1 2

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be commanded any piece of popery, so that it be named policy.6 Ezechias and Josias knew no such authority. But, they say, it is for policy (for it plainly appeareth that there is less care for religion than for policy). But beware that the example of Jeroboam be not followed, that made such-­l ike priests for policy as would do as he commanded them. . . . Nebuchadnezzar’s idol was for unity and policy, but without the warrant of God’s word there is neither good unity nor policy. The godly father Bucer7 calleth the tenths and the first fruits sacrilege and robbery; they be kept still for policy. Cross and candlesticks are superstitious, though they be kept, I wot not for what policy. The adoration of the sacrament in the countries where they knock and kneel to a wafer cake is a popish policy. That women baptize, that pluralities, tot-­quots,8 impropriations, non-­residence, dispensations, suspensions, excommunications, and absolutions, for money are granted, it is evil, like as are many other enormities borrowed from Rome, which remain in the name of policy. All these things were abhorred as popish superstitions and idolatries among our gospellers, both bishops and others, when they were under God’s rods in poverty. But how they now have learned courtly divinity, to ground all upon policy! Humble them again, ô Lord, that they do not forget thee, and thy great kindness and mercy showed upon them; and stir up their hearts and minds that they may be careful over thy poor flock. . . . Furthermore, if popery be superstitious and idolatrous, evil and wicked, as yet there was never a worse thing in the world, then are we commanded to abstain from all participation thereof, and from all the show thereof: ab omni specie mali; that is, from all show of wickedness {1 Thess. 5:22}. These garments were the show of their blasphemous priesthood; herein they did sing and say their superstitious idolatrous service; they did cense their idols and help forward their idolatrous masses. What policy can it be then to wear this gear but a superstitious, wicked, and popish policy? . . . Our master Christ’s policy was expressed in one word: feed, feed, feed {John 21:15-­17}; and the prophets before and the apostles afterward. If Christ be the wisdom of the Father, the true ministers shall be well enough known by that one mark which he giveth. And if that he have not that mark, better unknown than known, both for himself and others. Therefore let them not say, for shame, that they seek God’s glory, Christ’s will, or the edification of his Church by their policy, while they threaten and stop the spreading of God’s word and feeding of Christ’s flock, commanded by writing to excommunicate the most faithful laborers in the planting of the gospel, because they will not wear the rags of popery. . . . As for you, dear brethren, whom God hath called into the brunt of the battle, the Lord keep ye constant. . . . But as you fight the Lord’s fight, be valiant. God will not leave you neither forsake you. As you seek God’s glory, God will glorify you. . . . The matter is not so small as the world do take it. It will appear before all be ended what a hard thing it is to cut off the rags of the hydra of Rome. It is beautiful, but poisonful. There 6 {“Policy” (i.e., expediency) is a key term here: under the usual Protestant theory of adipahora or “things indifferent,” political authorities could ordain ceremonies for the sake of order even if they were not required by Scripture. Gilby is here noting that by this argument, a Catholic ruler could effectively require Catholic worship as a civil rather than religious requirement.} 7 {The Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer (1491–­1551), who spent his final years in England as regius professor of divinity at Cambridge} 8 {A dispensation permitting the holding of multiple benefices}

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is no dealing with such a monster. Beware of looking back to Sodom, or delight any wit in the garments of Babylon; neither once touch the poisoned cup, though it be of gold or glittering. . . . Let us open our windows with Daniel, and profess what we are: their cruelty shall be our glory. Let us follow Paul, that knew that the truth-­gospel could not be retained if any Jewish ceremonies were maintained. Let us rather never wear any garment, than we should wear those whereby our brethren should be weakened, offended, or boldened to take part with the idolaters—­a nd so through our haughtiness in knowledge, our weak brethren perish, for whom Christ died. Behold and mark well how they fall backward that yield in any iota; and see how they are edified and increase in godliness, which hold that right way that you go. In the which the Lord increase you, and us all, and strengthen us with his Holy Spirit that we may continue to our lives’ end always, both by our thoughts, words, and works, to advance his glory and honor daily more and more, now and forever. Amen. [\ T ext: Anthony Gilby, To my louynge brethren that is troublyd abowt the popishe aparrell, two short and comfortable epistels (Emdene, 1566) (NSTC 10390).

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A brief examination, for the time, of a certain declaration lately put in print, in the name and defense of certain ministers in London, refusing to wear the apparel prescribed by the laws and orders of the realm. . . .

Born into an old and moderately prosperous Norwich family, Parker entered Corpus Christi, Cambridge, sometime around 1520, graduating BA in 1525. He was ordained two years later, the same year he proceeded MA and was elected fellow of Corpus Christi, at which point he began his theological studies, attaining his BTh in 1535, his DTh in 1538. He had long been a member of the university’s small evangelical cadre, and by 1535 was sufficiently prominent to be made chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and then, after Anne’s fall, to Henry VIII. In 1535 the Queen presented her new chaplain to the deanery of the Suffolk College of Stoke by Clare, a small community of priests and choristers established in the early fifteenth century. Parker proved an exceedingly successful administrator. The prebendaries, whose principal duty had been praying for the dead, were retrained as preachers and sent out into the parishes; a scholar was brought in to lecture on the Bible four times weekly; a free grammar school established; and the college’s financial condition improved. Such virtues do not go unrewarded, and in 1544, while still dean, he was elected master of Corpus Christi, where his administrative talents proved no less remarkable. In 1545 and again in 1548 the university elected him vice-­chancellor by impressive margins. Among his other achievements was managing to save both universities from the depredations of laity hungry for yet more of the Church’s ancient patrimony: a feat accomplished by concocting such a dire picture of the colleges’ financial plight that they seemed not worth the having. In 1549 Martin Bucer arrived in Cambridge as regius professor of divinity. He and Parker struck up a friendship that lasted until the former’s death in 1551: Parker would preach his funeral sermon and inherit many of his papers. It was a significant friendship. Bucer was “the principal spokesman for the moderate Protestants in Europe, those who sought ecumenical solutions in a time of confessional conflict” (ODNB, 85), and his broad-­church vision left its mark not only on Parker but also on Cranmer, his predecessor at Canterbury, and Grindal, his successor. 154



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Mary’s accession in 1553 stripped Parker of his college mastership, along with the various benefices and offices attained under Edward VI. He spent the Marian years in England, concealed by friends and in relative poverty, using the windfall of free time to study patristics and compose a verse translation of the Psalms, later published with music by Thomas Tallis. Within a month after Mary’s death in November 1558, Cecil notified Parker that Elizabeth had chosen him as her first archbishop of Canterbury. Parker, who would vastly have preferred to return to Corpus Christi, protested into the spring but was finally consecrated in late 1559. Much of his sixteen-­year tenure as archbishop played out the grim struggle Elizabeth’s councillors had anticipated from the beginning to defend the 1559 Settlement against those who repudiated its retention of “some old ceremonies” as “cloaked papistry.”1 The Queen, Parker protested to Cecil in April of 1563, found her new archbishop “too soft and easy”; the dissident clerics, unsurprisingly, thought him “too sharp” (Correspondence 150). A letter written around the same time bears witness to his tightrope moderation. Parliament had just passed an act requiring all newly ordained priests to take the Oath of Supremacy under penalty of high treason for a second refusal. Parker’s response to this draconian provision was to write his suffragan bishops, instructing them that if an ordinand refused the Oath, not to offer it the fatal second time, but to notify Parker at once, in the hope that “reason and clemency” might prevail—­the letter ending with a codicil in Cecil’s hand warning its recipients to keep the instructions “secret to yourselves” (idem., 175). Reason and clemency apparently prevailed, since there is no record of any newly ordained minister being drawn and quartered.2 The parliamentary statute targeted Roman Catholics. Most of Parker’s episcopate, by contrast, was spent battling the stiffer sort of Protestants over their refusal to wear the mandated clerical garb. These protests against the traditional vestments, which went back to the reign of Edward VI, drew their strength from deeply rooted aspects of the magisterial Reformation: the ferocious anti-­popery common to both Lutheran and Reformed strains and the contempt for the external trappings of worship characteristic of the latter. The Queen, however, wanted vestments, and both the Act of Uniformity and the Book of Common Prayer mandated their use. As Parker makes clear in his deathbed letter to Cecil, he himself ascribed no particular significance to tippets and surplices. These were, strictly speaking, things indifferent, adiaphora (idem., 478), but if the Elizabethan Church did not have the authority to mandate things indifferent, then it had no authority at all, since it obviously could not ordain things intrinsically good or evil to be otherwise than they were. For Parker, the issue was thus the existence of the English Church: whether the center could be made to hold, or whether the fissiparous dynamic of reform would, as it did a half-­century later, tear its fabric into sects and factions. Parker’s writings disclose little about his personal theological and liturgical preferences. The inventory of his picture gallery at Lambeth seems more revealing. The dozen Device for the alteration of religion, c. 1558 (on which, see the general introduction ). A similar spirit informs Parker’s 1568 preface to the Bishops’ Bible, as also his decision to omit all “bitter notes”and theologically loaded glosses. 1 2

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ecclesiastical portraits include neither Luther, Calvin, nor Zwingli, but Cardinal Pole, Cardinal Wolsey, and Archbishop Warham remained on the walls of Lambeth Palace, where they too had resided, their presence attesting to Parker’s sense of the English Church’s continuity across the Reformation divide, a sense of continuity informing his De archiepiscopis Ecclesiæ Cantuariensis septuaginta, a biographical history the archbishops of Canterbury from Augustine of Tarsus to Cardinal Pole, a work whose historiographic premises outraged those who saw the visible institutional Church of the later Middle Ages as the seat of Antichrist. Yet more probative are the four churchmen whom Parker honored with two portraits: Erasmus, Cranmer, Jewel, and Melanchthon. We have no label under which to group these figures, but it is in this theological lineage that Parker probably belongs. [\

The immediate context for A brief examination was the January 1565 royal letter ordering Parker to enforce clerical conformity to the vestment rubrics.3 As detailed in the Gilby introduction , about three dozen London ministers initially refused to subscribe and were suspended, among them Robert Crowley, a fierce and experienced polemicist, who lashed back by assaulting some vested choristers in a funeral procession, for which he was deprived and imprisoned. Crowley then took up his pen, defending his position in A brief discourse against the outward apparel and ministring garments of the popish church.4 It is to this tract that Parker’s A brief examination responds. The selections reprinted below present a striking contrast not only to Gilby’s anti-­ Vestiarian tract but to the premises of mainstream conformist puritanism. Parker rejects its governing opposition between the word of God and the traditions of men, dismisses its fear of popish contamination, and upholds the claims of charity over those of purity. The laws of godly magistrates are not mere “precepts of men,” although ordained by men, for all laws “derived from the rule of charity,” all laws that conduce to love of neighbor, to peace among men, to reverent worship, are “precept[s] of God.” Parker, that is to say, anticipates Hooker’s Thomist grounding of man-­made laws and customs in the first law eternal.5 Parker’s concluding argument adds an unexpected conciliarist twist. Rather than invoke the royal supremacy or episcopal authority, he appeals to the Thirty-­nine articles, the thirty-­fourth of which states that Christians are not to break openly with traditions and ceremonies mandated by lawful authority, as long as they “be not repugnant to the word of God” (a far stricter qualification than “not edifying” or “tending to superstition”). In 1566 the authority of the Thirty-­nine articles rested on their 1563 adoption by Convocation, the bicameral assembly of bishops and ministers representing the clergy of the province of Canterbury; they would not be ratified by Parliament until 1571. Parker 3 Exactly what the mandated vestments were was a matter of some debate, but this was a peripheral issue; the nonconforming clergy refused cope, chausable, and surplice alike. 4 Sometime in the 1570s Crowley (c. 1518–­1588) conformed, was reinstated, and spent the last years of his life as a respected London minister. 5 However, Parker’s claim that Christian liberty does not authorize individuals to follow the dictates of their own conscience regarding matters indifferent but rather frees the soul from the bondage imposed by mistaking such indifferent things for sacred obligations comes, as his margins indicate, from Calvin.

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underscores the point with the work’s sole manicule, the long, slender index finger pointing at the text of article 34, and beneath it the reminder “In the articles agreed in the last Synod.” The clergy are bound not by laws imposed from above but by canons their own representatives have enacted. [\ Sources: ODNB (Matthew Parker, Robert Crowley); Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. John Bruce and Thomas Perowne (Cambridge, 1853).

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1

A brief examination, for the time, of a certain declaration2 lately put in print, in the name and defense of certain ministers in London refusing to wear the apparel prescribed by the laws and orders of the realm. . . .

1566

I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause division and give occasions of evil, contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them: for they that are such serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies, and with sweet and flattering words deceive the hearts of the innocents.

Rom. 14

The counsel of S. Austin unto Januarie, Epistola 118. Such things as have diversity of observations, by reason of the diversity of lands and countries, as of fasting on the Sabbath day, or at other days; of communicating every day, Sunday or Saturday, or otherwise: all these things have freedom in observation. And certes, there is no manner discipline or usage in these things more agreeable unto a grave and prudent Christian man than that he attemper himself to the orders of that church whereto he shall chance to resort. For by S. Ambrose counsel, a man ought to observe that manner which he seeth that church to use whereto he chanceably cometh. . . . As for me (saith S. Austen) when I diligently bethought myself of this sentence, I have always had it in such veneration as if I had received it as an oracle heavenly sent from God. For I have perceived, even to my great sorrow and heaviness, much disquieting of the weak to be caused by the contentious stubbornness and superstitious fear of certain brethren, which raise up so brawling questions that they think nothing to be well done but what they do themselves, and that in such matters which can come to no certain end, neither by the authority of holy Scripture nor by the tradition of the universal Church, nor tend to any commodity of the reformation of life. Yet is this disturbance made because someone hath devised within himself some manner of reason 1 The text was published anonymously, although the attribution to Parker has never been seriously questioned. 2 {I.e., Robert Crowley’s A briefe discourse against the outwarde apparell and ministring garmentes of the popishe Church, 1566}

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whatsoever it be: either for that he himself in his own country accustomed so to do, or else saw other do in some such place where he hath travelled—­t he which, the farther it was from his own country, so much the better learned he thought that place to be. . . .

The examination . . . Leaving then to the judgment of others whether you run not headlong the ready way to make yourselves justly, and the ministry also, evil spoken-­of, by not seeking the peace of the country where you dwell, and by not obeying and following, but breaking and forsaking those variable orders and manners whereby worldly quietness at the least is gotten and maintained . . . leaving (I say) this . . . to the judgment of others, it shall be sufficient at this time to weigh the grounds and reasons which you use in refusing to wear apparel and garments, not now of the pope’s Church, but of Christ’s Church in England. . . . Here, before you show what ruin and destruction of God’s building these few orders lawfully enjoined do make, frankly you grant all these things refused now of you to be, of their own nature, indifferent and that they may be used or not used as occasion shall serve. It is hard to say whether this be the mind of all the shrinking & refusing ministers of London, who are known herein not to be of one judgment. Yea, it is affirmed of you a little after in your declaration that they be monuments of idolatry, and so to be utterly destroyed; that they be contrary to Scripture, and so also not to be received, though princes command them. . . . But to beat down this policy of man’s brain, you say (very little, nay nothing at all, to the purpose) that in things neither commanded nor forbidden, we must not follow our own fantasies, lest we hear, In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines the precepts of men [Matth. xv]. . . . That wholesome laws of godly magistrates, which, serving God (as S. Augustine affirmeth), they make not only for human society but also for God’s religion, which furthermore he truly termeth . . . profitable terrors . . . that these (I say) are not to be thought the precepts of man, it needeth not to call together here all the ancient fellowship of Fathers. Doctor Bucer upon this place may teach you the same, who most godly pronounceth thus: Quicquid homo statuerit, quod quomodocunque ad usum proximorum faciat. &c. Whatsoever man shall decree which by any means may make to the use of his neighbors, for that the same is derived from the rule of charity—­as be laws civil, domestical statutes, ceremonies and rites which Christian men use thereby to teach or hear God’s word more commodiously or to pray, and about the Lord’s Supper and baptism, yea & whatsoever shall be a furtherance to pass our life here more profitably and decently—­that thing ought not to be esteemed as a tradition or precept of man, though by men it be commanded, but as the tradition or precept of God. Thus far Doctor Bucer. With whom Master Calvin very well agreeth, saying, that which is part of decency commended unto us by the Apostle, though it be prescribed by man, is God’s tradition and not man’s, as 159



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kneeling at solemn prayers and suchlike [Instit. li. 4, ca. 10, par. 30].3 So then if you would have rested upon the censures of these godly learned men, you should not have needed thus unwisely to have scoffed at this wisdom of man, containing herself within the limits of the wisdom of God. . . . . . . This truth all faithful Christians confirm with you: that concerning faith and doctrine, concerning remission of sins and eternal salvation, nothing ought to be taught or received which is contrary or not grounded in the canonical Scriptures. For Holy Writ, given by the inspiration of God, is not only a light to our feet, as David saith, but also so profitable that thereby the man of God may be absolute, being made perfect unto all good works, as Saint Paul testifieth [2 Tim. iii]. And though this be most true touching the substance of Christian religion, yet the manner and order of setting of it forth is not particularly expressed, but generally left to the disposition of Christ’s Church from time to time, according to those words of Saint Paul: Let all things be done comely and orderly [1 Cor. xiv]. Wherein whatsoever shall be lawfully done to those purposes is not to be judged besides the Scriptures. As, for example, fasting is commanded in God’s word; but what days we should fast or what days we should not, being not there determined, if the Christian Church decree, it is not besides the Scripture. . . . Thus also the preaching of the Gospel is commanded in God’s word, but how to do this office—­in pulpit or otherways, in morning or afternoon, and so forth—­if the Christian Church decree, it is not besides the Scripture. The like may be said concerning laws politic of princes, affairs and traffic betwixt man & man, whose grounds and rules are in God’s word, and yet the particular circumstances in practicing them being divers in sundry countries, according to the judgment of magistrates, are not besides Scriptures, when all those diversities have God’s word for their general rule and end. . . . Surely the examples which you bring in of wicked kings and false prophets might have well at this time in this cause been pretermitted as {examples} which concern matters expressly forbidden or commanded by God, but that you would intimate to some not well-­stayed that the prince in these things suffereth them contrary to God’s word and her lawful authority (which—­thanks be to our heavenly Father for his abundant blessings most richly poured upon her—­is altogether otherways), or that all preachers and subjects obeying so orderly demands are but false prophets and flatterers. This is very sore judgment, to condemn all your brethren for man-­pleasers that obey their supreme governor under God in matters indifferent: of whom (as you know) a great number, when flattery was much more gainful, refused to do it, with no small danger. . . . The bonds and limits which you appoint for true obedience of subjects to their princes are very narrow & dangerous. For oftentimes the subject ought to obey in 3 {The passage in Calvin reads “Let us take, for example, the bending of the knee which is made in public prayer. It is asked, whether this is a human tradition, which any one is at liberty to repudiate or neglect? I say, that it is human, and that at the same time it is divine. It is of God, inasmuch as it is a part of that decency, the care and observance of which is recommended by the apostle; and it is of men, inasmuch as it specially determines what was indicated in general, rather than expounded.”}

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things not forbidden by God, and commanded by law, though he do not plainly perceive either for what good end they are required or to what end they will come, as daily experience in commonwealths do show. But (belike) you will have every man to understand as much as the prince and Council knoweth and intendeth or else you will set the subject at his choice. . . . The fifth and last reason general that moveth you utterly to refuse the receiving of apparel . . . is the consideration of Christian liberty, which thereby (you think) should be manifestly infringed, and so forth. And here you triumph in your texts: how Christ hath delivered us from the bondages of ceremonies and law. As touching Christian liberty, the faithful man must know that it is altogether spiritual and pertaineth only to the conscience. . . . This liberty consisteth herein, not to be holden & tied with any religion in external things, but that it may be lawful before God to use them or omit them as occasion shall serve. This persuasion a godly man must always retain & keep fast in his mind. But when he cometh to the use & action of them, then must he moderate and qualify his liberty according to charity towards his neighbor and obedience to his prince. So, though by this knowledge, his mind and conscience is always free, yet his doing is, as it were, tied or limited by law or love. Hereupon a well-­learned man saith, it is sufficient in Christian liberty to understand that before God it is no matter what meats or what clothes thou use . . . [Calv. {Inst. 4.10.5}]. ‡ First of all then, you judge that because these two things that remain come from the Jews & gentiles (which yet you do not fully prove), they ought utterly to be refused. . . . But let us weigh this reason further that would persuade us to use nothing that was invented by wicked and unbelieving authors. You yourselves say out of Polydore4 (we know) that God took from the Egyptians linen vestures, abused of them, and appointed the same for his own service. . . . Whereupon it may be truly thought that it is no great matter from whom that thing first cometh that serveth to godly use. Moses appointed tenths, though Hercules had his tithes. Christ appointed his memorial to be kept in bread & wine, though bread was offered before to Mithras [Ter{tullian}]. Who brought in marriages to be celebrate in churches? a bishop of Rome. Who used the ring first in wedding? the heathen. Whence are tithes taken up till this day? from the Jews. Whence were Seniors in the primitive Church and yet still? from the Jews. Easter day and Whitsuntide, general councils took from the Jews. Besides Sundays, our fathers feared not to decree certain holy days, though the gentiles had their solemnities. Times of fastings are appointed, though Marcion the heretic made laws thereof. But what need long searching in this matter, when Saint Paul institute{d} a feast in Christian churches about the Communion time [1 Cor. 11], though the gentiles there always had their . . . common banquets in their idols’ temples. And the gown that you yourselves would so gladly minister in seemeth to come either from Turks or Papists. . . . 4

{Polydore Vergil, De rerum inventoribus}

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‡ Last of all, you request two things. The one: that you may keep your conscience undefiled. This your petition in some things touching the worship of God might have his place; but in these matters (which you call indifferent), what is it that should defile you? the thing itself, or your weak opinion of it? The thing itself doth not pollute you. For (as S. Paul saith) to the pure, all things are pure. . . . Next you require freedom to teach your flocks by doctrine. This thing your bounden obedience may easily obtain; whereas by your own willfulness, you deprive yourselves thereof. . . . Meet is it that Christian people hear divers times of the freedom of conscience in meats, places, times, and days; and yet neither you nor they ought to disturb political {i.e., public} order lawfully taken. Which disturbance of public quiet in rites and ordinances (which may be for the variety of places divers, and yet to be straitly observed), what a great offence it is, not only the Scriptures may teach you, & the usage of Christ’s true Church, but also the determination of this Church in England, both agreed upon in King Edward’s days & also testified and subscribed by themselves, who now would gainsay their own doings then. The words which the whole Synod were well pleased withal, & whereunto all the clergy’s hands are set to, be these: It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one or utterly like, for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordered against the word of God. Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly (that other may fear to do the like) as one that offendeth against the common order of the Church and hurteth the authority of the magistrate and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.5 After these godly men’s judgments, if you go before your flock in this quiet manner, your example verily shall edify much. Thus therefore, if we all shall be faithful & wise servants, giving our Master’s household their duty of meat in due season, and also be found by our Lord when he cometh so doing, happy shall we be, and we shall have our portion, not with the hypocrites, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but with the blessed in the kingdom of the most mighty God, which is King of kings and Lord of lords, to whom be honor and rule everlasting. Amen Ephes. 4 But let us follow the truth in love, and in all things grow up into him which is the head, that is Christ. Phil. 3 Nevertheless, in that whereunto we are come, let us proceed by one rule, that we may be of one accord. {See article 34 of the Thirty-­nine articles ; this was article 33 in the Edwardian Forty-­two articles of 1553.} 5

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T ext: [Matthew Parker], A briefe examination for the tyme, of a certaine declaration, lately put in print in the name and defence of certaine ministers in London, refusyng to weare the apparell prescribed by the lawes and orders of the realme . . . (London: Richard Jugge, 1566) (NSTC 10387).

163

JOHN FIELD (1544/45–­1588)

A view of popish abuses yet remaining in the English Church, for the which godly ministers have refused to subscribe

At the time of writing the work that catapulted him into the vanguard of the radical puritan movement, A view of popish abuses yet remaining in the English Church, Field was perhaps twenty-­seven and already, in Patrick Collinson’s words, a “dedicated revolutionary” (86). He had received his BA from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1564; his MA three years later. From 1568 to 1571 he and Thomas Wilcox—­the principal author of the Admonition to the Parliament , which together with A view comprise a single tract—­were among the puritan ministers preaching at the near-­separatist London parish of Holy Trinity Minores; in 1570, the same year that Thomas Cartwright gave his uncompromisingly presbyterian lectures at Cambridge, the two also began organizing the city’s young radical clergy into an embryonic classis.1 In 1571, however, Convocation required all clergy to subscribe to the Prayer Book, vestments, and the Thirty-­nine articles as a condition for the renewal of their preaching licenses. Field, unsurprisingly, refused, and having thus forfeited his license to preach, was driven to the bleak expedient of teaching school. Within the year, he and Wilcox had started writing the Admonition and View, although the decision to publish this “declaration of ecclesiastical war” probably came after the Queen blocked a 1572 parliamentary bill that would have given puritan nonconformity a measure of legal toleration (ODNB). Both authors were soon in Newgate, sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, during which time someone oversaw the printing of a second, and perhaps third, edition. Upon his release, Field may have gone abroad, returning soon after Edmund Grindal’s elevation to the See of Canterbury in 1575. Grindal’s bottom-­line sympathies lay with the puritans, and for the next few years Field turned his polemical energies against Rome. When in 1583 the unsympathetic Whitgift succeeded Grindal, Field returned to the fray, masterminding the puritan opposition to the bishops and the Book of Common Prayer, for which in 1585 he was once again suspended from preaching. He may have played a role A classis (or presbytery) is the presbyterian assembly of pastors and elders governing a group of local churches. 1

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in the Marprelate pamphlets, which relied heavily on his extensive dossier of rumored clerical misdoings, but he escaped the legal consequences by dying around the same time that the first pamphlet appeared in print. [\

The Admonition—­including A view, with which it was invariably bound—­has to be seen in the context both of its immediate moment and of the long arc of Elizabethan puritanism. In the short term, the work bespeaks puritan frustration at Parliament’s failure in 1566, 1571, and 1572 to pass legislation that would have abolished misliked aspects of the Elizabethan Settlement or at least have allowed those who found certain provisions intolerable to ignore them—­each parliamentary failure followed by a crackdown on nonconformists. The shrill anti-­popery of A view also bears the imprint of the tense years of actual and threatened Roman Catholic violence between the 1569 Northern Uprising, followed by the papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth, and the St. Bartholomew Day massacre in late August of 1572. The events did not create the tract’s rhetoric of fear and loathing, but they help explain why it found a receptive audience. Although most of the puritan old guard proved less receptive, signaling an emergent split between conformist and nonconformist godly, Thomas Cartwright chimed in with a Second admonition, and across the country a groundswell of enthusiasm for these Admonitioners’ “new and militant” brand of puritanism moved towards the brink of open revolt against the established Church. London’s Bishop Sandys, an evangelical Calvinist with no great love for vestments and ceremonies, thus wrote Burghley that “the deceitful devil, enemy to religion, hath so poured out the poison of sedition” that even the Paul’s Cross preachers “most spitefully inveighed against the ecclesiastical policy now by law established, confirming Mr. Cartwright’s book [the Second admonition] as the true platform of the sincere and apostolical Church”; conventicles and conspiracies were afoot; and the authors of the Admonition were “honored for saints,” leading Sandys to warn that London “will never be quiet until these authors of sedition who are now esteemed as gods, as Field, Wilcox, Cartwright, and other, be far removed from the City” (Frere xviii–­xix). When in June 1573 the Crown issued a proclamation ordering that all copies of the Admonition be turned in to the authorities, not a single person complied. A new edition of the Admonition tracts appeared in 1644 when Sandys’ feared revolt finally erupted.2 The principal long-­term significance of Field and Wilcox’s pamphlet was to inject Cartwright’s Beza-­style divine-­right presbyterianism into the public contest between the puritans and the bishops’ party, which up to this point had centered on vestments and ceremonies. Although the Admonition’s call for root-­and-­branch reform faded by the mid-­1570s, it remained a powerful, if latent, ideal, one that sprang back to life whenever the Church mounted a strong push for ceremonial conformity. Field’s specific complaints regarding the kneeling for communion, saints’ days, vestments, organs, and the like were long-­standing puritan gravamina, nor was there anything novel in his demand for “further reform” according to “the word of God as interpreted 2 Another edition was printed in Leiden in 1617 on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, and Collinson notes a 1578 edition (not in EEBO), which he views as evidence that Grindal’s policy of moderation failed largely due to “the provocations of the puritan left wing” (208).

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by ‘the best reformed churches’” (Collinson, 36). Yet, perhaps because of the polemical bitterness and journalistic punch of Field’s style, the Admonition tracts, including Cartwright’s follow-­up Second admonition, became the definitive statement of the puritan position; it is to these that Whitgift and Hooker respond . In the original, biblical citations fill the margins of A view: a compelling demonstration of Scriptural fidelity, but only as long as one does not check the actual passages cited. In the portion reprinted below, we have retained a representative note, whose half-­dozen biblical verses cited to show God’s dislike of reading (as opposed to preaching) ministers upon inspection turn out not to address the subject. The real basis of Field’s churchmanship is not Scripture but the best-­reformed Churches of the Continent, and in particular that of Geneva. The normativity of the Genevan model drastically enlarges the scope of Field’s anti-­ popery to cover not just late medieval “corruptions” but the entire span of Christian history, including the patristic era, which Jewel’s semiofficial Apology for the Church of England made the touchstone of legitimate worship.3 For Field, the previous 1500 years smell of popery; he thus rejects the practice of standing for the Gospel, scornfully noting that it “came from Anastatius the pope, in an. 404.” That the practice (to put it another way) goes back to the lifetime of St. Augustine cuts no ice with Field: whatever finds no place in the best-­reformed Churches belongs on the “popish dunghill.” For we must not, Field avers, “so much as communicate with the tail of the Beast.” [\ Sources: ODNB (John Field, Edwin Sandys); Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, eds., Puritan manifestoes (London, 1907).

3 Note that even for Foxe, who shared many of Field’s objections to the Book of Common Prayer, the great falling-­off of the Church of Rome dates from 1215 (see the 1570 preface to Acts and monuments .)

166

JOHN FIELD

A view of popish abuses yet remaining in the English Church, for the which godly ministers have refused to subscribe

15721

Whereas immediately after the last Parliament, holden at Westminster, begun in anno 1570 and ended in anno 1571, the ministers of God’s holy word and sacraments were called before her Majesty’s high commissioners and enforced to subscribe unto the Articles, if they would keep their places and livings; and some for refusing to subscribe were unbrotherly and uncharitably intreated, and from their offices and places removed; may it please therefore this honorable and high court of Parliament, in consideration of the premises {i.e., foregoing}, to take a view of such causes as then did withhold, and now doth, the foresaid ministers from subscribing and consenting unto those foresaid articles. . . .

The first article First, that the book commonly called the Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England, authorized by Parliament, and all & every the contents therein, be such as are not repugnant to the word of God.

Albeit, right honorable & dearly beloved, we have at all times borne with that which we could not amend in this book, and have used the same in our ministry so far forth as we might, reverencing those times & those persons in which and by whom it was first authorized, being studious of peace and of the building up of Christ’s Church, yet now, being compelled by subscription to allow the same & to confess it not to be against the word of God in any point, but tolerable, we must needs say as followeth: that this book is an unperfect book, culled & picked out of that popish dunghill, the portuise {i.e., breviary} and Mass book, full of all abominations. . . . . . . 3. In this book, days are ascribed unto saints and kept holy with fasts on their evens, & prescript service appointed for them, which, beside that they are of many superstitiously {This text has been heavily cut, because many passages echo arguments set forth in Field and Wilcox’s Admonition, which is included among the ecclesiology readings .} 1

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kept and observed, are also contrary to the commandment of God, Six days shalt thou labor; and therefore we, for the superstition that is put in them, dare not subscribe to allow them.2 . . . 8. The public baptism, that also is full of childish & superstitious toys. First in their prayer they say that God by the baptism of his Son Jesus Christ did sanctify the flood Jordan, and all other waters, to the mystical washing away of sin, attributing that to the sign which is proper to the work of God in the blood of Christ—­a s though vertue were in water, to wash away sins. . . . Fourthly, they do superstitiously and wickedly institute a new sacrament, which is proper to Christ only, marking the child in the forehead with a cross in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ. . . . We say nothing of those that are admitted to be witnesses, what ill choice there is made of them, how convenient it were, seeing the children of the faithful only are to be baptized, that the father should and might, if conveniently, offer & present his child to be baptized, making an open confession of that faith wherein he would have his child baptized, as is used in well-­reformed Churches. . . . 11. They appoint a prescript kind of service to bury the dead; and that which is the duty of every Christian, they tie alone to the minister, whereby prayer for the dead is maintained, and partly gathered out of some of the prayers where they pray that we, with this our brother & all other departed in the true faith of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body & soul. . . . As for the superstitions used both in country and city for the place of burial—­which way they must lie; how they must be fetched to church, the minister meeting them at church stile with surplice, with a company of greedy clarks; that a cross, white or black, must be set upon the dead corpse; that bread must be given to the poor, and offerings in burial time used, and cakes sent abroad to friends—­by cause these are rather used of custom and superstition than by the authority of the book. . . . God be merciful unto us, and open our eyes that we may see what that good and acceptable will of God is, and be more earnest to provoke his glory. . . . 13. In all their order or service there is no edification according to the rule of the Apostle, but confusion: they toss the psalms in most places like tennis balls.3 They pray that all men may be saved, & that they may be delivered from thundering & tempest, when no danger is nigh. . . . When Jesus is named, then off goeth the cap and down goeth the knees with such a scraping on the ground that they cannot hear a good while after. . . . As for organs and curious singing, though they be proper to popish dens (I mean to cathedral churches4), yet some others also must have them. The Queen’s chapel and these churches, which should be spectacles of Christian reformation, are rather patterns and precedents to the people of all superstitions. 14. Their pontifical5 (which is annexed to the Book of Common Prayer, and whereunto, subscribing to the Articles, we must subscribe also), whereby they consecrate {On the celebration of saints’ days in the Elizabethan Church, see Hooker, Laws .} {I.e., antiphonally; see Hooker, Laws 5.39.1–­2 .} 4 {See Stanford Lehmberg, The Reformation of cathedrals (Princeton, 1988).} 5 {The Roman Catholic liturgical book containing the offices and sacraments that only a bishop could perform: e.g., confirmation and ordination. These offices were included in the Book of Common Prayer.} 2 3

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bishops, make ministers & deacons, is nothing else but a thing word for word drawn out of the pope’s pontifical, wherein he showeth himself to be antichrist most lively. . . . And as safely may we, by the warrant of God’s word, subscribe to allow the dominion of the pope universally to reign over the Church of God, as of an archbishop over an whole province, or a lord bishop over a diocese which containeth many shires and parishes. For the dominion that they exercise—­t he archbishop above them, & they above the rest of their brethren—­is unlawful, and expressly forbidden by the word of God. . . .

The 2 article That the manner and order appointed by public authority about the administration of the sacraments and common prayers, and that the apparel by sufficient authority appointed for the ministers within the Church of England, be not wicked nor against the word of God, but tolerable; and being commanded for order and obedience sake, are to be used.

. . .

And as for the apparel, though we have been long borne in hand, and yet are, that it is for order and decency commanded, & yet we know and have proved that there is neither order nor comeliness nor obedience in using it. . . . But they are as the garments of the idol, to which we should say, avaunt and get thee hence. They are as the garments of Balaamites, of popish priests, enemies to God and all Christians. . . . Therefore can no authority by the word of God, with any pretense of order and obedience, command them nor make them in any wise tolerable, but by circumstances they are wicked and against the word of God. . . . Neither6 is the controversy betwixt them and us as they would bear the world in hand, as for a cap, a tippet, or a surplice, but for great matters concerning a true ministry and regiment of the Church according to the word. Which things once established, the other melt away of themselves. . . . We strive for true religion & government of the Church, and show you the right way to throw out Antichrist both head and tail, and that we will not so much as communicate with the tail of the Beast; but they, after they have thrust Antichrist out by the head, go about to pull him in again by the tail, cunningly coloring it lest any man should espy his footsteps, as Cacus did when he stole the oxen.7 For if it might please her Majesty, by the advice of you, right Honorable, in this high court of Parliament, to hear us by writing or otherwise to defend ourselves, then, such is the equity of our cause that we would trust to find favor in her Majesty’s sight. . . . If this cannot be obtained, we will by God’s grace address ourselves to defend his truth by suffering, and willingly lay our heads to the block, and this shall be our peace: to have quiet consciences with our God, whom we will abide for, with all patience, until he work our full deliverance.

The 3 article That the articles of religion which only concern the true Christian faith and the doctrine of the sacraments, comprised in a book imprinted Articles whereupon it was agreed by both archbishops, &c., and every of them contain true & godly Christian doctrine. 6 7

{From this point through “oxen” was added in the second edition.} {Vergil, Aeneid 8.184–­305}

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For the {Thirty-­nine} articles concerning that substance of doctrine (using a godly interpretation in a point or two, which are either too sparely or else too darkly set down), we were & are ready, according to duty, to subscribe unto them. We would to God that as they hold the substance together with us, and we with them, so they would not deny the effect and vertue thereof.8 Then should not our words and works be divorced, but Christ should be suffered to reign, a true ministry according to the word instituted, discipline exercised, sacraments purely and sincerely ministered. This is that we strive for and about which we have suffered. . . . [\ T ext: [John Field], A view of popishe abuses yet remayning in the Englishe Church, for the which godly ministers have refused to subscribe (Hemel Hempstead?,? 1572) (STC 10848).

8

[The right government of the Church cannot be separated from the doctrine. 1 Timoth. 3:2.]

170

JOHN WHITGIFT (1530/31?–­1604)

The defense of the Answer to the “Admonition” against the reply of T. C.

If Whitgift was in fact born in 1530 or 1531, he was some years older than most of his classmates when he matriculated at Pembroke in 1550. In 1577 he became bishop of Worcester; in 1583, archbishop of Canterbury. One always thinks of him as archbishop of Canterbury. However, when he published the Defense in 1574, he had been at Cambridge for nearly a quarter-­century: master of Trinity since 1567, twice vice-­chancellor in the early 1570s.1 This introduction will confine itself to Whitgift’s university decades, which overlap, as it turns out, the more checkered Cambridge career of the Defense’s principal antagonist, Thomas Cartwright. The year Whitgift matriculated at Pembroke, its master, the future Marian martyr Nicholas Ridley, defended the conformist position (along many of the same lines as his new undergraduate would later use) against John Hooper’s violent objections to cope and surplice—­a debate that inaugurated the Vestiarian Controversy, itself the precursor to the Admonition Controversy in which Whitgift took over the defense. Whitgift’s tutor at Pembroke was John Bradford, another Marian martyr. Whitgift escaped the flames thanks to the good offices of Andrew Perne, who made him a fellow of Peterhouse, where Perne had just become master.2 Whitgift took his MA in 1557, but did not enter holy orders until 1560. In 1563 Whitgift received his BTh and was appointed the Lady Margaret professor of divinity. Shortly thereafter the Vestiarian Controversy flared up at Cambridge. At this point Whitgift appears to have been part of a moderate group sympathetic to puritan objections but alarmed by the extremist rhetoric. By 1566, however, he had come to share the rather less sympathetic view of the university’s normally very sympathetic, tolerant, and long-­suffering chancellor, William Cecil. Thereafter, in the 1 In 1571, however, he became dean of Lincoln; thereafter until 1577 he spent part of each year in that diocese, although retaining his post at Trinity. 2 On Perne, see Collinson, “Perne the turncoat,” in his Elizabethan essays, 179–­218; Shuger, “Protesting,” 608–­13, 616.

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words of H. C. Porter, the future archbishop “fought to the top of his strength pro Ecclesia Dei” (170). The battle that concerns us took place between 1570 and 1574. In 1567, the year Whitgift was appointed both regius professor of divinity and master of Trinity, Cartwright returned to Cambridge, having left for Ireland in 1565 as chaplain3 to the bishop of Armagh after a failed attempt to radicalize Trinity. Restored to his fellowship, in 1569 Cartwright was appointed to the Lady Margaret professorship formerly held by Whitgift. His 1570 lecture series on Acts depicted the apostolic Church as more or less identical to Calvin’s Genevan model, which Cartwright concluded must be considered “normative for all time, and by which the hierarchical, episcopal Church of England stood utterly condemned”—­a conclusion that makes him, Collinson remarks, “the true progenitor of English presbyterianism” (ODNB). William Chaderton and Edmund Grindal quickly wrote Cecil, warning him of the firebrand just thrown in the haystack. When the smoke and heat finally dissipated after a near meltdown at the 1570 Commencement, Cambridge had a new set of statutes, drafted primarily by Whitgift, that transferred much of the authority previously held by the regent-­masters (the MA teaching fellows, most of whom were in their twenties) to the vice-­chancellor and the heads of the colleges. Taking advantage of their provisions, in December of 1570 the university leadership ordered Cartwright to recant and, upon his refusal, stripped him of his chair. Cartwright immediately left for Geneva, accompanied by his fellow-­presbyterian Walter Travers, whom Whitgift had just expelled from Trinity. Over the next few years they would publish the foundational texts of English presbyterianism. At the urging of his followers, in 1572 Cartwright returned to Cambridge, only to be deprived of his Trinity fellowship by Whitgift, who was of course master, on the grounds that by not entering the ministry, Cartwright had violated both his own oath and college statutes. He probably had no direct connection to the Admonition to Parliament, which burst on the scene that June. Whitgift, however, did. The 1572 Convocation, whose meetings were concurrent with the Parliament to which the Admonition was addressed, elected Whitgift president of its lower house, so he saw firsthand the unfolding of events leading up to the Admonition’s defiant attack on the English Church. Soon thereafter, Whitgift was chosen to mount that Church’s defense. His Answer to a certain libel entitled “An admonition” came out in November; after it had gone to the printers, there appeared an anonymous Second admonition, so in February of 1573 Whitgift issued a revised Answer, which dealt with both Admonitions. In April Cartwright joined the debate with his Reply, and then prudently fled to Heidelberg. At Archbishop Parker’s request, Whitgift composed a final, synthesizing contribution to the debate, the 1574 Defense of the “Answer” excerpted below, leaving other men to respond to Cartwright’s subsequent volleys. In the years that followed, Whitgift became archbishop of Canterbury. Cartwright studied at the University of Heidelberg, returning to England in 1585 as the master of the newly endowed Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick, a sinecure that allowed him to continue his work as a presbyterian organizer—­and consequently to spend a year or two in prison. He and Whitgift, who had both begun their undergraduate studies in 1550, 3

Cartwright must have been a deacon by that point; he was never ordained as a priest.

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would die two months apart: Cartwright at Warwick in late December 1603, Whitgift at Lambeth in late February 1604. [\

The first thing one notices in the selection that follows is the radicalism of the opening quotation from the Admonition: its stated goal is to make readers “detest” the English Church and therefore with “might and main endeavor” to bring in Genevan presbyterianism—­ or as the Admonition phrases it, to have “Christ reign in his Church.” The second thing to notice, however, is how the disputation format of the Defense (the standard point-­by-­ point quotation-­and-­rejoinder mode of post-­Reformation controversy) cools the rhetorical temperature. For all the defects of this mode, it does force the controversy down from the barricades. One also notes throughout Whitgift’s citation of leading Continental Reformers in support of his position. The practice of canvassing and citing Protestant auctores went back to the early stages of the Vestiarian Controversy and was used by both sides.4 The material Whitgift quotes, however, comes as something of a surprise, with Reformers from Geneva and Zurich arguing in favor of unity, conformity, and retaining the old church bells. These passages yield a rather different picture of the Reformed tradition than one gets from reading early Stuart controversies (or, for that matter, Hooker’s Laws); they explain why “moderate puritans” like Chaderton and Grindal had little patience with Cartwright (Dent 174–­75); more important, they give substance to Peter Lake’s comment that the Whitgift-­Cartwright debate was “a struggle for the English protestant tradition” (Anglicans 26). The impression one gets (and is meant to get) from Whitgift’s quotations is that the Church of England belongs to the Reformation mainstream, and the presbyterian fundamentalism of the Admonitioners does not. Yet, although Whitgift argues that the Continental Reformers support his position, he does not appeal to the Continental Reformed Churches as legitimating precedents. The appeal is always to long-­standing Christian tradition: that the usage in question arose “before the pope was antichrist” and has been “of very long continuance in the Church.” He does not oppose long-­standing Christian tradition to Reformed practice, but for him the former alone provides the normative model; we refer to our Churches as reformed, he observes, “rather than newly builded” because “we retain whatsoever we find to be good,” while refusing or reforming “that which is evil” .5 The Admonitioners, of course, bend all their force against this position, on the ground that such “good” practices had been contaminated by popery, which “was so toxic” that even “the last vestiges” presented an intolerable danger (Lake, Anglicans, 47). Cartwright even suggests replacing the traditional usages with Islamic ones as a way of cutting the insidious cords binding Christ’s Church to the papist idolatry of its neighbors and its past . Cartwright’s fearful picture of Romish contamination draws on one of Whitgift’s most-­cited Reformed supporters, the Zürcher Heinrich Bullinger, whose 1528 On the 4 See Chavura, 188–­93; Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, 80–­81, 109–­10; Anne Overell, Italian reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–­c. 1585 (Ashgate, 2008), 184. 5 References to the Defense indicate the tractatus, chapter, and division numbers, although in arabic rather than Whitgift’s roman numerals.

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origin of errors presented “the least ritual innovation as a dangerous step down the slippery slope to popery” (Benedict, 58). While Whitgift does not misquote his Reformed sources, nonetheless the actual worship and discipline of the Continental Reformed Churches had more in common with the Admonitioners’ vision than with the Elizabethan Settlement. The role of the sacraments in The defense is of particular interest. Recent studies of Reformation-era sacramental theologies focus on questions of divine presence. The issue surfaces in the Whitgift-­Cartwright exchange, but only on the periphery. Instead, for both men the sacraments bear directly on the nature of Church authority and Christian community. Beginning in Tractatus II, the two men spar over the relation of sacrament to ceremony, with Cartwright taking the initially astonishing position that a sacrament is simply a significant sign, and so any ecclesiastical ceremony to which a signification is attached (e.g., the ring in marriage) is a sacrament . That is, he takes a strictly memorialist position—­one even more attenuated than Zwingli’s, and far removed from the spiritual real presence theology of Calvin, whose footsteps Cartwright elsewhere follows.6 Whitgift, by contrast, takes the orthodox Reformed view of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), whose generous, if syncretic, definition of the sacraments he quotes . In theory, Cartwright should have agreed with him; the Genevan Church, whose teachings he normally embraces, endorsed this Confession (Benedict 57). The memorialist view, however, had an overriding advantage for Cartwright, because Whitgift had early on admitted that the negative argument from Scripture holds with respect to matters of faith and necessary for salvation, a category that includes sacraments . If significant ceremonies are eo ipso sacraments, then any ceremony that Scripture does not mandate, it forbids. For Whitgift, only preaching and the two dominical sacraments are “of God”; in other respects, the Church remains a human institution, its practices and forms subject to human (ecclesiastical) authority.7 By contrast, Cartwright’s equation of ceremonies with sacraments, like his parallel equation of discipline with “matters of faith and necessary to salvation,” makes Scripture the sole authority for “all things pertaining to the Church; yea, of whatsoever things can fall into any part of man’s life” . As the remainder of this paragraph indicates, part of his motivation for turning Scripture into a comprehensive rule book derives from the voluntarist ethics Cartwright shares with most Calvinists: “no man can glorify God in anything but by obedience; and there is no obedience but in respect of the commandment and word of God.” The sacraments return to center stage in Tractatus XV and XVI, but here the focus shifts to Church membership and Christian community: specifically, whether a suspected papist might be admitted to Communion without a “clear renouncing of popery with which he hath been defiled” and whether only the children of godly parents (or at least one godly parent) should be granted baptism. Cartwright makes the fundamental issue 6 Such memorialism seems to have been typical of English Calvinism; see Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, 368, as well as the Coverdale/Calvin reading in the Reformation section . 7 See articles 20 and 25 of the Thirty-­nine articles .

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crystal-­clear: is the Church the “house of God” into which “only the family of God” may enter” or a common inn open to “clean and unclean” . The effect of Cartwright’s position (and presumably its intent) would be to drive parishioners either out of the Church or into the camp of the godly. This would at a swoop remove a main problem facing puritan ministers: namely, the numerous indifferent, recalcitrant, and hostile parishioners—­some drunkards or whoremongers, some crypto-­papists, most (like Dent’s Asunetus) content with mere Christianity—­who resisted further reformation and accused their minister of factionalism for preaching it. Once the swine were gone (to use Cartwright’s metaphor ) and the goats forced to behave as sheep, the visible Church could become “the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.”8 Whitgift, in turn, defends the Elizabethan Church’s traditional practice of baptizing every child brought to the font and allowing all “content to conform themselves to the outward orders of the Church” to “communicate with us in the word and sacraments” .9 Both men shape their arguments to meet the emergent occasion and on behalf of their respective ideological cohorts; yet it again seems worth noting the deep temporal underpinnings of the opposing positions. Whitgift’s view of the Church as “a net that gathereth together of all kind of fish,” “the evil . . . mixed with the good” until (to mix a metaphor) “the time of harvest” is that of St. Augustine, who, in wrestling with the Donatist schism within the African Church, came to hold that “the actual community of Christians which constitutes the visible Church is a mixed body, containing the holy and wicked side by side”—­not, as the Donatists argued, the walled garden of Canticles “set in the midst of an alien profane world,” but a place where, on any given Sunday, aspiring saints mingled with “drunkards, misers, tricksters, gamblers, adulterers, fornicators, {and} people wearing amulets” (Brown, 213). Moreover, although Elizabethan puritans angrily rejected the label, Cartwright’s picture of the visible Church as “a community of true believers . . . in the midst of a corrupt and corrupting world” and fearful of “contact with the ‘unclean’ thing” seems identical to the Donatist one (Lake, 29; Brown, 214–­18). The key difference between the Donatist and puritan positions was that, although both considered the Catholic Church false and corrupt, Donatists further held that a false, corrupt Church lacked valid sacraments—­hence the Donatist practice of rebaptizing Catholic converts. Reformed theologians, of course, begged to differ, but it is precisely this difference that Whitgift’s barbed questions in 16.4.3 seek to erode: if, as Cartwright claims, the children of papists ought not be baptized since their parents, qua papists, remain outside the Church, then how, Whitgift queries, could baptism by popish priests—­for example, the popish priests who baptized John Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright in the 1530s—­be valid? [\

Note on the Text: The structure of the Defense can be somewhat confusing, because each of its numbered sections and subsections includes the relevant portions of the From the Venite (Psalm 95), said at the beginning of Morning Prayer This was also Bullinger’s position (Benedict, 54). For a historical overview of the theology of baptism, particularly infant baptism, see Wood’s entry on baptism in Encyclopedia of religion and ethics. 8 9

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Admonition to Parliament, Whitgift’s Answer, and Cartwright’s Reply (under the heading “T.C.”), plus Whitgift’s own response to Cartwright (under the heading “Jo. Whitgift”). The reading below preserves the layout of the Defense, but we have put all Whitgift’s responses in Roman type, and all the puritan materials in italic. [\ Sources: ODNB; Benedict, Christ’s churches; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (Berkeley, 1969); Stephen Chavura, Tudor Protestant political thought, 1547–­1603 (Leiden, 2011); Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; Collinson, Godly people; David Keep, “Bullinger’s intervention in the vestiarian controversy of 1566,” Evangelical Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1975): 223–­30; Charles Porterfield Krauth, Infant baptism and infant salvation in the Calvinistic system (Philadelphia, 1874); Lake, Anglicans; R. A. Markus, “The Latin fathers,” in The Cambridge history of medieval political thought, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge, 1988), 92–­122; Porter, Reformation and reaction; Shuger, Political theologies in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke, 2001); H. G. Wood, “Baptism (later Christian),” in vol. 2 of James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of religion and ethics, 13 vols. (New York, 1908–­1926).

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The defense of the Answer to the “Admonition” against the reply of T. C.

1574

‡

Of the authority of the Church in things indifferent: Tract. II Some things may be tolerated in the Church touching order, ceremonies, discipline, and kind of government, not expressed in the word of God {Tract. II} Chapter i. The first division Admonition

Seeing. . . . 1 Answer to the Admonition, Page 20, Sect. 1 and 2

I will not answer words but matter, nor bare affirmations or negations but reasons; and therefore in as few words as I can I will comprehend many lines. But, before I enter into their reasons, I think it not amiss to examine that assertion which is the chief and principal ground (so far as I can gather) of their book; that is, that those things only are to be placed in the Church which the Lord himself in his word commandeth. As though they should say, nothing is to be tolerated in the Church of Christ touching either doctrine, order, ceremonies, discipline, or government, except it be expressed in the word of God. And therefore the most of their arguments in this book be taken ab auctoritate negative, which by the rules of logic prove nothing at all. T. C. Page 13, Sect. 2

You give occasion of suspicion that your end will be scarce good, which have made so evil a beginning. . . . Many things are both commanded and forbidden for which there is no express 1

{Whitgift here quotes the first ¶ of the Admonition, which can be found on page .}

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mention in the word, which are as necessarily to be followed or avoided as those whereof express mention is made. . . . Hereupon you conclude that their arguments taken ab auctoritate negative prove nothing. When the question is of the authority of a man, indeed it neither holdeth affirmatively nor negatively. . . . But forsomuch as the Lord God, determining to set before our eyes a perfect form of his Church, is both able to do it and hath done it, a man may reason both ways necessarily: the Lord hath commanded it should be in his Church; therefore it must. And of the other side: he hath not commanded; therefore it must not be. . . . Jo. Whitgift

This my interpretation of their words is grounded upon the whole discourse and drift of their book, as it may evidently appear to be true to any that hath eyes to see and ears to hear; and show you, if you can, any one place in their book which doth overthrow this my interpretation of their words. . . . But I think you were not well advised when you said that many things are both commanded and forbidden of which there is no express mention in the word of God, which are as necessarily to be followed or avoided as those whereof express mention is made. . . . If you mean that many things are commanded or forbidden to be done, necessary unto salvation, which notwithstanding are not expressed in the word of God, then I see not how you differ from that opinion which is the ground of all papistry: that is, that all things necessary unto salvation are not expressed in the Scriptures. Howsoever you mean it, it cannot be true; for there is nothing necessary to eternal life which is not both commanded and expressed in the Scripture. I count it expressed when it is either in manifest words contained in Scripture or thereof gathered by necessary collection. . . . . . . Whether all things pertaining to the outward form of the Church be particularly expressed or commanded in the Scripture, or no, is the question that we have now in controversy: that God could do it, and therefore hath done it, is no good reason, no more than it is for the real presence in the sacrament. Affirmatively the argument is always good of the authority of the Scripture: as God hath there commanded it to be done; therefore it must be done. . . . But negatively it holdeth not, except in matters of salvation and damnation; which is not my opinion only, but the opinion of the best interpreters. Zwinglius . . . reproveth them {i.e., anabaptists} for reasoning on this sort . . . : We read not that the apostles baptized infants; ergo, they are not to be baptized. . . . {Tract. II} Chapter i. The Second Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 21, Sect. 1, 2, 3

It is most true that nothing ought to be tolerated in the Church as necessary unto salvation or as an article of faith, except it be expressly contained in the word of God or may manifestly thereof be gathered; and therefore we utterly condemn and reject transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, the authority of the bishop of Rome, worshipping of images, &c. . . . 178



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But you say that in matters of faith and necessary to salvation it holdeth, which things you oppose after and set against matters of ceremonies, orders, discipline, and government; as though matters of discipline and kind of government were not matters necessary to salvation, and of faith. . . . Jo. Whitgift

That matters of ceremonies, discipline, and kind of government be matters necessary unto salvation is a doctrine strange and unheard of to me; whereof I will by and by speak more at large, after I have in a word or two answered your objections. . . . Certainly no government is to be brought into the Church that is directly against the word of God . . . but it doth not therefore follow to make this a general rule, that the government of the Church, or kind of government, is necessary to salvation. . . . . . . . . . Furthermore, you know that the supper and baptism be not only ceremonies but also sacraments, instituted and commanded by Christ, having promises of salvation annexed unto them; and so have not other ceremonies. And you speak too basely of them when you call them ceremonies, not showing how or in what sort they may be so called. It is the next way to bring the sacraments into contempt, and it argueth that you have not so reverent an opinion of them as you ought to have. . . . But now to your paradox: you say that matters of discipline and kind of government are matters necessary to salvation, and of faith. . . . There are two kinds of government in the Church, the one invisible, the other visible; the one spiritual, the other external. The invisible and spiritual government of Church is when God, by his Spirit, gifts, and ministry of his word, doth govern it by ruling in the hearts and consciences of men and directing them in all things necessary to everlasting life. This kind of government indeed is necessary to salvation, and it is in the Church of the elect only. The visible and external government is that which is executed by man, and consisteth of external discipline and visible ceremonies practiced in that Church and over that Church that containeth in it both good and evil, which is usually called the visible Church of Christ. . . . . . . That any one kind or government is so necessary that without it the Church cannot be saved, or that it may not be altered into some other kind thought to be more expedient, I utterly deny; and the reasons that move me so to do be these: The first is because I find no one certain and perfect kind of government prescribed or commanded in the Scriptures to the Church of Christ; which no doubt should have been done, if it had been a matter necessary unto the salvation of the Church. Secondly, because the essential notes of the Church be these only: the true preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments. . . . {Tract. II} Chapter i. The Third Division T. C. Page 14, Sect. 1 and 2.

And it is no small injury which you do unto the word of God, to pin it in so narrow room as that it should be able to direct us but in the principal points of our religion; or as though the 179



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substance of religion, or some rude and unfashioned matter of building of the Church, were uttered in them, and those things were left out that should pertain to the form and fashion of it; or as if there were in the Scriptures only to cover her nakedness and not also chains and bracelets and rings and other jewels to adorn her and set her out. . . . These things you seem to say when you say that matters necessary to salvation and of faith are contained in the Scripture, especially when you oppose these things to ceremonies, order, discipline, and government. And, if you mean by matters of faith and necessary to salvation, those without which a man cannot be saved, then the doctrine that teacheth there is no free-­will or prayer for the dead is not within your compass. For I doubt not but divers of the Fathers of the Greek Church, which were great patrons of free-­will, are saved, holding the foundation of the faith, which is Christ. . . . Jo. Whitgift

. . . I give that perfection to the word of God which the word itself requireth and all godly-­ learned men consent unto. . . . If I mean, say you, by matters of faith and necessary to salvation, those without the which a man cannot be saved, &c. I cannot but muse what you mean willingly to pretend ignorance. Is this, think you, a sound argument: Divers of the Fathers of the Greek Church, which were great patrons of free-­will, are saved, holding the foundation of the faith, which is Christ; ergo, the doctrine of free-­will is not a doctrine of salvation or damnation? You might as well say that many in the popish Church, which believed that the pope was supreme head of the Church . . . and such like points of papistical religion, be saved; ergo, these are no matters of salvation or damnation. Surely by the same reason all other kind of sins (almost) might be without this compass. But it may please you to understand that the mercy of God in his Son Jesus Christ is infinite, and that he pardoneth at his good will and pleasure not only misbelief proceeding of ignorance but willful errors and sins also, though they be of themselves damnable; he also altereth the mind of man even in a moment; and therefore, as his mercies be infinite, so be his judgments unsearchable. . . . But leaving the weight of such kind of arguments to the consideration of the reader, I come to the purpose. When I say that an argument holdeth negatively from the authority of the Scripture in matters of faith and necessary to salvation, my meaning is manifest: which is this, that the Scriptures do contain all things necessary to be believed and to salvation; and therefore whatsoever is taught unto us as an article of faith and necessary to salvation, not contained in the Scriptures, that same to be false and untrue and therefore to be rejected: as for example, the doctrine of free-­will, of purgatory, of praying for the dead. . . . {Tract. II} Chapter i. The Fourth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 21, Sect. 4

But that no ceremony, order, discipline, or kind of government may be in the Church, except the same be expressed in the word of God, is a great absurdity and breedeth many inconveniences. T. C. Page 14, Sect. 3.

But to the end it may appear that this speech of yours doth something take up and shrink the arms of the Scripture, which otherwise are so long and large, I say that the word of God 180



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containeth the direction of all things pertaining to the Church; yea, of whatsoever things can fall into any part of man’s life. . . . St Paul saith that, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we must do it to the glory of God. But no man can glorify God in anything but by obedience; and there is no obedience but in respect of the commandment and word of God. Therefore it followeth that the word of God directeth a man in all his actions. . . . But the place of St Paul in the xiv to the Romans is of all other most clear, where, speaking of those things which are called indifferent, in the end he concludeth that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. But faith is not but in respect of the word of God; therefore whatsoever is not done by the word of God is sin. . . . Whereupon it falleth out that—­forasmuch as in all our actions, even civil and private, we ought to follow the direction of the word of God—­in matters of the Church and which concern all, there may be nothing done but by the word of God. Not that we say as you charge us in these words, when you say that we say that no ceremony, &c. may be in the Church except the same be expressed in the word of God; but that in making orders and ceremonies of the Church it is not lawful to do what men list, but they are bound to follow the general rules of the Scripture that are given to be the square whereby those should be squared out. Jo. Whitgift

. . .

. . . {Regarding} 1 Cor. x, Whether therefore we eat or drink, &c. . . . the true meaning of St Paul in that place is that we seek the glory of God in all things and do nothing that is against his word and commandment. He glorifieth God in meat and drink, which acknowledgeth God to be the giver of them and then is thankful for them and useth them moderately, &c. . . . . . . But what need I labor so much in a matter at the length confessed by yourself? For you deny that you say that no ceremony, &c., may be in the Church except the same be expressed in the word of God, but that in making orders and ceremonies of the Church, it is not lawful to do what men list, &c. Hold you here, and we shall soon agree. . . . ‡ {Tract. II} Chapter i. The Sixth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 21, Sect. 5, 6, and Page 22, Sect. 1, 2

. . . The Scripture hath not appointed what time or where the congregation shall meet for common prayer and for the hearing of the word of God, neither yet any discipline for the correcting of such as shall contemn the same. The Scripture hath not appointed what day in the week should be most meet for the Sabbath-­day, whether Saturday, which is the Jews’ Sabbath, or the day now observed, which was appointed by the Church. The Scripture hath not determined what form is to be used in matrimony, what words, what prayers, what exhortations. The Scripture speaketh not one word of standing, sitting, or kneeling at the Communion; of meeting in churches, fields, or houses to hear the word of God; of preaching in pulpits, 181



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chairs, or otherwise; of baptizing in fonts, in basins, or rivers, openly or privately, at home or in the church, every day in the week or on the Sabbath-­day only. And yet no man (as I suppose) is so simple to think that the Church hath no authority to take order in these matters. T. C. Page 15, Sect. ult. and Page 16, Sect. 1

. . . Because I will not draw the reader willingly into more questions than are already put up, I will not stand to dispute whether the Lord’s day (which we call Sunday) . . . ought or may be changed, or no. . . . But where was your judgment when you wrote that the Scripture hath appointed no discipline nor correction for such as shall contemn the common prayers and hearing the word of God? What Church-­discipline would you have other than admonitions, reprehensions, and, if these will not profit, excommunications? And are they not appointed of our Savior Christ, Matt, xviii? There are also civil punishments and punishments of the body likewise appointed by the word of God in divers places: in the xxii of Exodus: He that sacrificeth to other gods, and not to the Lord alone, shall die the death. . . . And thus you see the civil punishment of contemners of the word and prayers. There are other for such as neglect the word, which are according to the quantity of the fault; so that whether you mean civil or ecclesiastical correction, the Scripture hath defined of them both. Jo. Whitgift

Out of all these things which I say the Scripture hath not prescribed or appointed, you choose to carp at, first, the Lord’s day, which we call Sunday; and you say that you will not dispute whether it ought or may be changed, or no, whenas you should rather have proved it to be appointed by the Scriptures (which no doubt you would have done if you could); for that is it which I deny.2. . . In good sooth, this is no true dealing. . . . I do not think that that which the Church hath once determined, and by long continuance proved to be necessary, ought to be altered without great and especial consideration. I say with St Augustine . . . If anything be universally observed of the whole Church, not to observe that or to call it into question is mere madness. . . . . . . To prove that there are also civil punishments . . . appointed by the word of God, you cite xxii of Exodus, xix of Deuteronomy, &c. But before I come to the answering of these places, I pray you, let me ask of you these questions. First, whether you would have both ecclesiastical and civil punishment for the self-­ same fault? Secondly, whether you would have negligence or contempt in frequenting of common prayers and hearing of the word punished with death, or no? For that punishment is appointed in those places by you alleged. 2 {The Jewish Sabbath, mandated by the Fourth Commandment, is, of course, on Saturday; there is no New Testament precept moving it to Sunday, just longstanding Church custom: hence Cartwright’s unwillingness to discuss the matter.}

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Last of all, whether you think the judicial laws to be perpetual, and to bind the civil magistrate to the observing of them, and to restrain him from making any other as shall be thought to him most convenient? . . .  . . . ‡ {Tract. II} Chapter vi. The Third Division T. C. Page 21, Sect. 4, 5

Now, if the Jews had precepts of every the least action, which told them precisely how they should walk, how is not their case in that point better than ours which, because we have in many things but general rules, are to seek oftentimes what is the will of God which we should follow? . . .  ... Jo. Whitgift

The Jews, as it is confessed by learned men, had their laws more particularly prescribed unto them, and especially touching ceremonies, not only because they were prone to idolatry but also oftentimes in subjection to idolatrous princes, where they had occasion offered unto them to worship their false gods. . . . This then was one, though not the only, cause of their ceremonial laws; and in this respect their case was not better but indeed much more servile and worse than ours, who are delivered from that yoke of ceremonies. . . . ‡

Of the election of ministers: Tract III {Tract. III} Chapter vi. The Second Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 44, Sect. 3

Secondly, in the apostles’ time, all or the most that were Christians were virtuous and godly and such as did sincerely profess the word; and therefore the election of their pastor might safely be committed to them; now the Church is full of hypocrites, dissemblers, whoremongers, &c.; so that if any election were committed to them, they would be sure to take one like to themselves. T. C. Page 34, Sect. 1

. . . But where you say our churches are full of drunkards and whoremongers, besides that you utter, or ever you be aware, how evil success the preaching of the gospel hath had here (for want of discipline and good ecclesiastical government), you bewray a great ignorance. For although there be hypocrites . . . whose wickedness is only known to God, and therefore cannot be discovered by men; yet in the churches of Christ there be no drunkards nor whoremongers, at least which are known: for either upon admonition of the Church they repent, and so are neither drunkards nor whoremongers; or else they are cut off by excommunication (if they continue stubborn in their sins), and so are none of the Church, and therefore have nothing to do in the 183



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election of the minister of the church. And methinketh you should not have been ignorant of this: that although there be tares in the flour of the Church, which are like the wheat . . . yet there are no acorns which are bread for swine. . . . It pertaineth to God only to sever the tares from the wheat, and the goats from the sheep; but the churches can discern between wheat and acorns, between swine and sheep. Jo. Whitgift

. . .

In saying that the Church is now full of hypocrites, drunkards, whoremongers, &c., I derogate no more from the good success that the preaching of the gospel hath had than the like or greater faults did from the same in the Church of Corinth and Galatia. The Church is a net that gathereth together of all kind of fish, Matt. xiii.; it is a field wherein the devil soweth tares as fast as the husbandman good corn; and for one that profitably heareth the word of God, three do the contrary. . . . Therefore it is no discredit to the gospel or to the preaching thereof, nor yet to the good government of the Church, to have many wicked and ungodly persons which cannot possible be rooted out until the time of harvest. . . . Whereas you say that in the Church of Christ there be no drunkards or whoremongers, at the least which are known, &c., either do you greatly overshoot yourself and forget the great crimes that were known to be in the Church of Corinth, or else would you secretly bring in the error of the anabaptists, which say that not to be the true Church of Christ in the which there appeareth manifest crimes. . . . It cannot be denied but that the evil are continually mixed with the good in this world, even in the most purest Church. . . . . . . {Tract. III} Chapter vi. The Fourth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 45, Sect. 1

Fourthly, in the apostles’ time there was in the Church no idolaters, no superstitious persons, no papists; now the Church is full of papists, atheists, and such like. Who seeth not therefore what strange ministers we should have, if the election of them were committed to their several parishes? T. C. Page 34, Sect. 3

I see that when a man is out of his way, the further he goeth, the worse. Before you placed in the Church whoremongers and drunkards, as filthy swine in the Lord’s courts; now you bring in papists, idolaters, and atheists, which are not only filthy but also poisoned and venomed beasts. . . . But now I hear you ask me, what then shall become of the papists and atheists, if you will not have them be of the Church? I answer that they may be of and in the commonwealth . . . and therefore, the Church having nothing to do with such, the magistrate ought to see that they join to hear sermons . . . and cause them to be examined how they profit, and, if they profit not, to punish them; and, as their contempt groweth, so to increase the punishment, until such times as they declare manifest tokens of unrepentantness; and then, as rotten members that do not only no good nor service in the body, but also corrupt and infect others, cut them off. 184



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And if they do profit in hearing, then to be adjoined unto that church which is next the place of their dwelling. Jo. Whitgift

You must of necessity admit this distinction, some be of the Church and some be only in the Church, else can you not make any visible Church; for we only know who be in the Church; but who be of the Church is known to him alone who knoweth those that be his. If they communicate with us in hearing the word and receiving the sacraments, though otherwise they be drunkards, superstitious, or infected with errors in doctrine, &c., yet must we count them in the Church, until they be cut off from it by excommunication. . . . And you know well enough that they which indeed are papists in opinion, yet, if they be content to conform themselves to the outward orders of the Church, would stand in their own defense against him that should accuse them. ‡

Of the Apparel of Ministers: Tract. VII The causes why they refuse the apparel examined {Tract. VII} Chapter i. The First Division T. C. Page 52, Sect. 3

The cap, the surplice, and tippet are not the greatest matters we strive for, which notwithstanding hath been informed to the Churches beyond sea, to the end that the judgments of some might be the easilier had against us. Howbeit we think it an attire unmeet for a minister of the gospel to wear; and the surplice especially, more than the other two, because such hurtful ceremonies are so much more dangerous as they do approach nearer the service or worship of God. . . . {Tract. VII} Chapter i. The Second Division T. C. Page 52, Sect. 4

The causes why we are loath to meddle with them are not, as many are borne in hand, because that we think any pollution so to stick to the things themselves as that the wearing of them had any such power to pollute and make unclean the users of them, neither yet only because the papists have superstitiously used them, but because they, having been abominably abused by them, have no use nor profit in those things or ends wherein and whereunto they are now used; and further, that they are also hurtful, being monuments of idolatry. . . . For it is not enough to say, it is indifferent in the {sic} own nature; ergo, meet to be done; but as the circumstances of the times and persons, and profit or hurt of our brethren do require or not require, so must it be done or not be done. For in these things which are called indifferent, God will have the use of them to be measured, that it be referred first to his glory, then to the profit of others. Jo. Whitgift

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themselves . . . and a number be carried away with that doctrine; else why do they refuse to come to our churches, our sermons, yea, to keep us company or to salute us? . . . And where have they learned this but of you and others your partners? Likewise, what was the chief ground of this opinion? . . . Forsooth, that this gear came from the pope, was invented by antichrist, and therefore abominable and not to be used. . . . But now, being convinced by manifest reasons and seeing the manifold absurdities that waiteth upon such assertions, you pass over the matter as though you had never been stained with it. . . . So that in effect this is now by you confessed, that those things which the papists have superstitiously used, yea, which they have abominably abused, if they have any use or profit . . . be lawful and not to be refused. And therefore we must, I think, have no more to do with this argument: The pope invented them; ergo, they are not to be used; but this must be the question: whether they have any use or profit in those things or ends wherein or whereunto they are now used. And this shift is invented to take away all objections which may be of churches, of bells, of pulpits, and such like. ‡ {Tract. VII} Chap. v. The Fifth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 59, Sect. 1, and Page 60, Sect. 1

Bucer, in an epistle that he writ to John a Lasco,3 is of the same judgment; his words are worthy to be noted, and be these: For if by no means it be lawful to use those things which were of Aaron’s priesthood or of the gentiles, then is it not lawful for us to have churches nor holy-­days. For there is no express commandment by word in the holy Scriptures of these things. It is gathered, notwithstanding, from the example of the old people, that they are profitable for us to the increase of godliness; which thing also experience proveth. . . . The use of bells was a mark of antichristianity in our churches when the people by them were called to masses and when they were rung against tempests! Now they are a token of Christianity, when the people by them are gathered together to the gospel of Christ and other holy actions. . . . . . . {Tract. VII} Chap. v. The Sixth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 60, Sect. 2

Bullinger and Gualter, in the epistle before alleged, answering this question whether we may wear such apparel as the papists do, say on this sort: If we should have nothing common with them, then must we forsake all our churches, refuse all livings, not minister baptism, not say the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed, yea, and quite cast away the Lord’s Prayer. . . . The matter of apparel was never taken away at the beginning of reformation, and is yet retained, not by the pope’s law but by the king’s commandment, as an indifferent thing of mere policy. . . . If in case any of the people be persuaded that these things savor of papism, monachism {i.e., monasticism}, or Judaism, let them be told the contrary and perfectly instructed therein. And if so be, through the importunate crying out hereon before the people by some men, many be disquieted in their {Polish evangelical reformer (d. 1560) and, under Edward VI, superintendent of the Strangers’ Church in London. In the initial Vestiarian Controversy, he sided with the nonconformists.} 3

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conscience, let them beware which so do, that they bring not greater yokes on their own necks and provoke the Queen’s majesty, and bring many faithful ministers in such danger as they cannot rid themselves out again. Hitherto Bullinger. ‡ {Tract. VII} Chapter vii. The Third Division Admonition

They serve not to edification. Answer to the Admonition, Page 238, Sect. 3

You say also that they do not edify. If you say that they do not edify of themselves, you say truly; for only the Holy Ghost on this sort doth edify by the ministry of the word. But if you say they edify not at all, that is, that they do not tend to edifying as other ceremonies and things used in the Church (as pulpit . . . singing, and such like), which be appointed for order and decency, do, then speak you that which you are not able by sound arguments to justify. . . . {Tract. VII} Chapter vii. The Seventh Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 239, Sect. 3

Thirdly, because also by experience we daily understand that such as consent in wearing this apparel consent also in all other points of doctrine and keep the peace of the Church, which is one of the principal causes of edifying; contrariwise, such as refuse the same apparel not only dissent and disagree among themselves, but fall into divers and strange opinions without stay, and slander the gospel with their contentiousness, and tear in pieces the Church of Christ with their factions and schisms, and be the cause why both the word of God and Christian magistrates be almost generally contemned. T. C. Page 58, Sect. 2

. . . If this consent in the points of religion be in the surplice, cope, &c., tell us, I beseech you, whether in the matter or in the form, or in what hid and unknown quality standeth it. If it be in that the ministers use all one apparel, then it is marvel that, this being so strong a bond to hold them together in godly unity, that it was never commanded of Christ nor practiced of prophets or apostles, neither of no other reformed Churches. I had thought wholly that those things which the Lord appointeth to maintain and keep unity with, and especially the holy sacraments of baptism and of the Lord’s supper, had been strong enough to have first of all knit us unto the Lord, and therefore also to his doctrine, and then one of us to another; and that the dissentings in such a ceremony as a surplice, &c., neither should nor could in those that pertain unto God break the unity of the Spirit, which is bound with the bond of truth. . . .

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. . .

Certain it is that those things which the Lord appointed to keep unity with, and especially the sacraments, ought to be the especial bond of the same; and that nothing should separate those that are coupled and joined therein; but we see it fall out otherwise, such is the crooked and rebellious nature of man. And therefore hath God also appointed magistrates and given them authority to make orders and laws to maintain the peace and unity of the Church, that those, which of conscience and good disposition will not, by such laws and orders may be constrained at the least to keep the external peace and unity of the Church. Do you take this to be a good reason: The sacraments are bonds to keep and maintain the unity of the Spirit; therefore there needeth no laws or magistrates to provide for the external peace and quietness of the Church? Your imagination throughout your whole book is of such a perfection in men as though they needed no laws or magistrates to govern them, but that every man might be as it were a law to himself; which whereunto it tendeth may easily be conjectured. . . . {Tract. VII} Chapter vii. The Eighth Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 239, Sect. 4

I here omit that which I might as justly bring for this kind of apparel as you do for sitting at the Communion: I mean a fit and profitable signification, whereof M. Martyr speaketh in the epistle before mentioned on this sort . . . the ministers of the Church (as the prophet Malachi witnesseth) be angels and God’s messengers; but angels for the most part appeared being clothed in white garments. I pray you, how shall we debar the Church of this liberty, that it cannot signify some good thing in setting forth their rites and ceremonies, especially being so done that no manner of God’s honor is attributed unto them, and that they be in sight comely and in number few, and that Christian people be not with them overburdened and matters of greater importance be omitted? T. C. Page 59, Lin. 5

The white apparel, which is a note and a true representation of the glory and pureness in the angels, should be a lying sign and pretense of that which is not in the ministers, which are miserable and sinful men. . . . And if it be meet that the ministers should represent the angels in their apparel, it is much more meet that they should have a pair of wings . . . to put them in remembrance of their readiness and quickness to execute their office. . . . Although the Church have authority to make ceremonies (so they be according to the rules before recited of God’s glory and profiting the congregation), I could for all that never yet learn that it had power to give new significations, as it were to institute new sacraments. And by this means is taken clean away from us the hold which we have against the papists, whereby (against all the goodly shows which they make by the color of these significations) we say that the word of God, and the sacraments of baptism and of the supper of the Lord are sufficient to teach, to admonish, and to put us in remembrance of all duty whatsoever. . . . And truly I see no cause why we may not have as well 188



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holy water and holy bread, if this reason which is here be good; for I am sure the significations of them are as glorious as this of the surplice, and call to remembrance as necessary things. . . . . . . Jo. Whitgift

. . . Your argument . . . is confuted by common usage; for several habits in the universities signify several degrees in learning; several kind of apparel, several callings and functions in the commonwealth; and this apparel doth put every man in mind of his duty. . . . No man saith that there is virtue in such garments or power to work godliness, and therefore your pretty jests builded upon that ground are vain and toyish. . . . Everything that signifieth anything is not a sacrament; for then were matrimony a sacrament, and so were laying on of hands, and such like. . . .

Of the Communion Book: Tract. IX The general faults examined wherewith the public service is charged by T. C. {Tract. IX} Chapter i. The First Division T. C. Page 102, Sect. 2

Before I come to speak of prayers, I will treat of the faults that are committed almost throughout the whole liturgy and public service of the Church of England; whereof one is that which is often objected by the authors of the Admonition, that the form of it is taken from the Church of Antichrist, as the reading of the Epistles and Gospels so cut and mangled,4 as the most of the prayers; the manner of ministering the sacraments, of marriage, of burial, confirmation translated as it were word for word, saving that the gross errors and manifest impieties be taken away. . . . Jo. Whitgift

. . . If in the administration of the sacraments, celebration of marriage, burying of the dead, confirmation, those things that are good and profitable be retained, and the gross errors and manifest impieties taken away, as you say they be, why do you then on this sort trouble the Church for using that which is good and refusing that which is evil? Is papistry so able to infect the word of God, godly prayers, and profitable ceremonies, that they may not be used in the Church reformed, the errors and impieties being taken away? Why do we call our Churches reformed Churches, rather than newly builded, or as it were wholly transformed, but that we retain whatsoever we find to be good, refuse or reform that which is evil? . . .  . . . {Tract. IX} Chapter i. The Third Division 4 {In Reformed Churches the minister normally read only the portion of Scripture on which he intended to preach. There was no lectionary; the pericope was selected by the minister. See William Maxwell, John Knox’s Genevan service book, 1556 (1931; repr. Westminster, 1965), 180–­81.}

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Now I will add this further, that whenas the Lord was careful to sever them by ceremonies from other nations, yet was he not so careful to sever them from any as from the Egyptians, amongst whom they lived, and from those nations which were next neighbors unto them, because from them was the greatest fear of infection. Therefore, by this constant and perpetual wisdom which God useth to keep his people from idolatry, it followeth that the religion of God should not only in matter and substance, but also, as far as may be, in form and fashion differ from that of the idolaters, and especially the papists, which are round about us and amongst us. For indeed it were more safe for us to conform our indifferent ceremonies to the Turks, which are far off, than to the papists, which are so near. Jo. Whitgift

The Egyptians and idolatrous gentiles neither worshipped nor pretended to worship the God of Israel, and therefore no marvel though in rites and ceremonies they were utterly severed from them; but the papists either worship or pretend to worship the same God which we do; and therefore there is no such cause in all points of rites and ceremonies to differ from them. And it is most untrue that God so severed his people from the Egyptians or other nations near adjoining that they had nothing common with them or no ceremonies like unto theirs; for they were like in many things touching the external form. The gentiles had sacrifices, and so had they; the gentiles in worshipping their gods used external pomp of garments, of golden and silver vessels, and such like, and so did they. . . . . . . But to put you out of doubt, we do not in any kind of ceremonies conform ourselves to the papists, but, using Christian liberty in external things and knowing that all things be clean to those that be clean, such things as we find instituted by learned and godly men, and profitable to the Church as pertaining to edifying or comeliness and order (though abused of the papists), we retain in our churches and restore to the right use; as our forefathers did the temples of idols, turning them to Christian churches . . . as I have declared in another place. ‡ Of baptism by women, wherewith the Communion Book is falsely charged {Tract. IX} Chapter iii. The First Division Admonition

In which a great number of things contrary to God’s word are contained, as baptism by women. . . . {Tract. IX} Chapter iii. The Third Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 80, Sect. 1.

The second place you do allege is 1 Cor. xiv, where Paul saith it is a shame for women to speak in the congregation. Paul saith not, it is a shame for women to speak at home in private houses; for women may instruct their families, yea, and they may speak also in 190



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the congregation in time of necessity, if there be none else there that can or will preach Christ;5 and hereof we have examples. T. C. Page 110, Line 13, and Sect. 1

But M. Doctor riseth up, and saith that a woman in time of necessity, and where there is none other that either can or will preach, may preach the gospel in the Church. This is strange doctrine, and such as strengtheneth the anabaptists’ hands, and savoreth stronger that ways than any one thing in all the Admonition, which is so often condemned of anabaptism. . . . Jo. Whitgift

. . .

Women were the first that preached Christ’s resurrection; a woman was the first that preached Christ in Samaria, John iv; and yet undoubtedly none of these did contrary to the prescript word of God. Women may not speak ordinarily in the congregation nor challenge any such function unto themselves; but upon occasion they may speak, as I have said in my Answer. ‡ The sacraments ministered by other than ministers {Tract. IX} Chapter v. The Second Division

. . . T. C. Page 113r, Sect. 1, 2, 3.

He hath certain other {examples} to prove that women may baptize, whereof the first is . . . that Sephora, Moses’ wife, circumcised her child; whereunto I have answered partly before, that particular examples, especially contrary to general rules, are not to be followed; and will further answer, if I first admonish the reader whereupon this baptism of midwives and in private houses rose, that when we know of how rotten a stock it came, the fruit itself may be more loathsome unto us. It first therefore rose upon a false interpretation of the place of St John: Unless a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Where certain do interpret the word water for the material and elemental water wherewith men are washed, whenas our Savior Christ taketh water there, by a translation or borrowed speech, for the Spirit of God, the effect whereof it shadoweth out. . . . {For} by the water and the Spirit he meaneth nothing else but the Spirit of God, which cleanseth the filth of sin and cooleth the broiling heat of an unquiet conscience, as water washeth the thing which is foul and quencheth the heat of the fire. Secondarily, this error came by a false and unnecessary conclusion drawn of that place. (For although the Scripture should say that none can be saved but those which have the Spirit of God and are baptized with material and elemental water, yet ought it to be understanded of those which can conveniently and orderly be brought to baptism. . . .) And hereupon St Augustine concludeth 5

{Tyndale makes the same argument; see .}

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that all not baptized are condemned  6—­which is as absurdly concluded of him as that, of our Savior Christ’s words, Except one eat the flesh of the Son of man he hath not life, he concludeth that whatsoever he be which receiveth not the sacrament of the Supper is damned. Upon this false conclusion of St Augustine hath risen this profanation of the sacrament of baptism in being ministered in private houses and by women or laymen. . . . Jo. Whitgift

. . .

The place in the iii of John by you alleged hath divers interpretations; and the most part of the ancient writers do take water in that place for material and elemental water. . . . But, because I do mislike as much as you the opinion of those that think infants to be condemned which are not baptized,7 therefore I will not contend with you. . . . Only this I say, that you must take heed lest, in avoiding an error, you fall into an heresy, and give place to anabaptists in not baptizing infants. And I know not what you can say against private baptism in that case of necessity, which they do not in like manner allege against the baptizing of young infants. . . . ‡ {Tract. IX} Chapter v. The Twelfth Division T. C. Page 115, Line 13

The authors of the Admonition object that necessity of salvation is tied to the sacraments by this means, and that men are confirmed in that old error that no man can be saved without baptism. . . . And I will farther say that, although that the infants which die without baptism should be assuredly damned (which is most false), yet ought not the orders which God hath set in his Church to be broken after this sort. For, as the salvation of men ought to be dear unto us, so the glory of God, which consisteth in that his orders be kept, ought to be much more dear, that if at any time the controversy could be between his glory and our salvation, our salvation ought to fall that his glory may stand.8 Jo. Whitgift

Yet the avoiding of that error is no sufficient cause to debar infants from baptism, except you will therein join with the anabaptists. The outward sacramental signs are seals of God’s promises, and whosoever refuseth the same shall never enjoy the promises; and, although the necessity of salvation is not so tied to the sacraments that whosoever hath the external signs shall therefore be saved, yet is it so tied unto them that none can be saved that willingly and wittingly is void of them and not partakers of them. Circumcision, which is a figure of baptism, had that necessity joined unto it, that whosoever lacked it was not counted nor reckoned {This was the position of the Roman Church.} {On the Protestant rejection of Augustinian rigorism with respect to baptism, see the entry on baptism in vol. 2 of James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of religion and ethics (New York, 1910), 401–­4.} 8 {Knox, as minister of the exile congregation at Frankfurt and Geneva, refused to allow a private baptism for a dying baby, a position that horrified Ridley, who thought that on matters where Scripture was silent, the Church might follow the “old ancient writers” (Maxwell, 112n5). See Hooker, Laws .} 6 7

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amongst the people of God. It is not nothing that Christ saith: Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit, &c. But your manner of doctrine is such that it maketh men think that the external signs of the sacraments are but bare ceremonies and in no sense necessary to salvation; which must in time bring in a contempt of the sacraments, and especially of baptism for infants. ‡

Of matters touching the Communion: Tract. XV Of the orders and ceremonies used in the celebration of the Communion {Tract. XV} Chap. i. The First Division Admonition

They had no introit; for Celestinus, a pope, brought it in about the year 430. But we have borrowed a piece of one out of the mass-­book. Answer to the Admonition, Page 94, Sect. 1, 2.

What you understand here by the introit, certainly I know not. The first thing that we say at the Communion is the Lord’s Prayer, which Celestinus did not invent, but Christ. . . . Next unto that is a very godly and necessary prayer, worthy to be said in the celebration of such a mystery, and therefore no matter at all who invented it or brought it in. And yet Celestinus was a godly bishop, and the Church of Rome at that time had the substance of the sacraments according to God’s word; neither was there any superstition mixed with them. . . . This I am sure of, that it is not evil because it is the mass-­book, except it be repugnant to the word of God; for the Lord’s Prayer, some of the psalms, the Gospels, and Epistles, the Nicene Creed, &c., be in the mass-­book, and yet good, so is there some other good prayers in it also. . . . Admonition The third {division}

The Nicene Creed was not read in their Communion; we have it in ours. Answer, Page 95, Sect. 3

. . . This Creed in this form was not framed in the apostles’ time, because the heresy of Arius was not then hatched. And therefore no good reason to say: It was not read in the apostles’ time at the Communion; ergo, it ought not to be read now. But this argument is intolerable: The Nicene Creed is read at the Communion; therefore the Communion is not sincerely ministered. All these three reasons be taken ab auctoritate negative, and therefore of no force—­except we will also grant these to be true, and such like, scilicet: Then they had no Christian princes, and therefore we may have no Christian princes. . . . Then Christians had propriety in nothing, but all things were common; ergo, no man may have anything of his own, but common to other. We do not read expressly that children were 193



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then baptized; therefore they ought not to be baptized now (for so do the anabaptists reason); neither do we read that women did then receive the Supper; therefore they ought not to do it now; with infinite other as absurd as these. . . . T. C. Page 130, Sect. 1

. . . M. Doctor . . . doth lay the manifest foundations of that part of anabaptism which standeth in having all things common, saying, directly against St Peter, that in the time of the apostles Christians had propriety in nothing; and, further, giving great cause of triumph, of the one side, to the catabaptists and such as deny the baptism of young infants, in matching that with those things which the Church may (although not without incommodity, yet without impiety) be without; and of the other side unto the papists, whilst he saith that we read not of any women which received the Lord’s supper in the apostles’ time. For this is that they allege to prove their unwritten verities, whenas it is easily answered both to the papists and M. Doctor, that, forsomuch as the Apostle doth witness that the churches of Corinth, consisting of men and women did receive,9 that therefore women also did receive and were partakers of the Lord’s table. Thus it is manifest that M. Doctor, only to displease the authors of the Admonition, sticketh not to pleasure three notable heretics: anabaptists, catabaptists, and papists. Jo. Whitgift

. . .

. . . neither speak I any otherwise of the baptism of infants or of women’s receiving the Communion than M. Zwinglius doth. . . . in his book De baptismo: Of the baptism of infants and the first original thereof, neither I nor any other man can otherwise affirm (if we respect the express and evident word of God) than that it is that true and only baptism of Christ. For we may find many things of this sort, whereof although there be no express and plain testimony of God, yet they are not repugnant to his will, but rather agreeth with the same; of this sort is that, that we make women partakers of the Lord’s supper, whenas notwithstanding we read of none that sat down in that supper which Christ did institute. And M. Calvin, in his book Adversus Anabaptist., saith in like manner: They have nothing to say against the baptism of infants but that there is nowhere any mention made that the apostles did use it. To this I answer that no more do we read in any place that they did at any time minister the supper of our Lord to any woman. And yet these two be neither anabaptists, catabaptists, nor papists, but valiant captains against them all. ‡ {Tract. XV} Chapter i. The Fifteenth Division Admonition The fourth reason

9

{The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. 11:20, although Paul there says nothing about gender.}

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In this book we are enjoined to receive the Communion kneeling, which, beside that it hath in it a show of papistry, doth not so well express the mystery of this holy supper. For, as in the old testament eating the paschal lamb standing signified a readiness to pass, even so in the receiving of it now sitting, according to the example of Christ, we signify rest: that is, a full finishing through Christ of all the ceremonial law and a perfect work of redemption wrought, that giveth rest forever. . . . Answer, Page 180, Sect, ult., &c.

. . .

You say, sitting is the most meetest gesture, because it signifieth rest, that is, a full finishing through Christ of all the ceremonial law, &c. What? Are you now come to allegories and to significations? Surely this is a very papistical reason: nay then, we can give you a great deal better significations of the surplice, of crossing, of the ring in marriage, and many other ceremonies than this is of sitting. . . . But you say, Christ sat at his supper; therefore we must sit at the receiving of the Supper. You may as well say, Christ did celebrate his supper at night, after supper; to twelve only men and no women; in a parlor within a private house the Thursday at night before Easter; therefore we ought to receive the Communion at night after supper, being twelve in number and only men, in a parlor within a private house the Thursday at night before Easter. But who seeth not the non sequitur of this argument? ‡ Of shutting men from the Communion, and compelling to communicate {Tract. XV} Chapter ii. The First Division Admonition The eleventh {division}

They shut men by reason of their sins from the Lord’s supper; we thrust them in their sin to the Lord’s supper.10 Answer to the Admonition, Page 102, Sect. 6, 7.

. . .

If you were not with malice blinded, you might understand that by the order and rules of this Church of England all notorious and known offenders, even such as St Paul here speaketh of, are secluded from the Lord’s supper.11. . . . . . {Tract. XV} Chapter ii. The Second Division T. C. Page 132, Sect. ult.

And therefore papists, being such as which are notoriously known to hold heretical opinions, ought not to be admitted, much less compelled to the Supper. For seeing that our Savior Christ did 10 11

{Thrice-­yearly Communion was compulsory.} {This is spelled out in the preface to the Communion liturgy in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer.}

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institute his Supper amongst his disciples and those only which were, as St Paul speaketh, within, it is evident that the papists, being without, and foreigners and strangers from the Church of God, ought not to be received if they would offer themselves; and that minister that shall give the supper of the Lord to him which is known to be a papist and which hath never made any clear renouncing of popery with which he hath been defiled, doth profane the table of the Lord and doth give the meat that is prepared for the children to dogs, and he bringeth into the pasture which is provided for the sheep, swine and unclean beasts, contrary to the faith and trust that ought to be in a steward of the Lord’s house, as he is. For, albeit that I doubt not but many of those which are now papists pertain to the election of God, which God also in his good time will call to the knowledge of his truth, yet notwithstanding they ought to be unto the minister and unto the Church, touching the ministering of the sacraments, as strangers and as unclean beasts. . . . Jo. Whitgift

When our Savior Christ did institute his supper, Judas was present, and partaker thereof with the rest. . . . I do not allow that papists, being notoriously known and continuing in their popery, should be admitted to receive the Communion; neither are they admitted thereunto in this Church. And, being such as you speak of, I think they would not come, although they were compelled. ‡

Of matters touching baptism: Tract. XVI Of fonts, and crossing in baptism

. . . {Tract. XVI} Chapter iii. The Second Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 108, Sect. 1

Touching crossing in baptism, I will only recite unto you the opinion of M. Bucer, which is this. . . . I think it neither uncomely nor unprofitable to use the sign of the cross, not only because the use thereof is very ancient but also because it hath an express signification of the Passion of Christ—­so that it be purely understood and religiously received, without any superstition or servitude of the element, or levity, or common custom. . . . {Tract. XVI} Chapter iii. The Fifth Division T. C. Page 136 somewhat past the midst

Concerning the other reason of the profitable signification of the cross, I have showed that that maketh the thing a great deal worse and bringeth in a new word into the Church, whereas there ought to be no Doctor heard in the Church but only our Savior Christ. . . . But although it be the word of God that we should not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, yet is it not the word of 196



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God that we should be kept in remembrance and observation of that by two lines drawn across one over another in the child’s forehead—­but a fond toy and idle device of man’s brain. Jo. Whitgift

The signification of the papistical ceremonies was only known to themselves, being used in the Church without any declaration of such signification, and therefore they might worthily be counted dumb and unprofitable; but it is not so in this, for the signification is joined with the sign and published in a tongue known. The papistical ceremonies were in number many, and they had annexed unto them an opinion of worship and a necessity unto salvation, &c, which made them wicked; but all these be far from this and other ceremonies used by us. And forasmuch as there is no word of God against it, and it hath a profitable signification, the Church may use it, though it be not expressed in the word; as it may do other rites, according to that that I have proved before in treating of the authority of the Church in such matters. {Tract. XVI} Chapter iii. The Sixth Division

. . . T. C. Page 1366, Sect. ult.

. . . M. Doctor answereth that every ceremony which betokeneth something is not a sacrament. I would know what maketh a sacrament, if a doctrine annexed unto an outward sign doth not make a sacrament. . . . Jo. Whitgift

You are not ignorant, I am sure, that to the making of a sacrament, besides the external element, there is required a commandment of God in his word that it should be done, and a promise annexed unto it, whereof the sacrament is a seal: so it was in circumcision, and so it is in the supper and baptism. . . . For sacraments, in the proper signification, be mystical signs ordained by God himself, consisting in the word of God, in figures, and in things signified, whereby he keepeth in man’s memory and sometimes reneweth his large benefits bestowed upon his Church; whereby also he sealeth or assureth his promises, and showeth outwardly and as it were layeth before our eyes those things to behold which inwardly he worketh in us; yea, by them he strengtheneth and increaseth our faith, by the Holy Ghost working in our hearts. And, to be short, by his sacraments he separateth us from all other people, from all other religions, consecrating us and binding us to him only, and signifieth what he requireth of us to be done.12 Now every ceremony signifying anything hath not these conditions and properties. Wherefore every ceremony signifying anything is not a sacrament; and therefore crossing in baptism, though it signifieth something, yet it is no sacrament. . . . Of the parties that are to be baptized {Tract. XVI} Chapter iv. The First Division 12

{This is article 19 of the Second Helvetic Confession, 1566.}

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. . . That the parties to be baptized—­if they be of the years of discretion, by themselves and in their own persons; or if they be infants, by their parents (in whose room, if upon necessary occasion they be absent, some one of the congregation, knowing the good behavior and sound faith of the parents)—­may both make rehearsal of their faith, and also, if their faith be sound and agreeable to holy Scriptures, desire to be in the same baptized. And finally, that nothing be done in this or any other thing but that which you have the express warrant of God’s word for. . . . {Tract. XVI} Chapter iv. The Second Division Answer to the Admonition, Page 111, Sect. 3, and Page 112, Sect. 1

I know not what you mean when you say that in the absence of the parents, some one of the congregation, knowing the good behavior and sound faith of the parents. . . . What if the parents be of evil behavior? What if it be the child of a drunkard or of an harlot? What if the parents be papists? What if they be heretics? What if they err in some point or other in matters of faith? Shall not their children be baptized? Herein you have a further meaning than I can understand; and I fear few do perceive the poison that lieth hid under these words. May not a wicked father have a good child? May not a papist or heretic have a believing son? Will you seclude for the parent’s sake (being himself baptized) his seed from baptism? . . . Admonition

How convenient it were, seeing the children of the faithful only are to be baptized, that the father should and might, if conveniently, offer and present his child to be baptized, making an open confession of that faith wherein he would have his child baptized; and how this is used in well-­ordered Churches.13 Answer to the Admonition, Page 193, Sect. 2

But I know not whereto this tendeth. . . . Do you not comprehend those under the name of faithful which be baptized? For else it passeth man’s understanding to know who be faithful indeed; because the unbelievers may make a confession of faith in words, and in this world it cannot certainly by man be determined who among Christians be faithful, who be unfaithful. . . . T. C. Page 137, Sect. 1 13 {For the medieval view, see Aquinas, Summa, 3.68.9 (should infants be baptized): “Nor is it a hindrance to their salvation if their parents be unbelievers, because, as Augustine says . . . ‘little children are offered that they may receive grace in their souls, not so much from the hands of those that carry them (yet from these too, if they be good and faithful) as from the whole company of the saints and the faithful. . . . But the faith of one, indeed of the whole Church, profits the child through the operation of the Holy Ghost, who unites the Church together and communicates the goods of one member to another.’” This is also Hooker’s position (Laws 5.64.5).}

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John Whitgift

After that M. Doctor . . . asketh first of all what if the infant be the child of a drunkard? what if he be of a harlot? shall not, saith he, the infant be baptized?. . . I see that M. Doctor doth make of the holy sacrament of baptism (which is an entry into the house of God, and whereby only the family of God must enter) a common passage, whereby he will have clean and unclean, holy and profane, as well those that are without the covenant, as those that be within it to pass by; and so maketh the Church no household, but an inn to receive whosoever cometh.14 Jo. Whitgift

. . . I make the holy sacrament of baptism no other kind of passage than God himself hath made it, and the Church of Christ hath ever used it. Good and evil, clean and unclean, holy and profane must needs pass by it. . . . Who can tell whether he be holy or unholy, good or evil, clean or unclean, elect or reprobate, of the household of the Church or not of the Church that is baptized, be he infant or at the years of discretion? I tell you plain, this assertion of yours savoreth very strongly of heresy in my opinion. But let us come to your reasons, if you have any. {Tract. XVI} Chapter iv. The Third Division T. C. Page 137, Sect. 1

I will answer therefore almost in as many words as the questions be asked. If one of the parents be neither drunkard nor adulterer, the child is holy by virtue of the covenant, for one of the parents’ sakes. If they be both, and yet not obstinate in their sin, whereby the Church hath not proceeded to excommunication (themselves being yet of the Church), their child cannot nor ought not to be refused. To the second question . . . if both be papists or condemned heretics (if so be I may distinguish papists from heretics), and cut off from the Church, their children cannot be received because they are not in the covenant. . . . . . . Jo. Whitgift

Surely these be very short answers for so weighty questions and so necessary points of doctrine: will you presume thus to determine in matters of salvation and damnation, the doctrine being so strange and unheard of, without either Scripture, reason, or other authority? Are we now come to ipse dixit? Nay, it may not be so; you have no such authority or credit that I know. But let us a little better consider your assertions, and mark your drift. Page 34, you say that there are no whoremongers nor drunkards in the Church that are known, because the Church doth excommunicate them; whereby you seem to run headlong into this heresy of the anabaptists: that is not the Church of Christ in the which are known drunkards and whoremongers, and no 14 {The legitimation of infant baptism on the basis of the parents’ (as opposed to the Church’s) faith goes back to Calvin, who held that “unless God transmits His grace from the fathers to the sons, to receive new-­born infants into the Church would be a mere profanation of baptism” ( Joannis Calvini . . . tractatus theologici omnes [Amsterdam, 1667], 683). See also Charles Porterfield Krauth, Infant baptism and infant salvation in the Calvinistic system [Philadelphia, 1874], 23–­28).}

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excommunication used against them. The which heresy is well and learnedly confuted by M. Calvin. . . . . . . And how can you allow the baptism of heretics to be good, if you disallow the baptizing of their children that be excommunicated? May an heretic excommunicated baptize, and is that baptism good, and may not the children of him that is excommunicated receive the sacrament of baptism? Can any fault of the parents, having once received the seal of the covenant, seclude their children from receiving the same seal? . . .  . . . And concerning papists, whom you have denied to be in the Church and to whose children also you here deny baptism, I will ask you but this one question: what you think of all those which are not only children to professed and known papists, but baptized also in the Romish Church? For if the children of known papists may not be baptized, what shall we say of ourselves and of our parents and predecessors, who all, or the most of them, were professed papists? Is not this the ground of re-­baptization and anabaptism? But that the reader may the better understand your error, and the rather believe it to be an error indeed, I will set down M. Beza his opinion of this matter, from whom you are loath (I am sure) to be thought to dissent. In his book of Epistles . . . {he} determineth thus: . . . God forbid that, the parents being excommunicated, we should conclude that their posterity belongeth not to the kingdom of God. Furthermore, there is great difference between those which, although they be notorious offenders, nevertheless depart not from the Church, and between those that are manifest renegades, joining themselves with the enemies to oppress the truth of the gospel. Further, it were unreasonable to esteem of papists, much less Christians excommunicated, no otherwise than of Turks; for although it be unpossible to serve the pope and Christ together, yet it is certain that popery is an erring of the Christian Church. Wherefore the Lord hath in the midst of that gulf of papistry preserved baptism, that is the first entering into the Church; whereby it appeareth (as also the thing itself proveth in us) that, although papism be not the Church, yet the Church hath been and is (as it were) drowned or covered in it; which cannot by any means be said of the Turks, which never gave their names to Christ. Lastly, forsomuch as the goodness of God is extended to a thousand generations—­that is, as it were without end—­it were hard if we should judge of the children, whether they belong to the covenant of God or no, by the profession of their last parents.15 Therefore, of all these arguments joined together, we conclude that the children of persons excommunicate, abiding yet in the Church of God, can by no right be debarred from baptism, if in case a meet surety be had which will make promise to the Church that they shall be virtuously brought up, which I think ought to be done of the ministers themselves, and other godly men, rather than their baptism should any longer be deferred. Yet it shall not be amiss if the minister, before he baptize the infant, taking hereof occasion, earnestly exhort the father that is excommunicated, being present, to repentance before the assembly, which is oftentimes practiced in our churches. Hitherto Beza. [\ T ext: The defense of the Answer to the Admonition against the reply of T.C. in The works of John Whitgift, D. D., 3 vols., ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1851–­1853). {Beza’s “thousand generations” echoes the opening of Calvin’s baptismal liturgy and its Anglo-­ Genevan paraphrase in the 1556 Form of prayers; for the latter, vide .} 15

200

RICHARD HOOKER (1554–­1600)

Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

The introduction to Hooker’s early sermon on faith covers the first portion of his career; the introduction to the ecclesiology of the Laws, the final decade. The selections below also come from the Laws­—from books II through VI, whose arguments intersect at multiple points with virtually every reading in this anthology, focusing as they do on key controverted issues of the period: hermeneutics, ceremonies, the eucharist, penance; the relation of nature to grace, of Protestant Christianity to its Catholic past, of Scripture to Church, and so on. The work, ostensibly a response to the mid-­Elizabethan presbyterian insurgency,1 in fact targets attitudes “central to whole evangelical Calvinist view of the world” (Lake, 187). Its theological vision implicitly contests, that is to say, not only Cartwright-­style nonconformity but also the predestinarian, sermon-­based, sola Scriptura, Law-­to-­Gospel piety of “moderate puritanism” that in the 1590s overran the Elizabethan mainstream. Hooker’s break with the Reformed tradition goes deep—­at its core, a reconceptualization of God. Book I in fact opens by jettisoning the voluntarist axiom underpinning Reformed theology that “of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides his will” (1.2.5). Against this voluntarism and its fundamentalist corollary, that “whatsoever is not done by the word of God is sin,”2 Hooker argues that God “worketh all things . . . not only according to his own will, but the counsel of his own will” (1.2.5), so that “in the working of that first cause . . . reason {is} followed . . . constant order and law is kept” (1.2.3). Like Elizabethan Calvinists, Hooker sees God in terms of law (2.2.2), but for him God’s laws are not commands but rather that which, by appointing the form and measure of a thing’s working, enables it to attain its end (1.2.1), as the laws of gravity enable the formation of stars, and as the law of reason enables persons to fulfill the ends of their

1 His main ostensible targets are Field’s A view , Wilcox’ Admonition , and the several tracts by Thomas Cartwright to which Whitgift had earlier replied . 2 Quoted in Whitgift . On Calvinist voluntarism, see also, in this volume, Perkins, A golden chain , Dove ; Form of prayers .

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creation. Law is thus rational ordering, and this “rational intelligibility of God’s plan for his creatures” stands at the very center of Hooker’s argument (Lake 148). Hooker’s “deepest enemy,” C. S. Lewis writes, was “the ‘Barthianism’ of the puritans, the theology which set a God of inscrutable will ‘over against’ the ‘accursed nature of Man’ with all its arts, sciences, traditions, learning, and merely human virtues” (452). For Hooker, by contrast, “all good things, reason as well as revelation, nature as well as grace, the commonwealth as well as the Church derive “from the Father of lights” (Lewis, 460; see ). The error of puritan-­presbyterian position is not, therefore, simply a mistaken view of the Church’s authority over things indifferent, but a “fundamental misunderstanding of the role of reason vis-­à-­vis Scripture” (Lake, 147). The “rational intelligibility of God’s plan” underlies Hooker’s case for the authority of reason—­albeit fallen and fallible—­not only with respect to civil society and secular ethics, but also with respect to the “society supernatural” of the Church, to matters of faith and of salvation, and to Scripture, whose interpretation rests on disciplines that see by Perkins’ “light of natural reason,” and whose claim to be the word of God must be weighed in its scales. Moreover, as so often in Hooker, the polarized structures of Calvinist thought give way to a sense of the interwovenness of things: the interpretation of Scripture is not a matter of “natural reason” attempting to understand God’s word, but of reason inwardly illumined by “God’s most blessed Spirit”—­which “selfsame Spirit,” Hooker adds, “may also be thought to aid and direct men in finding out by the light of reason what laws are expedient to be made for the guiding of his Church” . Hooker’s reconceptualization of God has a further aspect, one that initially presents itself as an absence. For all his emphasis on law, he never portrays God as The Law; that is to say, he drops the standard early modern figuration of the Father as stern patriarch whose justice threatens the slightest infraction with eternal torment.3 Indeed he rarely “portrays” God at all, but tends to write about God qua God in the idiom of scholastic abstraction, as in Book V’s reference to God as “the most high {cause},” whose nature exemplifies the universal axiom that “the higher any cause is, the more it coveteth to impart vertue unto things beneath it” . The stress here on the generosity rather than the justice of God marks the Laws from its opening declaration that God created all things not to manifest his glory, but “for him to show beneficence and grace” (1.2.4). Hooker returns to this theme in Book V, which describes the “natural will of God” as wishing “all happiness . . . to the works of his own hands” , for God’s “desire is to have all men saved” . The Laws’ vision of God shapes its argument throughout. The wording of 5.49.1 strongly implies that predestination (that is, absolute double predestination) contradicts the very nature of God. The insistence on God’s desire for the happiness and well-­being of all his creatures likewise serves as theological ground for Hooker’s anti-­rigorist stance, for God “taketh . . . in good worth that little which we do.”4 The same insistence informs his rejection of the high-­bar puritan criteria for admission to the Lord’s Supper, or at least for receiving any benefit from it;5 for Hooker, as long as the sacraments are not “received with See, e.g., Dent . Hooker, Laws 6.6.18; see also 5.35.2, 5.48.11. 5 See, e.g., Coverdale’s preface to his translation of Calvin’s Treatise on the sacrament and Cartwright’s arguments in Whitgift, Defense . 3 4

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Richard Hooker

contempt, we are not to doubt but that they really give what they promise” .6 This minimalist requirement is, in turn, bound up with Hooker’s expansive model of Christian community. “It could almost be argued,” Lake observes, “that where puritans wanted to use the sacraments to define the Christian community by excluding the ungodly from them, Hooker wanted to define it by inducing as many people as possible to receive them” (182). [\

Hooker’s defense of the Prayer Book ceremonies against deep-­seated Reformed mistrust of externalities involved a major reconceptualization of worship. Whereas earlier conformist writers tended to defend these as “things indifferent” and therefore within the purview of ecclesiastical authority, the Laws reinvests ceremonies with “genuinely religious significance” (Lake, 166), yet without inching back towards the Catholic doctrine of sacramentals and the material holy. That is, except with respect to the sacraments, Hooker never argues that the practices and paraphernalia of public worship have intrinsic sacrality; they have value but only as aesthetic-­a ffective aids to devotion. Yet these are valid and powerful aids, because the senses are not enemies of but tied by subtle knots to “that very part of man which is most divine” . The Laws’ glorious chapter on sacred music thus describes its working by appeal to the ancient Greek view of education (mousike paideia) as training the emotions to love that which is truly good.7 Hence to some real extent, worship matters more than sermons. Hooker was, Collinson notes, the “first Elizabethan Protestant” to see the church as principally a house of prayer, “with worship and sacraments its prime business” (175). Hooker’s sacramental theology resembles Bullinger’s “symbolic parallelism.”8 Both hold that the sacraments confer but do not contain grace ; that the elements are signs “whereby to know when God doth impart the vital or saving grace of Christ”; that Christ is truly present in the faithful recipient, although not in the elements themselves . (Hooker’s claim that they are “causes instrumental” of a “mystical kind of union, which maketh us one” with Christ , is closer to Calvin’s symbolic instrumentalism.) According to Hooker, this view, which he endorses, represents the dominant Reformed position—­the Zwinglian memorialism of the Edwardian period having been largely abandoned, so that there is now “general agreement” on “the real participation of Christ . . . by means of this sacrament” . However, when Hooker lays out the same sacramental theology in Book VI, what he stresses is its filiation to a major strand of Roman Catholic doctrine : not the Thomist doctrine that Christ is corporeally present in the elements, but a strand associated with the Franciscans and, later, the Nominalists.9 This strand, known as “occasionalism” This is the standard scholastic position: that the sacraments are efficacious “as long as no obstacle (obex) is placed in the way of their reception” (Holtzen 630n). 7 See Plato, Laws 653bc; Hooker’s own note cites the Phaedrus. 8 See the general introduction . On Hooker as a high Calvinist, see Spinks, 24. 9 See T. L. Holtzen’s splendid article on this, especially pp. 623–­24.Gerrish notes in passing the “Franciscan” character of Bullinger’s symbolic parallelism (240). 6

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or, with reference to its sixteenth-­century variant, “moral causality,”10 holds that the sacraments are vessels and causes of grace, “not that the grace is substantially present in them or causally effected by them—­for grace dwells only in the soul and is infused by none but God—­but that, by divine command, we are to draw the grace of our healing from Christ . . . through and by these sensible signs” (Holtzen, 620). These could be Hooker’s words, but the quotation comes in fact from St. Bonaventure. Hooker’s sacramental theology, that is to say, affirms a position for which he finds a “general agreement” among Protestants and Catholics, or at least most Protestants and many Catholics. This is not, to be sure, how Catholics or Protestants typically presented each other’s sacramental theologies, in both the accent typically falling on their vast difference—­an insistence on the gulf between Protestant and Catholic doctrine not confined to the sacraments nor to the early modern era.11 Diarmaid MacCulloch has documented the surprising range of Hooker’s impact, extending to figures as diverse as the Calvinist Richard Baxter, the Cromwellian John Hall, the Leveller William Walwyn, and the contractualist John Locke.12 In the near term, however, his principal influence was twofold, the spirit of the Laws informing both the high churchmanship of the next half-­century, Laud’s in particular, and the circumscribed rationalism of the Great Tew circle, above all Chillingworth’s conjunction of Scripture, rational probability (moral certainty), and Christian tradition as the interlocking bases of faith.13 [\ Sources: ODNB; Patrick Collinson, “Hooker and the Elizabethan establishment,” in Richard Hooker and the construction of Christian community, ed. A. S. McGrade (Tempe, Ariz., 1997), 149–­82; Brian Gerrish, “The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed confessions,” in Major themes in the Reformed tradition, ed. Donald McKim (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1992), 245–­58; T. L. Holtzen, “Sacramental causality in Hooker’s eucharistic theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 62, no. 2 (2011): 607–­48; W. J. Torrance Kirby, “Reason and Law” in A companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, 2008), 251–­72, and “Hooker’s theory of natural law,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 3 (1999): 681–­703; Lake, Anglicans and Puritans; C. S. Lewis, English literature in the sixteenth century, excluding drama (Oxford, 1954); Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: a history (New York, 2003), and “Richard Hooker’s reputation,” Companion, 563–­612; Susan Schreiner, Are you alone wise? The search for certainty in the early modern era (Oxford, 2011); Debora Shuger, Habits of thought in the English Renaissance (Berkeley, 1988), and “‘Societie supernaturall’: the imagined community of Hooker’s Laws,” in Construction, 307–­30; Bryan Spinks, Sacraments, ceremonies and the Stuart divines (Aldershot, 2002); Paul Tillich, A history of Christian thought, ed. Carl Braaten (New York, 1967); Nigel Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed theology (Oxford, 2003).

10 Hooker refers to the sacraments as “moral instruments” at 5.57.5, by which he does not mean that receiving them is a moral duty on our part, but rather that their causality is “moral” (God, acting as a voluntary agent, bestows grace) rather than physical (inherent in the consecrated elements). See Holtzen, 624, 645, 648. 11 Tillich, writing in the mid-­t wentieth century, calls the Reformation “the creation of another religion” (228). 12 MacCulloch, “Hooker’s reputation”; also Shuger “‘Societie supernaturall’,” 309. 13 See Shuger, ed., Religion, xiii–­x iv, 272, 370–­71, 382, 385, 391, 887, 895–­96, 914, 923, 936.

204

RICHARD HOOKER

Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

1593 (Books I–­IV), 1597 (Book V), 1648 (Book VI)1

THE SECOND BOOK Concerning their first position who urge reformation in the Church of England: namely, that Scripture is the only rule of all things which in this life may be done by men. [2.1.4] First therefore whereas they allege that Wisdom doth teach men every good way; and have thereupon inferred that no way is good in any kind of action unless wisdom do by Scripture lead unto it; see they not plainly how they restrain the manifold ways which wisdom hath to teach men by unto one only way of teaching, which is by Scripture? The bounds of wisdom are large, and within them much is contained. Wisdom was Adam’s instructor in Paradise; wisdom endued the fathers who lived before the Law with the knowledge of holy things. . . . The ways of well-­doing are in number even as many as are the kinds of voluntary actions, so that whatsoever we do in this world and may do it ill, we show ourselves therein by well-­doing to be wise. . . . To teach men therefore Wisdom professeth, and to teach them every good way; but not every good way by one way of teaching.2 Whatsoever either men on earth or the angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of Wisdom, which Wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. . . . Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of Nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other; but let all her ways be according unto their place and degree adored. 1 {We have included the substantive chapter headings, but not those on the order of “First proof ” or “Another.”} 2 {This affirmation of multiple sacral loci, multiple sites at which the holy enters the temporal realm, carries over to become perhaps the most distinctive feature of early Stuart high churchmanship; see Shuger, ed., Religion, xiii–­x iv.}

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. . . [2.2.2] . . . God may be glorified by obedience, and obeyed by performance of his will, and his will be performed with an actual intelligent desire to fulfill that law which maketh known what his will is, although no special clause or sentence of Scripture be in every such action set before men’s eyes to warrant it. For Scripture is not the only law whereby God hath opened his will touching all things that may be done, but there are other kinds of laws which notify the will of God . . . nor is there any law of God, whereunto he doth not account our obedience his glory. . . . . . . The {puritans’} first assertion endeavored to be proved by the use of taking arguments negatively from the authority of Scripture, which kind of disputing is usual in the Fathers

[2.5.1] But against this it may be objected, and is, that the Fathers do nothing more usually in their books than draw arguments from the Scripture negatively in reproof of that which is evil: Scriptures teach it not, avoid it therefore. . . . But how far such arguments do reach, it shall the better appear by considering the matter wherein they have been urged. . . . [2.5.4] As for those alleged words of Cyprian, The Christian religion shall find that out of this Scripture rules of all doctrines have sprung, and that from hence doth spring and hither doth return whatsoever the ecclesiastical discipline doth contain: surely this place would never have been brought forth in this cause, if it had been but once read over in the author himself out of whom it is cited. For the words are uttered concerning that one principal commandment of love, in the honor whereof he speaketh after this sort: Surely this commandment containeth the Law and the Prophets, and in this one word is the abridgment of all the volumes of Scripture. . . . This is the first commandment and the last. . . . Let Christian religion read this one word and meditate upon this commandment, and out of this Scripture it shall find the rules of all learning to have sprung, and from hence to have risen and hither to return whatsoever the ecclesiastical discipline containeth. . . . Was this a sentence (trow you) of so great force to prove that Scripture is the only rule of all the actions of men? Might they not hereby even as well prove that one commandment of Scripture is the only rule of all things, and so exclude the rest of the Scripture, as now they do all means beside Scripture? But thus it fareth, when too much desire of contradiction causeth our speech rather to pass by number than to stay for weight. . . . Their opinion concerning the force of arguments taken from human authority for the ordering of men’s actions or persuasions

[2.7.1] An earnest desire to draw all things unto the determination of bare and naked Scripture hath caused here much pains to be taken in abating the estimation and credit of man.3 Which if we labor to maintain as far as truth and reason will bear, let not any think that we travail about a matter not greatly needful. For the scope of all their pleading against man’s authority is to overthrow such orders, laws, and constitutions in the Church as, depending thereupon, if they should therefore be taken away, would peradventure leave 3

{See, e.g., Whittingham’s preface to The form of prayers .}

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neither face nor memory of Church to continue long in the world, the world especially being such as now it is. That which they have in this case spoken I would for brevity’s sake let pass, but that the drift of their speech being so dangerous, their words are not to be neglected. [2.7.2] Wherefore to say that simply an argument taken from man’s authority doth hold no way, neither affirmatively nor negatively, is hard. By a man’s authority we here understand the force which his word hath for the assurance of another’s mind that buildeth upon it, as . . . the Samaritans {did} . . . upon the report of a simple woman: for so it is said in St. John’s Gospel, Many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He hath told me all things that ever I did. The strength of man’s authority is affirmatively such that the weightiest affairs in the world depend thereon. In judgment and justice are not hereupon proceedings grounded? . . .  And if it be admitted that in matter of fact there is some credit to be given to the testimony of man but not in matter of opinion and judgment, we see the contrary both acknowledged and universally practiced also throughout the world. The sentences of wise and expert men were never but highly esteemed. Let the title of a man’s right be called in question, are we not bold to rely and build upon the judgment of such as are famous for their skill in the laws of this land? In matter of state the weight many times of some one man’s authority is thought reason sufficient even to sway over whole nations. . . . As for arguments taken from human authority, and that negatively: for example sake, if we should think the assembling of the people of God together by the sound of a bell . . . or any other the like received custom to be impious because some men, of whom we think very reverently, have in their books and writings nowhere mentioned or taught that such things should be in the Church, this reasoning were subject unto just reproof. . . . Notwithstanding, even negatively an argument from human authority may be strong, as namely thus: the chronicles of England mention no more than only six kings bearing the name of Edward since the time of the last conquest; therefore it cannot be there should be mo. So that if the question be of the authority of a man’s testimony, we cannot simply avouch either that affirmatively it doth not any way hold, or that it hath only force to induce the simpler sort, and not to constrain men of understanding and ripe judgment to yield assent; or that negatively it hath in it no strength at all. For unto every of these the contrary is most plain. [2.7.3] Neither doth that which is alleged concerning the infirmity of men overthrow or disprove this. Men are blinded with ignorance and error . . . and although themselves do not err, yet may they through malice or vanity even of purpose deceive others. Howbeit infinite cases there are wherein all these impediments and lets are so manifestly excluded . . . that the testimony of man will stand as a ground of infallible assurance. That there is a city of Rome . . . I suppose we are certainly enough persuaded. The ground of our persuasion, who never saw the place . . . can be nothing but man’s testimony. Will any man here notwithstanding allege those mentioned human infirmities as reasons why these things should be mistrusted or doubted of? Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and strength of man’s testimony were to shake the very fortress of God’s truth. For whatsoever we believe concerning 207



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salvation by Christ, although the Scripture be therein the ground of our belief, yet the authority of man is, if we mark it, the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture. The Scripture could not teach us the things that are of God, unless we did credit men who have taught us that the words of Scripture do signify those things. Some way therefore, notwithstanding man’s infirmity, yet his authority may enforce assent. . . . [2.7.5] The truth is, that the mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most infallible certainty which the nature of things can yield. The greatest assurance generally with all men is that which we have by plain aspect and intuitive beholding. Where we cannot attain unto this, there what appeareth to be true by strong and invincible demonstration, such as wherein it is not by any way possible to be deceived, thereunto the mind doth necessarily assent, neither is it in the choice thereof to do otherwise. And in case these both do fail, then which way greatest probability leadeth, thither the mind doth evermore incline. Scripture with Christian men being received as the word of God; that for which we have probable, yea, that which we have necessary reason for, yea, that which we see with our eyes, is not thought so sure as that which the Scripture of God teacheth; because we hold that his speech revealeth there what himself seeth, and therefore the strongest proof of all, and the most necessarily assented unto by us (which do thus receive the Scripture) is the Scripture. Now it is not required or can be exacted at our hands that we should yield unto anything other assent than such as doth answer the evidence which is to be had of that we assent unto. For which cause even in matters divine, concerning some things we may lawfully doubt and suspend our judgment . . . as namely touching the time of the fall both of man and angels. . . . Finally in all things then are our consciences best resolved, and in most agreeable sort unto God and nature settled, when they are so far persuaded as those grounds of persuasion which are to be had will bear. Which thing I do so much the rather set down for that I see how a number of souls are, for want of right information in this point, oftentimes grievously vexed. When bare and unbuilded conclusions are put into their minds, they, finding not themselves to have thereof any great certainty, imagine that this proceedeth only from lack of faith, and that the Spirit of God doth not work in them as it doth in true believers. By this means their hearts are much troubled; they fall into anguish and perplexity. Whereas the truth is that, how bold and confident soever we may be in words, when it cometh to the point of trial, such as the evidence is which the truth hath either in itself or through proof, such is the heart’s assent thereunto; neither can it be stronger, being grounded as it should be. I grant that proof derived from the authority of man’s judgment is not able to work that assurance which doth grow by a stronger proof; and therefore, although ten thousand general councils would set down one and the same definitive sentence concerning any point of religion whatsoever, yet one demonstrative reason alleged or one manifest testimony cited from the mouth of God himself to the contrary could not choose but overweigh them all. . . . Howbeit in defect of proof infallible, because the mind doth rather follow probable persuasions than approve the things that have in them no likelihood of truth at all, surely, if a question concerning matter of doctrine were proposed, and on the one side no kind of proof appearing, there should on the other be alleged and showed that 208



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so a number of the learnedest divines in the world have ever thought; although it did not appear what reason or what Scripture led them to be of that judgment, yet to their very bare judgment somewhat a reasonable man would attribute, notwithstanding the common imbecilities which are incident into our nature. . . . [2.7.9] Shall I add further, that the force of arguments drawn from the authority of Scripture itself, as Scriptures commonly are alleged, shall (being sifted) be found to depend upon the strength of this so much despised and debased authority of man? Surely it doth, and that oftener than we are aware of. For although Scripture be of God, and therefore the proof which is taken from thence must needs be of all other most invincible, yet this strength it hath not unless it avouch the selfsame thing for which it is brought. If there be either undeniable appearance that so it doth . . . then Scripture-­proof (no doubt) in strength and value exceedeth all. But for the most part, even such as are readiest to cite for one thing five hundred sentences of holy Scripture, what warrant have they that any one of them doth mean the thing for which it is alleged? Is not their surest ground most commonly either some probable conjecture of their own or the judgment of others taking those Scriptures as they do? . . . So that now and then they ground themselves on human authority, even when they most pretend divine. Thus it fareth even clean throughout the whole controversy about that discipline which is so earnestly urged and labored for. Scriptures are plentifully alleged to prove that the whole Christian world for ever ought to embrace it. Hereupon men term it The discipline of God. Howbeit, examine, sift and resolve their alleged proofs till you come to the very root from whence they spring . . . and it shall clearly appear unto any man of judgment that the most which can be inferred upon such plenty of divine testimonies is only this: that some things which they maintain, as far as some men can probably conjecture, do seem to have been out of Scripture not absurdly gathered. Is this a warrant sufficient for any man’s conscience to build such proceedings upon as have been and are put in ure for the stablishment of that cause? . . . A declaration what the truth is in this matter

[2.8.1] But to the end it may more plainly appear what we are to judge of their sentences, and of the cause itself wherein they are alleged: first it may not well be denied, that all actions of men endued with the use of reason are generally either good or evil. . . . [2.8.2] Whatsoever is good, the same is also approved of God; and according unto the sundry degrees of goodness, the kinds of divine approbation are in like sort multiplied. Some things are good, yet in so mean a degree of goodness that men are only not disproved {i.e., disapproved} nor disallowed of God for them: No man hateth his own flesh. If ye do good unto them that do so to you, the very publicans themselves do as much. . . . In actions of this sort, the very light of Nature alone may discover that which is so far forth in the sight of God allowable. [2.8.3] Some things in such sort are allowed that they be also required as necessary unto salvation . . . so that without performance of them we cannot by ordinary course be saved, nor by any means be excluded from life observing them. In actions of this kind our 209



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chiefest direction is from Scripture, for Nature is no sufficient teacher what we should do that we may attain unto life everlasting. . . . [2.8.4]4 Finally some things, although not so required of necessity that to leave them undone excludeth from salvation, are notwithstanding of so great dignity and acceptation with God that most ample reward in heaven is laid up for them. Hereof we have no commandment either in Nature or Scripture which doth exact them at our hands, yet those motives there are in both which draw most effectually our minds unto them. In this kind there is not the least action but it doth somewhat make to the accessory augmentation of our bliss. For which cause our Savior doth plainly witness that there shall not be as much as a cup of cold water bestowed for his sake without reward. Hereupon dependeth whatsoever difference there is between the states of saints in glory. . . . [2.8.5] Wherefore, seeing that in all these several kinds of actions there can be nothing possibly evil which God approveth; and that he approveth much more than he doth command; and that his very commandments in some kind, as namely his precepts comprehended in the law of nature, may be otherwise known than only by Scripture; and that to do them, howsoever we know them, must needs be acceptable in his sight: let them with whom we have hitherto disputed consider well how it can stand with reason to make the bare mandate of sacred Scripture the only rule of all good and evil in the actions of mortal men. . . . . . .

THE THIRD BOOK Concerning their second assertion that in Scripture there must be of necessity contained a form of church polity, the laws whereof may in nowise be altered. . . . Another answer in defense of the former assertion, whereby the meaning thereof is opened in this sort: all Church orders must be commanded in the word; that is to say, grounded upon the word, and made according at leastwise unto the general rules of Holy Scripture. As for such things as are found out by any star or light of reason and are in that respect to be received (so they be not against the word of God), all such things it holdeth unlawfully received.

. . .

[3.8.4] But so it is, the name of the light of nature is made hateful with men, the star of reason and learning, and all other such like helps, beginneth no otherwise to be thought of than if it were an unlucky comet. . . . A number there are who think they cannot admire as they ought the power and authority of the word of God, if in things divine they should attribute any force to man’s reason. . . . . . . [3.8.6] First, concerning the inability of reason to search out and to judge of things divine, if they be such as those properties of God and those duties of men towards him which may be conceived by attentive consideration of heaven and earth, we know that of {See Emma Disley, “Degrees of glory: Protestant doctrine and the concept of rewards hereafter,” Journal of Theological Studies 42, no.1 (1991): 77–­105.} 4

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mere natural men the Apostle testifieth how they knew both God and the Law of God. Other things of God there be which are neither so found, nor, though they be showed, can never be approved without the special operation of God’s good grace and Spirit. Of such things sometime spake the Apostle St. Paul, declaring how Christ had called him to be a witness of his death and resurrection from the dead. . . . Festus, a mere natural man . . . heard him, but could not reach unto that whereof he spake; the suffering and the rising of Christ from the dead he rejecteth as idle superstitious fancies not worth the hearing. . . . Which example maketh manifest what elsewhere the same Apostle teacheth: namely, that nature hath need of grace; whereunto I hope we are not opposite, by holding that grace hath use of nature. . . . [3.8.13] Because we maintain that in Scripture we are taught all things necessary unto salvation, hereupon very childishly it is by some demanded, what Scripture can teach us the sacred authority of the Scripture, upon the knowledge whereof our whole faith and salvation dependeth? As though there were any kind of science in the world which leadeth men into knowledge without presupposing a number of things already known. No science doth make known the first principles whereon it buildeth, but they are always either taken as plain and manifest in themselves, or as proved and granted already, some former knowledge having made them evident. Scripture teacheth all supernatural revealed truth without the knowledge whereof salvation cannot be attained. The main principle whereupon our belief of all things therein contained dependeth is that the Scriptures are the oracles of God himself. This in itself we cannot say is evident. For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it in heart, as they do when they hear that every whole is more than any part of that whole. . . . There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all believers. Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered unto the world by revelation, and it presumeth us taught other wise that itself is divine and sacred. [3.8.14] The question then being by what means we are taught this, some answer that to learn it we have no other way than only tradition: as namely that so we believe because both we from our predecessors and they from theirs have so received. But is this enough? That which all men’s experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denied. And by experience we all know that the first outward motive leading men so to esteem of the Scripture is the authority of God’s Church. For when we know the whole Church of God hath that opinion of the Scripture, we judge it even at the first an impudent thing for any man bred and brought up in the Church to be of a contrary mind without cause. Afterwards the more we bestow our labor in reading or hearing the mysteries thereof, the more we find that the thing itself doth answer our received opinion concerning it. So that the former inducement prevailing somewhat with us before, doth now much more prevail when the very thing hath ministered farther reason. If infidels or atheists chance at any time to call it in question, this giveth us occasion to sift what reason there is whereby the testimony of the Church concerning Scripture and our own persuasion which Scripture itself hath confirmed may be proved a truth infallible. In which case the ancient Fathers . . . endeavored still to maintain the authority of the books of God by arguments such as unbelievers themselves must needs think reasonable, if they judged thereof as they should. Neither is it a thing impossible or greatly hard, even by such kind of proofs so to 211



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manifest and clear that point that no man living shall be able to deny it without denying some apparent principle such as all men acknowledge to be true. Wherefore if I believe the Gospel, yet is reason of singular use, for that it confirmeth me in this my belief the more; if I do not as yet believe, nevertheless, to bring me to the number of believers, except reason did somewhat help and were an instrument which God doth use unto such purposes, what should it boot to dispute with infidels or godless persons for their conversion and persuasion in that point? . . . [3.8.18] In all which hitherto hath been spoken touching the force and use of man’s reason in things divine, I must crave that I be not so understood or construed as if any such thing by vertue thereof could be done without the aid and assistance of God’s most blessed Spirit. The thing we have handled according to the question moved about it: which question is whether the light of reason be so pernicious that, in devising laws for the Church, men ought not by it to search what may be fit and convenient. For this cause therefore we have endeavored to make it appear how in the nature of reason itself there is no impediment but that the selfsame Spirit which revealeth the things that God hath set down in his Law may also be thought to aid and direct men in finding out by the light of reason what laws are expedient to be made for the guiding of his Church, over and besides them that are in Scripture. Herein therefore we agree with those men, by whom human laws are defined to be ordinances, which such as have lawful authority given them for that purpose do probably draw from the laws of nature and God, by discourse of reason aided with the influence of divine grace. And for that cause, it is not said amiss touching ecclesiastical canons, that by instinct of the Holy Ghost they have been made, and consecrated by the reverend acceptation of all the world. ‡

THE FOURTH BOOK Concerning their third assertion, that our form of church polity is corrupted with popish orders, rites, and ceremonies banished out of certain Reformed churches, whose example therein we ought to have followed. . . . How great use ceremonies have in the Church

[4.1.3] The end which is aimed at in setting down the outward form of all religious actions is the edification of the Church. Now men are edified when either their understanding is taught somewhat whereof in such actions it behoveth all men to consider, or when their hearts are moved with any affection suitable thereunto: when their minds are in any sort stirred up unto that reverence, devotion, attention, and due regard which in those cases seemeth requisite. Because therefore unto this purpose not only speech but sundry sensible means besides have always been thought necessary, and especially those means which, being object to the eye, the liveliest and the most apprehensive sense of all other, have in that respect seemed the fittest to make a deep and a strong impression. From hence have risen not only a number of prayers, readings, questionings, exhortings, but even of visible 212



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signs also, which, being used in performance of holy actions, are undoubtedly most effectual to open such matter. . . . We must not think but that there is some ground of reason, even in nature, whereby it cometh to pass that no nation under heaven either doth or ever did suffer public actions which are of weight, whether they be civil and temporal or else spiritual and sacred, to pass without some visible solemnity, the very strangeness whereof and difference from that which is common doth cause popular eyes to observe and to mark the same. . . . The things which so long experience of all ages hath confirmed and made profitable, let not us presume to condemn as follies and toys because we sometimes know not the cause and reason of them. A wit disposed to scorn whatsoever it doth not conceive might ask wherefore Abraham should say to his servant, Put thy hand under my thigh and swear [Gen. 24:2]. Was it not sufficient for his servant to show the religion {i.e., sanctity} of an oath by naming the Lord God of heaven and earth unless that strange ceremony were added? In contracts, bargains, and conveyances, a man’s word is a token sufficient to express his will. Yet this was the ancient manner in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to establish all things, a man did pluck off his shoe and gave it his neighbor; and this was a sure witness in Israel [Ruth 4:7]. . . . It were an infinite labor to prosecute {i.e., pursue} these things so far as they might be exemplified both in civil and religious actions (for in both they have their necessary use and force). The sensible things which religion hath hallowed are resemblances framed according to things spiritually understood, whereunto they serve as a hand to lead and a way to direct.5 . . . That it is not our best policy for the establishment of sound religion to have in these things no agreement with the Church of Rome, being unsound

[4.8.2] They which measure religion by dislike of the Church of Rome think every man so much the more sound by how much he can make the corruptions thereof to seem more large. And therefore some there are, namely the Arians in Reformed Churches of Poland, which imagine the canker to have eaten so far into the very bones and marrow of the Church of Rome as if it had not so much as a sound belief: no, not concerning God himself, but that the very belief of the Trinity were a part of antichristian corruption;6 and that the wonderful providence of God did bring to pass that the bishop of the see of Rome should be famous for his triple crown—­a sensible mark whereby the world might know him to be . . . that great and notorious Antichrist in no one respect so much as in this, that he maintaineth the doctrine of the Trinity. Wisdom, therefore, and skill is requisite to know what parts are sound in that Church, and what corrupted. . . . That we are not to abolish our ceremonies either because papists upbraid us as having taken from them7 or for that they are said hereby to conceive I know not what great hopes [Dionys. de eccl. hierarch.] {The reference is to the Minor Reformed Church (Polish Brethren), an early Unitarian sect that split off from the Polish Reformed Church in 1565.} 7 {E.g.s of such upbraiding, see Alexandra Walsham, Church papists: Catholicism, conformity, and confessional polemic in early modern England, 2d ed. (Woodbridge, 1999), 45.} 5 6

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[4.9.1] That the Church of Rome doth hereby8 take occasion to blaspheme, and to say our religion is not able to stand of itself unless it lean upon the staff of their ceremonies, is not a matter of so great moment that it did need to be objected or doth deserve to receive an answer. They which hereof make so perilous a matter do seem to imagine that we have erected of late a frame of some new religion, the furniture whereof we should not have borrowed from our enemies . . . whereas in truth the ceremonies which we have taken from such as were before us are not things that belong to this or that sect, but they are the ancient rites and customs of the Church of Christ, whereof ourselves being a part, we have the selfsame interest in them which our fathers before us had, from whom the same are descended unto us. . . . ‡

THE FIFTH BOOK Of their fourth assertion, that touching the several public duties of Christian religion, there is amongst us much superstition retained in them; and concerning persons which for performance of those duties are endued with the power of ecclesiastical order, our laws and proceedings according thereunto are many ways herein also corrupt . . . The first proposition touching judgment what things are convenient in the outward public ordering of church affairs

[5.6.2] That which inwardly each man should be, the Church outwardly ought to testify. And therefore the duties of our religion which are seen must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be. Signs must resemble the things they signify. If religion bear the greatest sway in our hearts, our outward religious duties must show it as far as the Church hath outward ability. Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men ought to have in them, according to our power, a sensible excellency correspondent to the majesty of him whom we worship [2 Chron. 2:5]. Yea, then are the public duties of religion best ordered, when the Militant Church doth resemble by sensible means, as it may in such cases, that hidden dignity and glory wherewith the Church Triumphant in heaven is beautified. . . . The sumptuousness of churches

[5.15.1] Some it highly displeaseth that so great expenses are this way employed. The mother of such magnificence (they think) is but only a proud ambitious desire to be spoken of far and wide. Suppose we that God . . . taketh pleasure in chargeable pomp? No. Then was the Lord most acceptably served when his temples were rooms borrowed within the houses of poor men. This was suitable unto the nakedness of Jesus Christ and the simplicity of his Gospel. . . . 8

{I.e., by the puritan tendency to regard all pre-­Reformation rites and practices as “popery”}

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[5.15.3] Touching God himself, hath he anywhere revealed that it is his delight to dwell beggarly? And that he taketh no pleasure to be worshipped saving only in poor cottages? Even then was the Lord as acceptably honored of his people as ever, when the stateliest places and things in the whole world were sought out to adorn his Temple. This most suitable, decent, and fit for the greatness of Jesus Christ, for the sublimity of his gospel. . . . . . . [5.15.4] If we should, over and besides this, allege the care which was had that all things about the tabernacle of Moses might be as beautiful, gorgeous, and rich as art could make them; or what travail and cost was bestowed that the goodliness of the Temple might be a spectacle of admiration to all the world, this, they will say, was . . . to shadow out the true everlasting glory of a more divine sanctuary, whereinto Christ being long sithence entered, it seemeth that all those curious exornations should rather cease. Which thing we also ourselves would grant, if the use thereof had been merely and only mystical. But sith the Prophet David doth mention a natural conveniency which such kind of bounteous expenses have, as well for that we do thereby give unto God a testimony of our cheerful affection which thinketh nothing too dear to be bestowed about the furniture of his service, as also because it serveth to the world for a witness of his almightiness, whom we outwardly honor with the chiefest of outward things, as being of all things himself incomparably the greatest.9 Besides, were it not also strange if God should have made such store of glorious creatures on earth and leave them all to be consumed in secular vanity, allowing none but the baser sort to be employed in his own service? To set forth the majesty of kings, his vicegerents in this world, the most gorgeous and rare treasures which the world hath are procured. We think belike that he will accept what the meanest of them would disdain? [5.15.5] If there be great care to build and beautify these corruptible sanctuaries, little or none that the living temples of the Holy Ghost, the dearly redeemed souls of the people of God, may be edified; huge expenses upon timber and stone, but towards the relief of the poor, small devotion; cost this way infinite, and in the meanwhile charity cold: we have in such case just occasion to make complaint. . . . . . . What holiness and vertue we ascribe to the church more than other places

[5.16.2] Again, albeit the true worship of God be, to God, in itself acceptable, who respecteth not so much in what place as with what affection he is served; and therefore Moses in the midst of the sea, Job on the dunghill . . . the thief on the cross, Peter and Paul in prison, calling unto God were heard, as St. Basil noteth; manifest notwithstanding it is that the very majesty and holiness of the place where God is worshipped hath in regard of us great vertue, force, and efficacy, for that it serveth as a sensible help to stir up devotion, and in that respect no doubt bettereth even our holiest and best actions in this kind. As therefore we everywhere exhort all men to worship God, even so, for performance of this service by the people of God assembled, we think not any place so good as the church, neither any exhortation so fit as that of David, O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness [Ps. 96:9]. . . . 9

{This sentence lacks a main clause, although if one removes the “sith” at the opening, all will be well.}

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[5.23.1] Between the throne of God in heaven and his Church upon earth here militant, if it be so that angels have their continual intercourse, where should we find the same more verified than in these two ghostly exercises: the one doctrine and the other prayer? . . . His heavenly inspirations and our holy desires are as so many angels of intercourse and commerce between God and us. As teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth, so prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our sovereign good. Besides, sith on God, as the most high, all inferior causes in the world are dependent; and the higher any cause is, the more it coveteth to impart vertue unto things beneath it; how should any kind of service we do or can do find greater acceptance than prayer, which showeth our concurrence with him in desiring that wherewith his very nature doth most delight? . . . Of public prayer

[5.24.1] This holy and religious duty of service towards God concerneth us one way in that we are men, and another way in that we are joined as parts to that visible mystical body which is his Church. As men, we are at our own choice, both for time and place and form, according to the exigence of our own occasions in private. But the service which we do as members of a public body is public, and for that cause must needs be accounted by so much worthier than the other as a whole society of such condition exceedeth the worth of any one. In which consideration, unto Christian assemblies there are most special promises made. . . . I speak no otherwise concerning the force of public prayer in the Church of God than before me Tertullian hath done: We come by troops to the place of assembly, that being banded as it were together, we may be supplicants enough to besiege God with our prayers. These forces are unto him acceptable. [5.24.2] When we publicly make our prayers, it cannot be but that we do it with much more comfort than in private, for that the things we ask publicly are approved as needful and good in the judgment of all; we hear them sought for and desired with common consent. Again, thus much help and furtherance is more yielded in that, if so be our zeal and devotion to Godward be slack, the alacrity and fervor of others serveth as a present spur: For even prayer itself (saith St. Basil), when it hath not the consort of many voices to strengthen it, is not itself. . . . . . . Of the form of common prayer

[5.25.2] And concerning the place of assembly, although it serve for other uses as well as this, yet seeing that our Lord himself hath to this, as to the chiefest of all other, plainly sanctified his own Temple by entitling it the house of prayer, what preeminence of dignity soever hath been . . . annexed unto his sanctuary, the principal cause thereof must needs be in regard of common prayer. For the honor and furtherance whereof, if it be as the gravest of the ancient Fathers seriously were persuaded and do oftentimes plainly teach, affirming that the house of prayer is a court beautified with the presence of celestial powers; that there we stand, we pray, we sound forth hymns unto God, having his angels 216



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intermingled as our associates . . . how can we come to the house of prayer and not be moved with the very glory of the place itself so to frame our affections praying as doth best beseem them whose suits the Almighty doth there sit to hear and his angels attend to further? When this was engrafted in the minds of men, there needed no penal statutes to draw them unto public prayer. The warning sound was no sooner heard but the churches were presently filled, the pavements covered with bodies prostrate and washed with their tears of devout joy. . . . Of them who allowing a set form of prayer, yet allow not ours

[5.27.1] Now albeit the Admonitioners did seem at the first to allow no prescript form of prayer at all, but thought it the best that their minister should always be left at liberty to pray as his own discretion did serve,10 yet because this opinion, upon better advice, they afterwards retracted, their defender and his associates have sithence proposed to the world a form such as themselves like;11 and to show their dislike of ours, have taken against it those exceptions, which whosoever doth measure by number must needs be greatly out of love with a thing that hath so many faults; whosoever by weight, cannot choose but esteem very highly of that wherein the wit of so scrupulous adversaries hath not hitherto observed any defect which themselves can seriously think to be of moment. Gross errors and manifest impiety, they grant we have taken away. Yet many things in it they say are amiss; many instances they give of things in our common prayer not agreeable as they pretend with the word of God. It hath in their eye too great affinity with the form of the Church of Rome. . . . 12 . . . Attire belonging to the service of God

[5.29.5]. . . . that church attire which with us, for the most part, is usual in public prayer . . . is in the number of those ceremonies which may with choice and discretion be used to that purpose13 in the Church of Christ; as also for that it suiteth so fitly with that lightsome affection of joy wherein God delighteth when his saints praise him, and so lively resembleth the glory of the saints in heaven, together with the beauty wherein angels have appeared unto men,14 that they which are to appear for men in the presence of God as angels, if they were left to their own choice and would choose any, could not easily devise a garment of more decency for such a service. . . .

10 {On the rejection of liturgy in favor of unscripted prayer among radical Protestants, see Browne ; also Lori Branch, Rituals of spontaneity (Waco, Tex., 2006).} 11 {I.e., The form of prayers} 12 {The passage goes on to summarize the objections to the Book of Common Prayer stated in Field and Wilcox .} 13 {I.e., for comeliness} 14 [Apoc. 15:6; Mark 16:5]

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[5.34.1] Again, forasmuch as effectual prayer is joined with a vehement intention of the inferior powers of the soul, which cannot therein long continue without pain, it hath been therefore thought good so by turns to interpose still somewhat for the higher part of the mind, the understanding, to work upon, that both being kept in continual exercise with variety, neither might feel any great weariness, and yet each be a spur to other. For prayer kindleth our desire to behold God by speculation; and the mind, delighted with that contemplative sight of God, taketh everywhere new inflammations to pray: the riches of the mysteries of heavenly wisdom continually stirring up in us correspondent desires towards them. So that he which prayeth in due sort is thereby made the more attentive to hear; and he which heareth, the more earnest to pray. . . . [5.34.2] But for what cause soever we do it, this intermingling of lessons with prayers is, in their taste, a thing as unsavory and as unseemly in their sight as if the like should be done in suits and supplications before some mighty prince of the world. Our speech to worldly superiors we frame in such sort as serveth best to inform and persuade the minds of them, who otherwise neither could nor would greatly regard our necessities; whereas, because we know that God is indeed a king, but a great king . . . a king which needeth not to be informed what we lack, a king readier to grant than we to make our requests, therefore in prayer we do not so much respect what precepts art delivereth touching the method of persuasive utterance in the presence of great men as what doth most avail to our own edification in piety and godly zeal. If they on the contrary side do think that the same rules of decency which serve for things done unto terrene powers should universally decide what is fit in the service of God . . . let them apply their own rule unto their own form of common prayer. Suppose that the people of a whole town, with some chosen man before them, did continually twice or thrice in a week resort to their king, and every time they come first acknowledge themselves guilty of rebellions and treasons, then sing a song, after that explain some statute of the land to the standers-­by, and therein spend at the least an hour; this done, turn themselves again to the king and for every sort of his subjects crave somewhat of him; at the length sing him another song, and so take their leave. Might not the king well think that either they knew not what they would have or else that they were distracted in mind, or some other such like cause of the disorder of their supplication? This form of suing unto kings were absurd. This form of praying unto God they allow. . . . Of music with psalms

[5.38.1] Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony. A thing which delighteth all ages and beseemeth all states, a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy, as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind more inwardly than any other sensible mean the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps and 218



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inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them that, whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our minds already are or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed than changed and led away by the other. In harmony, the very image and character even of vertue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances and brought, by having them often iterated, into a love of the things themselves. For which cause, there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some, nothing more strong and potent unto good. And that there is such a difference of one kind from another we need no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness; of some, more mollified and softened in mind; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another to move and stir our affections. There is, that draweth to a marvelous grave and sober mediocrity {i.e., moderation}; there is also, that carrieth as it were into ecstasies, filling the mind with an heavenly joy and, for the time, in a manner severing it from the body. So that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls is, by a native puissance and efficacy, greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled, apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too eager, sovereign against melancholy and despair, forcible to draw forth tears of devotion if the mind be such as can yield them, able both to move and to moderate all affections. . . . Of singing or saying psalms and other parts of common prayer, wherein the people and minister answer one another by course

[5.39.1] And if the Prophet David did think that the very meeting of men together and their accompanying one another to the house of God should make the bond of their love insoluble and tie them in a league of inviolable amity (Psal. 55:14), how much more may we judge it reasonable to hope that the like effects may grow in each of the people towards other, in them all towards their pastor, and in their pastor towards every of them, between whom there daily and interchangeably pass, in the hearing of God himself and in the presence of his holy angels, so many heavenly acclamations, exultations, provocations, petitions, songs of comfort, psalms of praise and thanksgiving: in all which particulars—­as when the pastor maketh their suits, and they with one voice testify a general assent thereunto; or when he joyfully beginneth, and they with like alacrity follow, dividing between them the sentences wherewith they strive which shall most show his own and stir up others’ zeal, to the glory of that God whose name they magnify; or when he proposeth unto God their necessities, and they their own requests for relief in every of them; or when he lifteth up his voice like a trumpet to proclaim unto them the laws of God, they adjoining, though not as Israel did by way of generality a cheerful promise, All that the Lord hath commanded we will do, yet that which God doth no less approve, that which savoreth more of meekness, that which testifieth rather a feeling knowledge of our common imbecility, unto the several branches thereof, several lowly and humble requests for grace at the merciful hands of God to perform the thing which is commanded; or when they wish reciprocally each other’s ghostly happiness; or when he by exhortation raiseth them up, and they by protestation of their readiness, declare he speaketh not in vain unto 219



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them—­these interlocutory forms of speech, what are they else but most effectual partly testifications and partly inflammations of all piety? [5.39.2] When and how this custom of singing by course {i.e., antiphonally} came up in the Church, it is not certainly known. Socrates15 maketh Ignatius the bishop of Antioch in Syria, the first beginner thereof, even under the apostles themselves. . . . Ignatius in Trajan’s days suffered martyrdom. And of the churches in Pontus and Bithynia, to Trajan the Emperor his own vicegerent there affirmeth that the only crime he knew of them {i.e., Christians} was they used to meet together at a certain day and to praise Christ with hymns as a God, secum invicem, one to another amongst themselves. Which, for anything we know to the contrary, might be the selfsame form which Philo Judaeus expresseth, declaring how the Essenes were accustomed with hymns and psalms to honor God, sometime all exalting their voices together in one, and sometime one part answering another, wherein as he thought they swerved not much from the pattern of Moses and Miriam. Whether Ignatius did at any time hear the angels praising God after that sort or no, what matter is it? If Ignatius did not, yet one which must be with us of greater authority did. I saw the Lord (saith the Prophet Esay) on an high throne; the seraphims stood upon it; one cried to another saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, the whole world is full of his glory. . . . Prayer that all men may find mercy, and of the will of God that all men might be saved

[5.49.1] In praying for deliverance from all adversity we seek that which nature doth wish to itself; but by entreating for mercy towards all, we declare that affection wherewith Christian charity thirsteth after the good of the whole world; we discharge that duty which the Apostle himself doth impose on the Church of Christ as a commendable office, a sacrifice acceptable in God’s sight, a service according to his heart whose desire is to have all men saved, a work most suitable with his purpose who gave himself to be the price of redemption for all, and a forcible mean to procure the conversion of all such as are not yet acquainted with the mysteries of that truth which must save their souls. Against it there is but the bare show of this one impediment: . . . that we know there are vessels of wrath to whom God will never extend mercy, and therefore that wittingly we ask an impossible thing to be had. [5.49.2] . . . There is in the knowledge both of God and man this certainty: that life and death have divided between them the whole body of mankind. What portion either of the two hath, God himself knoweth; for us he hath left no sufficient means to comprehend, and for that cause neither given any leave to search in particular who are infallibly the heirs of the kingdom of God, who castaways. Howbeit, concerning the state of all men with whom we live . . . the safest axioms for charity to rest itself upon are these: he which believeth already is and he which believeth not as yet may be the child of God. It becometh not us during life altogether to condemn any man, seeing that (for anything we know) there is hope of every man’s forgiveness, the possibility of whose repentance is not yet cut off by death. And therefore charity, which hopeth all things, prayeth also for all men. 15

{Socrates Scholasticus, a fifth-­century Church historian}

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[5.49.3] Wherefore to let go personal knowledge touching vessels of wrath and mercy, what they are inwardly in the sight of God it skilleth not; for us there is cause sufficient in all men whereupon to ground our prayers unto God in their behalf. For whatsoever the mind of man apprehendeth as good, the will of charity and love is to have it enlarged in the very uttermost extent, that all may enjoy it to whom it can any way add perfection. Because, therefore, the farther a good thing doth reach, the nobler and worthier we reckon it, our prayers for all men’s good, no less than for our own, the Apostle with very fit terms commendeth as being καλòν, a work commendable for the largeness of the affection from whence it springeth. . . . For as it is in itself good, so God accepteth and taketh it in very good part at the hands of faithful men. Our prayers for all men do include both them that shall find mercy and them also that shall find none. . . . And if any man doubt how God should accept such prayers in case they be opposite to his will—­or not grant them, if they be according unto that which himself willeth—­our answer is that such suits God accepteth in that they are conformable unto his general inclination, which is that all men might be saved; yet always he granteth them not, forasmuch as there is in God sometimes a more private occasioned will, which determineth the contrary.16 So that the other being the rule of our actions and not this, our requests for things opposite to this will of God are not therefore the less gracious in his sight. . . . Of the name, the author, and the force of sacraments; which force consisteth in this, that God hath ordained them as means to make us partakers of him in Christ, and of life through Christ

[5.50.1] . . . As many therefore as are apparently to our judgment born of God, they have the seed of their regeneration by the ministry of the Church, which useth to that end and purpose not only the word but the sacraments, both having generative force and vertue. . . . The union or mutual participation which is between Christ and the Church of Christ in this present world

[5.56.10 ¶4] Christ is whole with the whole Church and whole with every part of the Church, as touching his Person, which can no way divide itself or be possessed by degrees and portions. But the participation of Christ importeth—­besides the presence of Christ’s Person, and besides the mystical copulation thereof with the parts and members of his whole Church—­a true actual influence of grace, whereby the life which we live according to godliness is his, and from him we receive those perfections wherein our eternal happiness consisteth. [5.56.11] Thus we participate Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory. The first thing of his so infused into our hearts in this life is the Spirit of Christ, whereupon, because the rest of what kind soever do all both necessarily depend and infallibly also ensue, therefore the apostles term it sometime the seed of God, sometime the pledge of our heavenly inheritance, sometime the 16

{See the introduction to the Lambeth articles on the voluntas beneplaciti .}

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handsel or earnest of that which is to come. From hence it is that they which belong to the mystical body of our Savior Christ and be in number as the stars of heaven, divided successively by reason of their mortal condition into many generations, are notwithstanding coupled every one to Christ their Head, and all unto every particular person amongst themselves, inasmuch as the same Spirit which anointed the blessed soul of our Savior Christ doth so formalize,17 unite, and actuate his whole race, as if both he and they were so many limbs compacted into one body by being quickened all with one and the same soul. . . . The necessity of sacraments unto the participation of Christ

[5.57.1] It greatly offendeth that some, when they labor to show the use of the holy sacraments, assign unto them no end but only to teach the mind, by other senses, that which the word doth teach by hearing. Whereupon, how easily neglect and careless regard of so heavenly mysteries may follow, we see in part by some experience had of those men with whom that opinion is most strong. For where the word of God may be heard, which teacheth with much more expedition and more full explication anything we have to learn, if all the benefit we reap by sacraments be instruction, they which at all times have opportunity of using the better mean to that purpose will surely hold the worse in less estimation. And unto infants, which are not capable of instruction, who would not think it a mere superfluity that any sacrament is administered, if to administer the sacraments be but to teach receivers what God doth for them? There is of sacraments therefore undoubtedly some other more excellent and heavenly use. . . . [5.57.3] But their chiefest force and vertue consisteth . . . in that they are heavenly ceremonies, which God hath sanctified and ordained to be administered in his Church, first, as marks whereby to know when God doth impart the vital or saving grace of Christ unto all that are capable thereof; and secondly, as means conditional which God requireth in them unto whom he imparteth grace. For sith God in himself is invisible and cannot by us be discerned working, therefore, when it seemeth good in the eyes of his heavenly wisdom that men, for some special intent and purpose, should take notice of his glorious presence, he giveth them some plain and sensible token whereby to know what they cannot see. For Moses to see God and live was impossible, yet Moses by fire knew where the glory of God extraordinarily was present. . . . The apostles, by fiery tongues which they saw, were admonished when the Spirit, which they could not behold, was upon them. In like manner it is with us. . . . . . . [5.57.5] This is therefore the necessity of sacraments. That saving grace which Christ originally is or hath for the general good of his whole Church, by sacraments he severally deriveth into every member thereof. Sacraments serve as the instruments of God to that end and purpose: moral instruments,18 the use whereof is in our hands, the effect in his. . . . Where the signs and sacraments of his grace are not either through contempt unreceived or received with contempt, we are not to doubt but that they really give what 17 18

{Give form to, as the soul informs the body} {On moral instruments, see the introduction to this section 204.}

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they promise and are what they signify. For we take not baptism nor the eucharist for bare resemblances or memorials of things absent . . . but (as they are indeed and in verity) for means effectual whereby God, when we take the sacraments, delivereth into our hands that grace available unto eternal life—­which grace the sacraments represent or signify. . . . What kind of necessity in outward baptism hath been gathered by the words of our Savior Christ, and what the true necessity thereof indeed is

[5.60.2] . . . although in the rest we make not baptism a cause of grace, yet the grace which is given them with their baptism doth so far forth depend on the very outward sacrament that God will have it embraced not only as a sign or token what we receive, but also as an instrument or mean whereby we receive grace, because baptism is a sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the end that they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ, and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness, as also that infused divine vertue of the Holy Ghost, which giveth to the powers of the soul their first disposition towards future newness of life. . . . [5.60.4] There were of the old Valentinian heretics, some which had knowledge in such admiration that to it they ascribed all, and so despised the sacraments of Christ, pretending that, as ignorance had made us subject to all misery, so the full redemption of the inward man and the work of our restoration must needs belong unto knowledge only. They draw very near unto this error, who, fixing wholly their minds on the known necessity of faith, imagine that nothing but faith is necessary for the attainment of all grace. Yet is it a branch of belief that sacraments are in their place no less required than belief itself. . . . [5.60.5] Now the law of Christ, which in these considerations maketh baptism necessary, must be construed and understood according to rules of natural equity. . . . And (because equity so teacheth) it is on all parts gladly confessed that there may be, in divers cases, life by vertue of inward baptism, even where outward is not found. So that if any question be made, it is but about the bounds and limits of this possibility. . . . What things in baptism have been dispensed with by the Fathers respecting necessity

[5.61.4] Judge, therefore, what the ancient would have thought if in their days it had been heard which is published in ours, that because the substance of the sacrament doth chiefly depend on the institution of God, which is the form and as it were the life of the sacrament, therefore first, if the whole institution be not kept, it is no sacrament; and secondly, if baptism be private, his institution is broken, inasmuch as according to the orders which he hath set for baptism, it should be done in the congregation, from whose ordinance in this point we ought not to swerve, although we know that infants should be assuredly damned without baptism.19 O sir, you that would spurn thus at such as in case of so dreadful extremity should lie prostrate before your feet, you that would turn away your face from them at the 19

{The quoted passages are from Thomas Cartwright; see Whitgift, The defense of the Answer .}

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hour of their most need, you that would dam up your ears and harden your heart as iron against the unresistible cries of supplicants calling upon you for mercy with terms of such invocation as that most dreadful perplexity might minister if God by miracle did open the mouths of infants to express their supposed necessity, should first imagine yourself in their case and them in yours. . . . Would you then contentedly hear, My son, the rites and solemnities of baptism must be kept; we may not do ill that good may come of it, neither are souls to be delivered from eternal death and condemnation by breaking orders which Christ hath set; would you . . . not rather embrace enclosed with both your arms a sentence which now is no gospel unto you, I will have mercy and not sacrifice [Matt. 9:13]? . . . The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ

[5.67.1] . . . Such as will live the life of God must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man because this is a part of that diet which, if we want, we cannot live. Whereas therefore in our infancy we are incorporated into Christ and by baptism receive the grace of his Spirit without any sense or feeling of the gift which God bestoweth, in the eucharist we so receive the gift of God that we know by grace what the grace is which God giveth us; the degrees of our own increase in holiness and vertue we see and can judge of them; we understand that the strength of our life begun in Christ is Christ, that his flesh is meat and his blood drink—­not by surmised imagination but truly, even so truly that, through faith, we perceive in the body and blood sacramentally presented the very taste of eternal life; the grace of the sacrament is here as the food which we eat and drink. [5.67.2] This was it that some did exceedingly fear lest Zwinglius and Oecolampadius would bring to pass that men should account of this sacrament but only as of a shadow: destitute, empty, and void of Christ. But seeing that, by opening the several opinions which have been held, they are grown, for aught I can see, on all sides at the length to a general agreement concerning that which alone is material—­namely, the real participation of Christ and of life in his body and blood by means of this sacrament—­ wherefore should the world continue still distracted and rent with so manifold contentions, when there remaineth now no controversy saving only about the subject where Christ is? Yea even in this point, no side denieth but that the soul of man is the receptacle of Christ’s presence. Whereby the question is yet driven to a narrower issue, nor doth anything rest doubtful but this: whether, when the sacrament is administered, Christ be whole within man only, or else his body and blood be also externally seated in the very consecrated elements themselves; which opinion they that defend are driven either to consubstantiate and incorporate Christ with elements sacramental, or to transubstantiate and change their substance into his. . . . . . . [5.67.11] Touching the sentence of antiquity in this cause. . . . they teach . . . that Christ, assisting this heavenly banquet with his personal and true presence, doth by his own divine power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements changeth them and maketh them that unto us which otherwise they could not be; that to us they are thereby made such instruments as mystically yet truly, invisibly yet really, work our communion or fellowship with 224



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the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit, grace, and efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration from death to life. In a word, it appeareth not that of all the ancient Fathers of the Church any one did ever conceive or imagine other than only a mystical participation of Christ’s both body and blood in the sacrament. . . . [5.67.12] These things considered, how should that mind which, loving truth and seeking comfort out of holy mysteries, hath not perhaps the leisure, perhaps not the wit nor capacity, to tread out so endless mazes as the intricate disputes of this cause have led men into, how should a virtuously disposed mind better resolve with itself than thus? . . .  “He which hath said of the one sacrament, wash and be clean, hath said concerning the other likewise, eat and live. If therefore, without any such particular and solemn warrant as this is, that poor distressed woman coming unto Christ for health could so constantly resolve herself, may I but touch the skirt of his garment I shall be whole, what moveth us to argue of the manner how life should come by bread, our duty being here but to take what is offered and most assuredly to rest persuaded of this: that can we but eat, we are safe. . . . Where God himself doth speak those things which either for height and sublimity of matter or else for secrecy of performance we are not able to reach unto, as we may be ignorant without danger, so it can be no disgrace to confess we are ignorant. Such as love piety will, as much as in them lieth, know all things that God commandeth, but especially the duties of service which they owe to God. As for his dark and hidden works, they prefer, as becometh them in such cases, simplicity of faith before that knowledge which, curiously sifting what it should adore and disputing too boldly of that which the wit of man cannot search, chilleth for the most part all warmth of zeal, and bringeth soundness of belief many times into great hazard. Let it therefore be sufficient for me, presenting myself at the Lord’s Table, to know what there I receive from him, without searching or inquiring of the manner how Christ performeth his promise. Let disputes and questions, enemies to piety, abatements of true devotion, and hitherto in this cause but over-­patiently heard, let them take their rest. Let curious and sharp-­witted men beat their heads about what questions themselves will, the very letter of the word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very Cross, that by them we draw out, as touching efficacy, force, and vertue, even the blood of his gored side; in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst forever quenched; they are things wonderful which he feeleth, great which he seeth, and unheard of which he uttereth whose soul is possessed of this Paschal Lamb and made joyful in the strength of this new wine. This bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes behold; this cup hallowed with solemn benediction availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and body, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal our infirmities and purge our sins as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving. With touching it sanctifieth, it enlighteneth with belief, it truly conformeth us unto the image of Jesus Christ; what these elements are in themselves, it skilleth not; it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ. His promise in witness hereof sufficeth, his word he knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this, O my God thou art true, O my soul thou art happy!” 225



Religion in Tudor England The manner of celebrating festival days

[5.70.1] The sanctification of days and times is a token of that thankfulness and a part of that public honor which we owe to God for admirable benefits; whereof it doth not suffice that we keep a secret calendar, taking thereby our private occasions as we list ourselves to think how much God hath done for all men, but the days which are chosen out to serve as public memorials of such his mercies ought to be clothed with those outward robes of holiness whereby their difference from other days may be made sensible. . . . [5.70.2] This is the day which the Lord hath made, saith the prophet David; let us rejoice and be glad in it. So that generally offices and duties of religious joy are that wherein the hallowing of festival times consisteth. The most natural testimonies of our rejoicing in God are, first, his praises set forth with cheerful alacrity of mind; secondly, our comfort and delight expressed by a charitable largeness of somewhat more than common bounty; thirdly, sequestration from ordinary labors, the toils and cares whereof are not meet to be companions of such gladness. Festival solemnity therefore is nothing but the due mixture as it were of these three elements: praise and bounty and rest. . . . [5.70.3] Plentiful and liberal expense is required in them that abound, partly as a sign of their own joy in the goodness of God towards them, and partly as a mean whereby to refresh those poor and needy, who, being especially at these times made partakers of relaxation and joy with others, do the more religiously bless God, whose great mercies were a cause thereof, and the more contentedly endure the burden of that hard estate wherein they continue. . . . [5.70.4] For if those principal works of God, the memory whereof we use to celebrate at such times, be but certain tastes and says,20 as it were, of that final benefit wherein our perfect felicity and bliss lieth folded up, seeing that the presence of the one doth direct our cogitations, thoughts, and desires towards the other, it giveth surely a kind of life and addeth inwardly no small delight to those so comfortable expectations, when the very outward countenance of that we presently do representeth after a sort that also whereunto we tend, as festival rest doth that celestial estate. . . . ‡

BOOK VI21 . . . The nature of spiritual jurisdiction

[6.2.2] The spiritual power of the Church being such as neither can be challenged by right of nature nor could by human authority be instituted, because the forces and effects thereof are supernatural and divine, we are to make no doubt or question but that from him which is the Head it hath descended unto us that are the body now invested therewith. {“A trial of food by taste or smell” (OED)} {The title of Book VI says that it will be about ecclesiastical jurisdiction (in particular, lay elders); however, the extant portion deals mainly with penance.} 20 21

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He gave it for the benefit and good of souls, as a mean to keep them in the path which leadeth unto endless felicity, a bridle to hold them within their due and convenient bounds, and, if they do go astray, a forcible help to reclaim them. Now although there be no kind of spiritual power for which our Lord Jesus Christ did not give both commission to exercise and direction how to use the same, although his laws in that behalf recorded by the holy evangelists be the only ground and foundation whereupon the practice of the Church must sustain itself, yet, as all multitudes, once grown to the form of societies, are even thereby naturally warranted to enforce upon their own subjects particularly those things which public wisdom shall judge expedient for the common good, so it were absurd to imagine the Church itself, the most glorious amongst them, abridged of this liberty. . . . In doctrines referred unto action and practice, as this is which concerneth spiritual jurisdiction, the first step towards sound and perfect understanding is the knowledge of the end, because thereby both use doth frame and contemplation judge all things. Of penitence, the chiefest end propounded by spiritual jurisdiction. Two kinds of penitency: the one a private duty towards God, the other a duty of external discipline. Of the vertue of repentence, from which the former duty proceedeth; and of contrition, the first part of that duty

[6.3.1] Seeing then that the chiefest cause of spiritual jurisdiction is to provide for the health and safety of men’s souls by bringing them to see and repent their grievous offenses committed against God, as also to reform all injuries offered with the breach of Christian love and charity towards their brethren (in matters of ecclesiastical cognizance), the use of this power shall by so much the plainlier appear, if first the nature of repentance itself be known. We are by repentance to appease whom we offend by sin. For which cause, whereas all sins deprive us of the favor of Almighty God, our way of reconciliation with him is the inward secret repentance of the heart: which inward repentance alone sufficeth, unless some special thing, in the quality of sin committed or in the party that hath done amiss, require more. For besides our submission in God’s sight, repentance must not only proceed to the private contentation of men (if the sin be a crime injurious22), but also further, where the wholesome discipline of God’s Church exacteth a more exemplary and open satisfaction. Now the Church being satisfied with outward repentance, as God is with inward, it shall not be amiss, for more perspicuity, to term this latter always the vertue, that former the discipline of repentance: which discipline hath two sorts of penitents to work upon, inasmuch as it hath been accustomed to lay the offices of repentance on some seeking, others shunning them. . . . Repentance being therefore either in the sight of God alone or else with the notice also of men, without the one . . . we have no remedy for any fault; whereas the other is only required in sins of a certain degree and quality. The one necessary forever, the other so far forth as the laws and orders of God’s Church shall make it requisite. The nature, parts, and effects of the one always the same; the other limited, extended, varied by infinite occasions. . . .

22

{I.e., if the offence be such that others are injured by it.}

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[6.5.3] Repentance is a name which noteth the habit and operation of a certain grace or vertue in us; satisfaction, the effect which it hath, either with God or man. And it is not in this respect said amiss that satisfaction importeth acceptation, reconciliation, and amity, because that through satisfaction, on the one part made and allowed on the other, they which before did reject are now content to receive, they to be won again which were lost, and they to love unto whom just cause of hatred was given. We satisfy therefore in doing that which is sufficient to this effect; and they, towards whom we do it, are satisfied if they accept it as sufficient and require no more. . . . It is therefore true that our Lord Jesus Christ by one most precious and propitiatory sacrifice . . . hath thereby once reconciled us to God, purchased his general free pardon, and turned away divine indignation from mankind. But we are not for that cause to think any office of penitence either needless or fruitless on our own behalf—­for then would not God require any such duties at our hands. Christ doth remain everlastingly a gracious intercessor, even for every particular penitent. Let this assure us that God, how highly soever displeased and incensed with our sins, is notwithstanding, for his sake, by our tears pacified, taking that for satisfaction which is due by us,24 because Christ hath by his satisfaction made it acceptable. . . . There is not any thing that we do that could pacify God and clear us in his sight from sin, if the goodness and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ were not; whereas now, beholding the poor offer of our religious endeavor meekly to submit ourselves as often as we have offended, he regardeth with infinite mercy those services which are as nothing, and with words of comfort reviveth our afflicted minds, saying, It is I, even I, that take away thine iniquities for mine own sake. Thus doth repentance satisfy God, changing his wrath and indignation into mercy. . . . [6.5.7] Our offences sometimes are of such nature as requireth that particular men be satisfied, or else repentance to be utterly void and of none effect. For if either through open rapine or cloaked fraud, if through injurious or unconscionable dealings, a man have wittingly wronged others to enrich himself, the first thing evermore in this case required (ability serving) is restitution.25 For let no man deceive himself: from such offences we are not discharged, neither can be, till recompense and restitution to man accompany the penitent confession we have made to Almighty God. . . . . . . Of absolution of penitents

[6.6.9] But the cause wherefore they26 are so stiff, and have forsaken their own master27 in this point, is for that they hold the private discipline of penitency to be a sacrament; {On Roman Catholic teaching regarding satisfaction, see Allen’s Defense of purgatory .} {I.e., accepting the tears as sufficient, rather than demanding payment of what we actually owe} 25 {On restitution, see Debora Shuger, “The reformation of penance,” Huntington Library Quarterly 71, no. 4 (2008): 557–­71.} 26 {Recent Roman Catholic theologians} 27 [Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences (d. 1164)] 23 24

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absolution, an external sign in this sacrament; the signs external of all sacraments in the New Testament to be both causes of that which they signify and signs of that which they truly cause. To this opinion concerning sacraments they are now tied by expounding a canon in the Florentine Council according to a former scholastical invention received from Thomas.28 For his device it was that the mercy of God, which useth sacraments as instruments whereby to work, endueth them at the time of their administration with supernatural force and ability to induce grace into the souls of men, even as the axe and saw do serve to bring timber into that fashion which the mind of the artificer intendeth. His conceit Scotus, Ockham, Petrus Alliacensis,29 with sundry others, do most earnestly and strongly impugn, showing very good reason wherefore no sacrament of the new law can, either by vertue which itself hath or by force supernaturally given it, be properly a cause to work grace; but sacraments are therefore said to work or confer grace, because the will of Almighty God is, although not to give them such efficacy, yet himself to be present in the ministry of the working that effect, which proceedeth wholly from him, without any real operation of theirs such as can enter into men’s souls.30 [6.6.10] . . . For so God hath instituted and ordained that, together with due administration and receipt of sacramental signs, there shall proceed from himself grace effectual to sanctify, to cure, to comfort, and whatsoever is else for the good of the souls of men. Howbeit this opinion Thomas rejecteth under pretence that it maketh sacramental words and elements to be in themselves no more than signs, whereas they ought to be held as causes of that they signify.31 He therefore reformeth it with this addition: that the very sensible parts32 of the sacraments do instrumentally effect and produce, not grace (for the schoolmen both of those times and long after did for the most part maintain it untrue, and some of them unpossible, that sanctifying grace should efficiently proceed but from God alone—­and that, by immediate creation, as the substance of the soul doth); but the phantasy which Thomas had was that sensible things, through Christ’s and the priest’s benediction, receive a certain supernatural transitory force, which leaveth behind it a kind of preparative quality or beauty within the soul, whereupon immediately from God doth ensue the grace that justifieth. Now they which pretend to follow Thomas, differ from him in two points. For first, they make grace an immediate effect of the outward sign, which he for the dignity and excellency thereof was afraid to do. Secondly, whereas he, to produce but a preparative quality in the soul, did imagine God to create in the instrument a supernatural gift or ability; they confess that nothing is created, infused, or any way inherent either in the word or in the elements; nothing that giveth them instrumental efficacy but God’s mere motion or application. Are they able to explain unto us, or themselves to conceive, what they mean when they thus speak? For example, let them teach us, in the sacrament of baptism, what it is for water to be moved till it bring forth grace. . . . {The Council of Florence was held in 1439; “Thomas” is St. Thomas Aquinas.} {Pierre d’Ailly (1351–­1420), French theologian and cardinal} 30 {See Holtzen, “Sacramental causality.”} 31 [Summ. Theol. pars iii. q. 62. art. 1.] 32 {I.e., the parts that can be sensed: the wine, the bread, and so on} 28 29

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. . . [6.6.18] . . . we may boldly affirm that they err, which imagine for every offence a certain proportionable degree in the passions and griefs of mind, whereunto whosoever aspireth not, repenteth in vain. . . . That which God doth chiefly respect in men’s penitency is their hearts. The heart is it which maketh repentance sincere; sincerity that which findeth favor in God’s sight; and the favor of God that which supplieth, by gracious acceptation, whatsoever may seem defective in the faithful, hearty, and true offices of his servants. Take it (saith Chrysostom) upon my credit: such is God’s merciful inclination towards men that repentance offered with a single and sincere mind, he never refuseth; no not although we be come to the very top of iniquity. If there be a will and desire to return, he receiveth, embraceth, omitteth nothing which may restore us to former happiness; yea, that which is yet above all the rest, albeit we cannot, in the duty of satisfying him, attain what we ought and would, but come far behind our mark, he taketh nevertheless in good worth that little which we do; be it never so mean, we lose not our labor therein. The least and lowest step of repentance, in Saint Chrysostom’s judgment, severeth and setteth us above them that perish in their sin. I will therefore end with St. Augustine’s conclusion, Lord, in thy book and volume of life all shall be written, as well the least of thy saints as the chiefest. Let not therefore the unperfect fear; let them only proceed and go forward. [\ T ext: The works of . . . Mr. Richard Hooker, 3 vols., ed. John Keble, rev. R. W. Church and F. Paget, 7th ed. (Oxford, 1888; repr. Hildersheim, 1977).

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ECCLESIOLOGY

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JOHN FIELD AND THOMAS WILCOX An admonition to the Parliament1

The early 1570s were both an exciting and a dangerous time for the faction in the Church of England who over the previous decade had become known as puritans. A series of Roman Catholic maneuvers—­notably the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569 and the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth by the pope in 1570—­had made puritans appear loyal and sensible, a reliable bulwark for the government against a reinvigorated Catholic threat. Energized by this apparent turn of the tides, the intellectual leader of the puritans, Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge University, gave a series of lectures in which he denounced episcopacy (the rule of the Church by bishops) as a relic of popery and called for the creation of a presbyterian system of Church government instead. This was pushing too far, and the new vice-­chancellor of Cambridge, the conservative John Whitgift, stripped Cartwright of his professorship. At the same time, as puritan ministers continued to reject the liturgical apparatus of the Book of Common Prayer, the archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, launched a new campaign to enforce uniformity in which all ministers would be required to swear that using the Book of Common Prayer was not contrary to Scripture. Puritans countered by introducing a bill in Parliament allowing ministers not to use elements of the Book of Common Prayer that violated their conscience, but the bill was soundly defeated. This was a moment, in other words, in which puritans still genuinely hoped to reform the Church of England from within through an organic process of continued reformation, but they were discovering, to their dismay, the unlikeliness of success through ordinary channels. The result was a new document called An admonition to the Parliament, written by the London puritan leaders John Field and Thomas Wilcox, who were simultaneously involved in a scheme to invent something like a private presbyterian Church within the Church of England through a series of semilegal private meetings of ministers at Wandsworth, just 1 An overview of Field’s career and some further details about the context and reception of the Admonition can be found in the introduction to Field’s A view of popish abuses, printed together with the Admonition in 1572 and thereafter.

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south of the River Thames. An admonition was submitted to Parliament as an alternative to the bill against the Book of Common Prayer that had failed to pass, but it was also published for wide distribution, and this publicity, along with the title, is key to understanding the text. According to puritan readings of Matthew 18, “admonition” was a crucial step in proper ecclesiastical discipline, a divinely ordained model of Church governance that the Church of England had neglected at its peril. In this model, if a “brother” (that is, a member of the same Church) sinned against you, the first step was to confront that person directly. If that failed, the next step was to seek the help of a few godly brethren. And if that failed, the next step was to admonish the person publically, according to the words of Matthew 18:17: “Tell it to the Church.” An admonition to the Parliament, then, was a dangerous step in escalating the Church of England’s internal disputes because according to Matthew 18, the next step after a failed admonition was excommunication: separating from the offender—­in this case, Parliament—­as a “heathen man or a publican.” [\

The content of An admonition was in part a more generalizable version of the puritan complaints of the previous decade. That is, it included arguments against the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer, only now, instead of focusing on the rights of individual ministers to abstain from ceremonial requirements for reason of conscience, An admonition sought to tear those ceremonies out by the roots on the grounds that they were popish accretions upon the pure Church established in Scripture. But in addition to the old issues of ceremonies, An admonition was revolutionary in attacking the governance and disciplinary structures of the Church of England itself. It argued, as Cartwright had begun to argue in his Cambridge lectures on the book of Acts, that the whole system of ecclesiastical government by bishops was anti-Christian and should be abolished. It also argued that the Church of England itself was corrupt because of its impure clergy, a result of the willy-­nilly process whereby, when Queen Mary died and Queen Elizabeth took the throne, the majority of the Catholic clergy had been allowed to restyle themselves as Protestant ministers, without any mechanism for insuring their doctrinal or moral purity. To the authors of An admonition, this corrupt clergy could not properly discipline the population, not only because they were not disciplined themselves, but because England lacked proper mechanisms for ecclesiastical discipline. Only a scriptural system of excommunication, in which the elders of each church policed the purity of their flock and excluded the intransigent, was capable of achieving in England the sort of full Reformation practiced in Geneva and in Scotland. [\ Sources: ODNB; Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; Patrick Collinson, “John Field and Elizabethan puritanism,” in Collinson, Godly people; W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, eds., Puritan manifestoes: a study of the origin of the puritan revolt, with a reprint of the “Admonition to the parliament,” and kindred documents (London, 1907); Lake, Moderate puritans; Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans.

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JOHN FIELD AND THOMAS WILCOX An admonition to the Parliament

1572

Seeing that nothing in this mortal life is more diligently to be sought for and carefully to be looked unto than the restitution of true religion and reformation of God’s Church, it shall be your parts (dearly beloved) in this present Parliament assembled, as much as in you lies, to promote the same, and to employ your whole labor and study not only in abandoning all popish remnants, both in ceremonies and regiment but also in bringing in and placing in God’s Church those things only which the Lord himself in his word commandeth. . . . Now, because many men see not all things, and the world in this respect is marvelously blinded, it hath been thought good to proffer to your godly considerations a true platform of a Church reformed to the end, that it being laid before your eyes to behold the great unlikeness betwixt it and this our English Church, you may learn either with perfect hatred to detest the one and with singular love to embrace and carefully endeavor to plant the other, or else to be without excuse before the majesty of our God, who . . . hath by us revealed unto you at this present the sincerity and simplicity of his Gospel . . . that you should yet now at the length with all your main and might endeavor that Christ (whose easy yoke and light burden we have of long time cast off from us) might rule and reign in his Church by the scepter of his word only. May it therefore please your wisdoms to understand that we in England are so far off from having a Church rightly reformed according to the prescript of God’s word that as yet we are scarce come to the outward face of the same. For, to speak of that wherein the best consent and whereupon all good writers accord, the outward marks whereby a true Christian Church is known are preaching of the word purely, ministering of the sacraments sincerely, and ecclesiastical discipline which consisteth in admonition and correction of faults severely. Touching the first, namely the ministry of the word, although it must be confessed that the substance of doctrine by many delivered is sound and good, yet herein it faileth: that neither the ministers thereof are according to God’s word proved, elected, called, or ordained; nor the function in such sort so narrowly looked unto as of right it ought and is of necessity required. . . . But we allow and like well of 235



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popish mass-­mongers, men for all seasons, King Henry’s priests, Queen Mary’s priests, who of a truth (if God’s word were precisely followed) should from the same be utterly removed. . . . Then, the congregation had authority to call ministers. Instead thereof, now, they run, they ride and, by unlawful suit and buying, prevent other suitors also. Then, no minister placed in any congregation but by the consent of the people. Now, that authority is given into the hands of the bishop alone, who by his sole authority thrusteth upon them such as they many times, as well for unhonest life as also for lack of learning, may and do justly dislike. . . . Then, the ministers were preachers. Now, bare readers. And if any be so well disposed to preach in their own charges, they may not without my Lord’s license. In those days, known by voice, learning, and doctrine. Now, they must be discerned from one other by popish and antichristian apparel—­as cap, gown, tippet, etc. Then, as God gave utterance, they preached the word only. Now, they read homilies, articles, injunctions, etc. Then, it was painful. Now, gainful. Then, poor and ignominious in the eyes of the world. Now, rich and glorious. And therefore titles, livings, and offices by Antichrist devised are given to them as metropolitan, archbishop, lord’s grace, lord bishop, suffragan, dean, archdeacon, prelate of the garter, earl, county palatine, honor, high commissioners, justices of peace and quorum, etc.: all which, together with their offices, as they are strange and unheard of in Christ’s Church—­nay, plainly in God’s word forbidden—­so are they utterly with speed out of the same to be removed. Then, ministers were not so tied to any one form of prayers, but as the Spirit moved them and as necessity of time required, so they might pour forth hearty supplications to the Lord. Now, they are bound of necessity to a prescript order of service and book of common prayer in which a great number of things contrary to God’s word are contained, such as baptism by women, private Communions, Jewish purifyings, observing of holidays, etc. . . . Then, nothing taught but God’s word. Now, prince’s pleasures, men’s devices, popish ceremonies, and antichristian rites in public pulpits defended. Then, they sought them. Now, they seek theirs. . . . Now, to the second point, which concerneth ministration of sacraments. . . . And first for the Lord’s Supper or holy communion. They had no introit, for Celestinus, a pope, brought it in about the year 430. But we have borrowed a piece of one out of the mass book. They read no fragments of the Epistle and Gospel. We use both. The Nicene Creed was not read in their Communion. We have it in ours. There was then accustomed to be an examination of the communicants, which now is neglected. Then, they ministered the sacrament with common and usual bread. Now, with wafer cakes, brought in by Pope Alexander, being in form, fashion, and substance like their god of the altar. They received it sitting; we kneeling, according to Honorius’ decree.1 Then, it was delivered generally and indefinitely: Take ye, and eat ye; we, particularly and singularly: Take thou, and eat thou. They used no other words but such as Christ left. We borrow from papists: The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, etc.2 They had no Gloria in excelsis in the ministry of the sacrament then, for it was put to afterward. We have now. They took it with conscience. We with custom. They shut men by reason of their sins from the Lord’s Supper. We thrust them in their sin to the Lord’s Supper. They ministered the 1 2

{Pope Honorius III (d. 1227). The decree seems to be mythic.} {But see 1 Cor. 11:24.}

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sacrament plainly. We, pompously, with singing, piping, surplice and cap wearing. They, simply, as they received it from the Lord. We, sinfully, mixed with man’s inventions and devises. And as for baptism, it was enough with them if they had water and the party to be baptized, faith, and the minister to preach the word and minister the sacraments. Now, we must have surplices devised by Pope Adrian, interrogatories ministered to the infant, holy fonts invented by Pope Pius, crossing, and such like pieces of popery, which the Church of God in the apostles’ times never knew (and therefore not to be used); nay (which we are sure of), were and are man’s devises brought in long after the purity of the primitive Church. To redress these, your wisdoms have to remove (as before) ignorant ministers; to take away private communions and baptisms; to enjoin deacons and midwives not to meddle in ministers’ matters; if they do, to see them sharply punished; to join assistance of elders and other officers that, seeing men will not examine themselves, they may be examined and brought to render a reason of their hope. That the Statute against wafer cakes may more prevail than an Injunction.3 That people be appointed to receive the sacrament rather sitting, for avoiding of superstition, than kneeling, having in it the outward show of evil, from which we must abstain. That excommunication be restored to his old former force. That papists nor other, neither constrainedly nor customably, communicate in the mysteries of salvation. That both the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and baptism also may be ministered according to the ancient purity and simplicity. That the parties to be baptized, if they be of the years of discretion, by themselves and in their own persons, or if they be infants, by their parents (in whose room, if upon necessary occasions and businesses they be absent, some of the congregation knowing the good behavior and sound faith of the parents) may both make rehearsal of their faith, and also, if their faith be sound and agreeable to holy Scriptures, desire to be in the same baptized. And finally, that nothing be done in this or any other thing but that which you have the express warrant of God’s word for. Let us come now to the third part, which concerneth ecclesiastical discipline. The officers that have to deal in this charge are chiefly three: ministers; preachers or pastors, of whom {we have spoken} before; seniors or elders;4 and deacons. Concerning seniors, not only their office but their name also is out of this English Church utterly removed. Their office was to govern the church with the rest of the ministers, to consult, to admonish, to correct, and to order all things appertaining to the state of the congregation. Instead of these seniors in every church, the pope hath brought in, and we yet maintain, the lordship of one man over many churches, yea over sundry shires. These seniors then did execute their offices in their own persons, without substitutes. Our lord bishops have their under-­ officers: as suffragans, chancellors, archdeacons, officials, commissaries, and such like. Touching deacons, though their names be remaining, yet is the office slowly perverted and turned upside down. For their duty in the primitive Church was to gather the alms diligently and to distribute it faithfully; also for the sick and impotent persons to provide painfully, having ever a diligent care that the charity of godly men were not wasted upon 3 {The royal injunctions of 1559 required wafers, while the Book of Common Prayer and the 1559 Act of Uniformity authorized common bread. The same Act also gave the Queen authority to revise sacramental forms, so in theory the injunctions might be taken to overrule the Book of Common Prayer, although by the mid-­1570s common bread was generally allowed.} 4 {In Greek, presbyteroi, and hence “presbyterian”}

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loiterers and idle vagabonds. Now it is the first step to the ministry. . . . Again, in the old Church, every congregation had their deacons. Now they are tied to cathedral churches only. And what do they there? Gather the alms and distribute to the poor? Nay, that is the least piece, or rather no part, of their function. What then? To sing a Gospel when the bishop ministereth the Communion. If this be not a perverting of this office and charge, let everyone judge. . . . Now then, if you will restore the Church to his ancient officers, this you must do. Instead of an archbishop or lord bishop, you must make equality of ministers. Instead of chancellors, archdeacons, officials, commissaries, proctors, summoners, churchwardens, and such like, you have to put in every congregation a lawful and godly seigniory. The deaconship must not be confounded with the ministry, nor the collectors for the poor may not usurp the deacon’s office. But he that hath an office must look to his office, and every man must keep himself within the bounds and limits of his own vocation. And to these three jointly—­that is, the ministers, seniors, and deacons—­is the whole regiment of the Church to be committed. This regiment consisteth especially in ecclesiastical discipline, which is an order left by God unto his Church whereby men learn to frame their wills and doings according to the law of God, instructing and admonishing one another. Yea, and by correcting and punishing all willful persons and contemners of the same. Of this discipline there is two kinds: one private, wherewith we will not deal because it is impertinent to our purpose; another public, which, although it hath been long banished, yet if it might now at the length be restored, would be very necessary and profitable for the building up of God’s house. The final end of this discipline is the reforming of the disordered and to bring them to repentance, and to bridle such as would offend. The chiefest part and last punishment of this discipline is excommunication by the consent of the Church determined, if the offender be obstinate—­which how miserably it hath been by the pope’s proctors and is by our new canonists abused, who seeth not? In the primitive Church it was in many men’s hands. Now, one alone excommunicateth. In those days, it was the last censure of the Church and never went forth but for notorious crimes. Now it is pronounced for every light trifle. Then, excommunication was greatly regarded and feared. Now, because it is a money matter, no whit at all esteemed. Then, for great sins, severe punishment; and for small offences, censures according. Now, great sins either not at all punished (as blasphemy, usury, drunkenness, etc.) or else slightly passed over with pricking in a blanket or pinning in a sheet (as adultery, whoredom), etc. Again, such as are no sins (as, if a man conform not himself to popish orders and ceremonies, if he come not at the whistle of him who hath by God’s word no authority to call—­we mean chancellors, officials, and all that rabble) are grievously punished, not only by excommunication, suspension, deprivation and other (as they term it) spiritual coercion, but also by banishing, imprisoning, reviling, taunting, and what not? Then, the sentence was tempered according to the notoriousness of the fact. Now, on the one side, either hatred against some persons carryeth men headlong into rash and cruel judgment; or else favor, affection, or money, mitigateth the rigor of the same. And all this cometh to pass because the regiment left of Christ to his Church is committed into one man’s hands, whom alone it shall be more easy for the wicked by bribing to pervert than to overthrow the faith and piety of zealous and godly company. For such manner of men indeed should the seigniors {i.e., seniors, elders} be. Then, it was said tell the Church. Now, it is spoken, complain to my lord’s grace . . . Again, whereas the excommunicate were never received till they had 238



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publicly confessed their offence; now, for paying the fees of the court, they shall by master official or chancellor easily be absolved in some private place. Then, the congregation, by the wickedness of the offender grieved, was by his public penance satisfied. Now, absolution shall be pronounced though that be not accomplished. . . . And this is that order of ecclesiastical discipline which all godly wish to be restored to the end that everyone by the same may be kept within the limits of his vocation and a great number be brought to live in godly conversation. Not that we mean to take away the authority of the civil magistrate and chief governor, to whom we wish all blessedness, and for the increase of whose godliness we daily pray; but that, Christ being restored into his kingdom to rule in the same by the scepter of his word and severe discipline, the prince may be better obeyed, the realm more flourish in godliness, and the Lord himself more sincerely and purely according to his revealed will served than heretofore he hath been or yet at this present is. Amend therefore these horrible abuses and reform God’s Church, and the Lord is on your right hand; you shall not be removed forever, for he will deliver and defend you from all your enemies, either at home or abroad, as he did faithful Jacob and good Jehoshaphat. Let these things alone, and God is a righteous judge. He will one day call you to your reckoning. Is a reformation good for France? And can it be evil for England? Is discipline meet for Scotland? And is it unprofitable for this realm? Surely God hath set these examples before your eyes to encourage you to go forward to a thorough and a speedy reformation. You may not do as heretofore you have done: patch and piece; nay rather, go backward and never labor or contend to perfection. But altogether remove whole Antichrist, both head and tail, and perfectly plant that purity of the word, that simplicity of the sacraments, and severity of discipline which Christ hath commanded and commended to his Church. . . . The God of all glory so open your eyes to see his truth that you may not only be inflamed with a love thereof, but with a continual care seek to promote, plant, and place the same amongst us, that we, the English people, and our posterity, enjoying the sincerity of God’s gospel forever, may say always: The Lord be praised. To whom, with Christ Jesus his Son our only Savior, and the Holy Ghost our alone Comforter, be honor, praise, and glory, forever and ever. Amen. [\ T ext: John Field and Thomas Wilcox, An admonition to the parliament (Hemel Hempstead?, 1572) (NSTC 10848). Corrected against Puritan manifestoes . . . with a reprint of the Admonition to the Parliament and kindred documents, ed. W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas (London: SPCK, 1907).

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ROBERT BROWNE (1550–­1633)

A treatise of reformation without tarrying for any

Browne inadvertently gave his name to an entire movement. For nearly a century, English Christians who separated from the Church of England to form their own independent congregations were known as Brownists. Ironically, Browne himself was only a Brownist for about six years, from 1579–­1585; afterwards, he made his peace with the established Church and lived the last forty-­eight years of his long life as a minister of the Church of England. But at the time he wrote A Treatise of reformation without tarrying for any, Browne and his friend Robert Harrison were the leaders of a small group who had just created their own breakaway Church on what they claimed was a scriptural model, rejecting the government and discipline of the Church of England in favor of a system where the congregation elected its own pastor, teacher, and elders, who guided the congregation in the disciplining of their own members. Browne, who was elected pastor, fled with his congregation to Middelburg in the Netherlands in the summer of 1582, and immediately upon arrival he wrote this treatise and several others. They were printed in Middelburg and then smuggled into England; in June 1583 Browne and his treatises were condemned by royal proclamation, and at least two “Brownists” in the Suffolk town of Bury St. Edmonds were arrested for circulating them and subsequently executed. [\

The issue of this treatise was at the center of the Reformation as a process rather than as a theory: how should reform be implemented in conditions where such implementation was against the law? Puritans in England believed that the Reformation there was incomplete: the outward forms of worship prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer remained largely unreformed, the governance of the Church of England through bishops and their courts was unscriptural, and so forth. But the Book of Common Prayer and the governance of the Church were established by civil laws passed by Parliament. So how could they be opposed without violating the scriptural requirement of obedience to civil powers? It was one thing to insist upon disobedience to Roman Catholic authority 240



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and the Mass: Protestants routinely asserted that those things were plainly evil, against the laws of God, and therefore to be opposed. But did they really want to claim that the Elizabethan Church remained likewise anti-Christian? Most Englishmen, including puritans, said “no”: however much the latter wanted further reformation, they accepted that the Church of England remained a true Church and held that individual ministers had no calling to alter public worship and Church government, which could only be changed by lawful authority. In that sense, while they might lobby for change and even reform their own private practices, on matters of public reformation they had to “tarry for the magistrate.” Robert Browne, however, was among the first of what would later become a flood of English separatists who answered “yes”: there was no room for wickedness in God’s Church, and to the extent that the Church of England licensed such wickedness it should be openly disobeyed and if necessary left behind. In making this argument, Browne appealed particularly to the Old Testament: the voices of prophets calling upon magistrates to reform or be damned, and the actions of the ancient Israelites who worked to build and purify the Temple even when their judges and kings turned against them. But it is important to note that there remains an ambiguity here: did “reformation without tarrying for any” mean separation from the Church of England or the rebuilding of that Church? If Browne and his followers had come to the conclusion that proper discipline consisted of congregations that elected their own officers and disciplined themselves without external interference, could the Church of England be reformed, or did reformation entail the breakup of the national Church? Browne did not have to answer this question in 1582, but generations of subsequent “Brownists” would fight bitterly over these questions. [\ Sources: ODNB; Stephen Brachlow, The communion of saints: radical puritan and separatist ecclesiology 1570–­ 1625 (Oxford, 1989); Leland Carlson and Albert Peel, eds., The writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne (London, 1953); B. R. White, The English Separatist tradition: from the Marian martyrs to the pilgrim fathers (Oxford, 1971).

241

ROBERT BROWNE

A treatise of reformation without tarrying for any

1582

Seeing in this book we show the state of Christians, and have labored also in good conscience to live as Christians, it is marveled and often talked of among many why we should be so reviled and troubled of many and also leave our country. Forsooth (say the enemies) there is some hidden thing in them more than plainly appeareth, for they bear evil will to their princess, Queen Elizabeth, and to their country; yea, they forsake the Church of God and condemn the same and are condemned of all, and they also discredit and bring into contempt the preachers of the gospel. To answer them, we say that they are the men which trouble Israel and seek evil to the prince, and not we; and that they forsake and condemn the Church, and not we. . . . But for the magistrate, how far by their authority or without it the Church must be builded and reformation made, and whether any open wickedness must be tolerated in the Church because of them, let this be our answer—­ for chiefly in this point they have wrought us great trouble and dismayed many weaklings from embracing the truth. We say, therefore, and often have taught concerning our sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, that neither the pope nor other popeling is to have any authority either over her or over the Church of God, and that the pope of Rome is Antichrist, whose kingdom ought utterly to be taken away. Again, we say that her authority is civil, and that power she hath as highest under God within her dominions, and that over all persons and causes. By that, she may put to death all that deserve it by law, either of the Church or commonwealth, and none may resist her, or the magistrates under her, by force or wicked speeches when they execute the laws. Seeing we grant and hold thus much, how do they charge us as evil-­willers to the Queen? Surely, for that we hold all those preachers and teachers accursed, which will not do the duties of pastors and teachers until the magistrates do force them thereto. They say the time is not yet come to build the Lord’s house [Hag. 1]; they must tarry for the magistrates and for parliaments to do it. They want the civil sword, forsooth; and the magistrates do hinder the Lord’s building and kingdom and keep away his government. Are they not ashamed thus to slander the magistrate? . . . Indeed, can the Lord’s spiritual government be no 242



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way executed but by the civil sword, or is this the judgment that is written [Psal. 149]: such honor shall be to all his saints? Is this to bind the kings in chains and the nobles with fetters of iron by the high acts of God in their mouths and a two-­edged sword in their hands? . . . Except the magistrates will go into the tempest and rain and be weather-­beaten with the hail of God’s wrath, they must keep under the roof of Christ’s government. They must be under a pastoral charge; they must obey to the scepter of Christ if they be Christians. How, then, should the pastor which hath the oversight of the magistrate, if he be of his flock, be so overseen of the magistrate as to leave his flock when the magistrate shall unjustly and wrongfully discharge him? Yet these preachers and teachers will not only do so, but even holding their charge and keeping with it, will not guide and reform it aright because the magistrates do forbid them, forsooth. But they slander the magistrate and, because they dare not charge them as forbidding them their duties, they have gotten this shift: that they do but tarry for the magistrate’s authority, and then they will guide and reform as they ought. Behold, is not all this one thing, seeing they lift up the throne of the magistrates, to thrust out the kingdom of Christ? . . .  Now then, if the magistrates be enemies unto the Lord’s kingdom, why are not these men better warriors to uphold the same? For they give up the weapons of their warfare into the enemy’s hands and then say they cannot do withal. By their weapons, I mean those whereof Paul doth speak [2 Cor. 10]: that they are not carnal, but mighty through God, to cast down holds {i.e., strongholds}, and so forth. These weapons have they given from them, for they have not the keys to the kingdom of heaven to bind and loose [Mat. 18, John 20] and to retain or pronounce remitted the sins of men, seeing they grant much open wickedness incurable among them and also avouch that it must needs be suffered. Yea, they have given up these keys to the magistrates or to the spiritual courts, and therefore have no right to call themselves the Church of God or lawful pastors thereof. . . . My kingdom, saith Christ, is not of this world, and they would shift in both bishops and magistrates into his spiritual throne to make it of this world. Yea, to stay the Church government on them is not only to shift but to thrust them before Christ. Yet under him in his spiritual kingdom are, first, apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, etc., also helpers and spiritual guides [1 Cor. 12]. But they put the magistrates first, which in a commonwealth indeed are first and above the preachers, yet have they no ecclesiastical authority at all but only as any other Christian, if so be they be Christians. Therefore hath God made these teachers fools and these spiritual professors as madmen. . . . They say: behold, we have a Christian prince and a mother in Israel. But can they be Christians when they make them to refuse or withstand the government of Christ in his Church or will not be subject unto it? If they therefore refuse and withstand, how should they be tarried for? If they be with them, there is no tarrying. And if they be against them, they are no Christians and therefore also there can be no tarrying. For the worthy may not tarry for the unworthy, but rather forsake them. . . . He that will be saved must not tarry for this man or that; and he that putteth his hand to the plow, and then looketh back, is not fit for the kingdom of God [Luke 9]. Therefore woe unto you, ye blind guides, which cast away all by tarrying for the magistrates. The Lord will remember this iniquity and visit this sin upon you. . . . If Jeremy was set over the nations and over the kingdoms to pluck up, and to root out, and to destroy, and throw down, to build, and to plant [Jer. 1], then 243



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have we also an authority, against which, if the kings and nations do set themselves, we may not be afraid of their faces nor leave our calling for them. How long, therefore, will these men take the inheritance from the right heir and give it unto the servant? For the spiritual power of Christ and his Church, and the keys of binding and loosing, they take from Christ and give to the magistrate. The magistrates have the civil sword and, lest they should strike them therewith, they give them the ecclesiastical also. Ho, say they, if we were prophets or if we were apostles, then should we preach though the magistrate forbid us, but we are but bare pastors or preachers, and therefore we must fear their frowning and threats and keep silent thereat. But let them speak. Had not the magistrates as full and the same power over apostles as over other pastors, or were apostles more exempted from their obedience to magistrates than other preachers? For let every soul be subject to the higher powers, saith the Scriptures [Rom. 13]. Therefore, as they could not displace nor discharge apostles from their office and calling, no more can they do lawful pastors and preachers. For whether it be right in the sight of God to obey men rather than God, let all men judge [Acts 4]. But to this they answer that Peter said this, being an apostle: But indeed must apostles only follow their calling though men do discharge them, and may not other do it likewise? For as God hath distributed to every man the gift (saith the Scripture) [1 Cor. 7]; as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk, and so ordained Paul in all the churches. If, then, the magistrate will command the soldier to be a minister or the preacher to give over his calling and change it for another, they ought not to obey him for they have not the gift, and God hath called him this way rather than that. . . . And this freedom have all Christians: that they consider what is lawful and what is profitable, what they may do and what is expedient, and in no case be brought under the power of anything, as Paul teacheth us; whatsoever doth most edify, that must we choose. . . . For if either magistrate or other would take that from us, we must not give place by yielding unto them, no, not for an hour [Gal. 2]; and this liberty is the free use of our callings and gifts as we see most agreeing to the word of God, and expedient for his glory. Therefore the magistrate’s commandment must not be a rule unto me of this and that duty, but as I see it agree with the word of God. So then it is an abuse of my gifts and calling if I cease preaching for the magistrate when it is my calling to preach. . . . Arise and speak unto them, all that I command you, sayeth the Lord. For I, behold, I have made you as defensed cities and iron pillars and walls of brass against the whole land, against the kings, and against the princes, against the priests, and against the people. For they shall fight against you, but they shall not prevail, for I am with you to deliver you even to the end of the world. . . . And hath not every lawful pastor or preacher his full authority? Are they not to teach the whole will of God and guide accordingly, and have they not then their whole authority? . . . Be ashamed, therefore, ye foolish shepherds, and lay not a burden on the magistrates, as though they should do that in building the Lord’s kingdom, which the apostles and prophets could not do. They could not force religion [Song 8] as ye would have the magistrate to do, and it was forbidden the apostles to preach to the unworthy or to force a planting or government of the Church [Mat. 10]. The Lord’s kingdom is not by force, neither by an army or strength as be the kingdoms of this world. Neither durst Moses nor any of the good kings of Judah force the people by law or by power to receive the Church government, but after they received it, if then they fell away and sought not the Lord, they might put them to death. . . . We know that Moses might reform, and the 244



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judges and kings which followed him, and so may our magistrates. Yea, they may reform the Church and command things expedient for the same. Yet may they do nothing concerning the Church but only civilly, and as civil magistrates. . . . that is, concerning the outward provision and outward justice, they are to look to it. But to compel religion, to plant churches by power, and to force a submission to ecclesiastical government by laws and penalties belongeth not to them, as is proved before, neither yet to the Church. Let us not, therefore, tarry for the magistrates: for if they be Christians, they give leave {i.e., permission}, and gladly suffer and submit themselves to the Church government. For he is a Christian which is redeemed by Christ unto holiness and happiness forever, and professeth the same by submitting himself to his laws and government. And if they be not Christians, should the welfare of the Church or the salvation of men’s souls hang on their courtesy? . . .  . . . . . . As it is written [Isa. 45]: they shall follow thee, and shall go in chains; they shall fall down before thee and make supplication unto thee. For who knoweth not that, though magistrates are to keep their civil power above all persons, yet they come under the censure of the Church, if they be Christians, and are openly to humble themselves in unfeigned repentance when they have openly and grievously trespassed.1 They are indeed to keep their royal dignity, yet, keeping that, they are to abase themselves unto God before the face of the Church. For all powers shall serve and obey Christ, saith the Prophet [Isa. 60]: and that kingdom and nation which will not also serve his Church (for so is the text) shall perish, and the nation shall be utterly destroyed. . . . . . .

Of their wicked answer that they cannot remedy things, and, therefore, they will tolerate Behold, the Lord hath cast dung on their faces, even the dung of their solemn feasts [Mal. 2], as of their Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide, and of all their traditions received from Baal. For, in their solemn meetings, then doth their iniquity most woefully appear. And they have said plainly (as in the days of Malachi), the table of the Lord is not to be regarded [Mal. 1]. For, though hogs and dogs come thereto, yet who can redress it, or why should the communion be counted polluted unto us? Thus they pollute my name, sayeth the Lord, and yet they say: wherein have we polluted thy name? In that ye suffer such wickedness amongst you, sayeth the Lord, and say also that it is sufferable and can no way be remedied. O goodly teachers, which eat up the sin of the people and devour silly {i.e., ignorant} souls, while they will tolerate forsooth. For by toleration they make unlawful things lawful, and by a protestation they justify all iniquity. Indeed, they be evil, say they, but ye must bear with them for there is no remedy. So not only they practice and use them themselves, and draw on other by their wicked example, but also command and teach all men the like, yea, hate and persecute all those which stand not with them. O notable Protestants, which both witness evil and do the same. Darkness hath certainly covered us, and gross darkness hath filled us that we could not hitherto espy {See Patrick Collinson, “If Constantine, then also Theodosius,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30, no. 2 (1979): 205–­29; also Barrow and Book VIII of Hooker’s Laws .} 1

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this great folly. For no wickedness is tolerable. . . . For the Lord’s way, sayeth the Scripture [Isa. 35], is holy, and no polluted shall pass by it. . . . Therefore doth Paul call that part of church government which is to separate the ungodly, the power of our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 5]. For thereby are the kings bound with chains, and the nobles with fetters of iron [Psal. 149], that they may execute upon them the judgment that is written: such honor be to all his saints. . . . So then there is nothing which the Lord will not break if it be against his glory, neither any wickedness which the government of his Church is not able to put down. For the scepter of Christ is a right scepter [Psal. 45]; he will keep in awe his people in this life and put apart from them the unruly. He shall be judge among the heathen, and fill all with dead bodies, and smite the heads over great countries [Psal. 110]. And after this life, he hath made ready the last vengeance against all disobedience, when the obedience of his people is fulfilled. How then dare these men teach us that any evil thing is tolerable in the Church, as though the church government could not remedy it? . . .  [\ T ext: Robert Browne, A booke which showeth the life and manners of all true Christians and howe vnlike they are vnto Turkes and Papistes, and heathen folke. . . . Also there goeth a treatise before of reformation without tarying for anie, and of the wickednesse of those preachers, which will not refourme them selues and their charge, because they will tarie till the magistrate commanude and compell them (Middelburgh, 1582) (NSTC 3910.3).

246

HENRY BARROW (1550?–­1593)

A brief discovery of the false Church

Barrow was born around 1550 and died on the gallows in 1593 for writing and distributing seditious books. Along with Robert Browne, he represents the most radical puritan views in this period—­and volume; and while he never accepted Browne’s spiritual individualism, unlike Browne (whom he came to despise as a traitor to the cause), he never recanted his positions and proved willing to die for his new vision of the Church as a gathered community of true believers. That vision would long survive him, and became the heart of perhaps the most important new development in Christianity in seventeenth-­ century England and New England: Congregationalism. There was nothing in Barrow’s upbringing to suggest a life of radicalism. He was from a prominent Norfolk family and educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, receiving a BA around 1570. He entered Gray’s Inn in 1576, although it is unclear how much law he really practiced. But by 1585 he had become part of a prominent separatist network, which included the Norfolk minister John Greenwood, who had renounced his orders and begun meeting in conventicles with like-­minded “saints.” After Greenwood and others were arrested in an 1587 raid on a London conventicle, Barrow went to to visit them in prison. This was his undoing: he was arrested for seditious words that he had apparently spoken on his way from Norfolk and spent the rest of his life, with only a couple of very brief respites, in prison. [\

A brief discovery of the false Church, written in the Fleet Prison in London and smuggled out for publication by English separatist exiles in the Netherlands, is Barrow’s longest and most important work. For Barrow, the Church of England is not a true Church at all, no more than the Church of Rome; hence separation is not only allowable but required of those who do not wish to become polluted by its excrescences. The first and most important attribute that betrays the Church of England’s falseness is its lack of control over membership: at Elizabeth’s accession, according to Barrow, the whole popish population 247



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and popish clergy were welcomed back into the Church, and no mechanism exists for purging that promiscuous body of its false members. Lying behind this argument is a fundamentally different version of what a Church is: while Barrow denies that he thinks (like the Anabaptists) that a Church is only a gathering of saints, he does argue that no visible sinners can be tolerated within it, so the Church must be a relentlessly exclusive body, maintaining its own health by excommunicating the sinners who threaten to infect it. In this vision, there could be no parish church structure, for in many parishes there would likely be no residents who warranted membership in an authentic congregation of Christ. The Church of England was also false because of its governance by bishops, its popish prayer book, its corrupt system of ecclesiastical courts, and much else that was commonplace in puritan arguments for further reformation. But Barrow not only took these puritan arguments much farther, to argue that abuses rendered the Church of England no Church at all, he also extended them much more widely, so that “popery” in his vocabulary came to encompass a bewildering variety of sins. What comes across most clearly in the text is Barrow’s unrelenting drive for purity; for it was only now, in the 1580s, that some of the most radical puritans like Barrow first began truly to embrace their name, calling for a Church purged of all that could not be called godly according to the most stringent scripturalist standards. It is thus more than a little ironic that so many other puritans at the time rejected Barrow’s separatism as a program of destruction rather than reform. Barrow’s attacks on John Calvin, for accepting superstition into his Genevan Church, can stand metonymically for the whole: this was a new vision of corporate Christianity, cousin to the Anabaptist one, in which standards of membership were so high that religion would no longer be capable of unifying state or society. [\ Sources: ODNB; Stephen Brachlow, The communion of saints: radical puritan and separatist ecclesiology, 1570–­ 1625 (Oxford, 1988); Leland Carson, ed., The writings of Henry Barrow 1587–­1590 (London, 1962); Patrick Collinson, “Separation in and out of the Church: the consistency of Barrow and Greenwood,” Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 5, no. 5 (1994): 239–­58; Ethan Shagan, The rule of moderation: violence, religion and the politics of restraint in early modern England (Cambridge, 2011); B. R. White, The English Separatist tradition: from the Marian martyrs to the pilgrim fathers (London, 1971).

248

HENRY BARROW

A brief discovery of the false Church

1590

As the mother, such the daughter is.

Ezek. 16:44

To the reader If the godly young King Josaiah, when he heard the book of God’s law read and compared the acts of his forefathers and the present estate of his kingdom thereunto, rent his clothes in horror of the wrathful judgments of God in that book denounced, etc . . . what occasion of sorrow and lamentation have all Christian hearts in whom is any compassion or love, in these dangerous (if not desperate) days, where the whole land . . . hath lain so long and is so deeply set in defection, sin, and security, where they are so universally departed from the strait ways of life and peace, and are so far wandered and strayed in their own by-­ways . . . as they have now utterly lost all knowledge of the true way and have no will to return; but, though they be showed the way and willed to walk in it, yet even the best of them stop their ears, wink with their eyes, and turn away the shoulder, lest they should be converted and be healed. . . . But now, whiles no man hath courage or openeth his mouth for the truth . . . whiles the ancients keep silence and fly as chased harts before the enemies, whiles the leaders faint and lie at the head of all the streets . . . what safety or hope is in this estate? Yea what heart could endure to behold so many of his natural countrymen, dear friends, and near kinsfolk in the flesh to perish before his eyes for want of warning or help. Wherefore behold, even the zeal of the glory of my God enforced me, as also the tender love and care of the safety of this my country constrained me, to break silence and to set the trumpet to my mouth. . . . Myself I willingly acknowledge of all other the most unmeet, and every way unfit unto this work; but let my zeal of the truth, my love unto you, and the present necessity of the time excuse me of presumption or vainglory, though no way cover or excuse any errors or faults escaped me in this present writing. . . . I have not desired to speak in the words taught by human wisdom, but in 249



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the words taught of the Holy Ghost. From which where I have swerved (as my unsanctified lips no doubt too often have) or which wherein I have abused (as fools know not to use a parable aright), I humbly crave the Christian correction rather than the pardon of the reader. . . . . . . But now remaineth the very argument and subject of this book, which of all other will be most disliked, and held most odious and heinous of all sorts of men, who will never endure to hear the magnificence of the false Church, wherein they have so long been nourished in so great delight, reproved and cast down. So thoroughly are they intoxicate with the wine of her abominations, and all their senses bound in the fetters of her fornications, that they have no eyes to see, ears to hear, or hearts to believe the truth. But especially the shipmasters, the mariners, merchantmen, and all the people that reign, row, and are carried in this false Church, they will never endure to see fire cast into her; they will never endure to suffer loss of their dainty and precious merchandise, but rather will raise up no small tumults and stirs against the servants of God, seeking their blood by all subtle and violent means, as we read in the Scriptures their predecessors have always done, accusing them of treason, troubling the state, schism, heresy, and what not. But unto all the power, learning, deceit, rage of the false Church, we oppose that little book of God’s word which (as the light) shall reveal her, as the fire consume her, as an heavy millstone shall press her and all her children, lovers, partakers, and abettors down to hell; which Book we willingly receive as the judge of all our controversies, knowing that all men shall one day (and that ere long) be judged by the same; by this Book whoso is found in error or transgression, let them have sentence accordingly. . . . It is a most fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Great is the mercy of God that bloweth the trumpet and giveth warning before he bring the evil upon us; yea, great is his mercy and patience that yet continueth to speak, knock, and call, we having so long scorned his messengers and despised his words, etc. Only now let all men in whom is any fear or love of God, any care of their own salvation, tremble at the word of God. . . . Let them not be persuaded to continue in evil by the authority, wisdom, pretended learning or holiness of any, neither by the numbers and multitudes, after they have once heard or seen the error of their way. The Lord keep all his from presumptuous sin. Long hath that great millstone of the Lord’s fearful judgments been lift up on high, in the eyes of all men, over this presumptuous confuse Babel wherein they continue; long hath the Lord called and commanded all his people to go, yea to flee out of her. Many they see by God’s mighty hand escaped and delivered, and marching with the banner of the Gospel displayed before all the enchanters of Egypt and Pharaoh his troops. Let the rest no longer tempt God or be held under the dint and compass of this dreadful millstone by any persuasions, but let them save their souls out of this accursed false Church with all speed, whiles yet grace and time is offered, and join themselves unto the faithful servants of Christ, under his conduct and Gospel; that he may lead them out of the house of this spiritual bondage, into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, unto that desired Zion, there together to serve God and lead their lives in holiness, according to God’s own will, to the comfort and assurance of their own souls and the glory of his name. Amen. 250



Henry Barrow Let the unjust do unjustly yet, and the filthy do filthily yet, and let the just do justice yet, and let the holy be sanctified yet. Behold I come shortly and my reward with me, to render unto every one according as his work shall be.

Apoc. 22: 11-­121 Seeing we have received a most sure word of the Lord our God, it behoveth us to give heed thereunto, as unto a light that shineth in dark places, whiles we travel in the dangerous wilderness of this world. In which word, the whole wisdom and counsels of God for our direction and instruction in all things are fully revealed unto us. So that now we are not to say in our hearts, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it us? . . . the sound of the Gospel having been long since carried forth through all the regions of the whole earth, so that no nation shall be excused which will not serve and obey unto the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . whereunto nothing may be added, nothing diminished, altered, or changed, violate, or willfully neglected, according to fleshly wisdom or worldly policy, without most heinous transgression, sacrilege, and impiety. . . . Neither hath any angel in heaven, any mortal man, no nor the whole Church, power or prerogative to alter or neglect the least iota or tittle thereof. But God hath especially committed these holy oracles to the careful custody of the Church, there to be inviolably preserved . . . there to be precisely observed with all reverence and fear, without any willing or known transgression, or swerving either to the right hand or to the left, of the whole Church or any member thereof. And hereunto is the whole Church, and every particular member thereof, both jointly and severally bound: both because they have all of them interest in the tree and river of life—­a ll are bound to the maintenance of the faith which is given and is common to all saints—­and because they are all of them the members of Christ, and together his body, and each other’s members in him. Therefore are they so often by the apostles charged and stirred up to exhort, edify, and admonish one another, to stand upon the watch-­tower of their faith . . . to try the spirits; to examine the doctrine whether any man teach otherwise and consent not unto the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the doctrine which is according to godliness. . . . Our savior Christ and his apostles, as they were most vigilant and faithful ministers, and did both prevent and foresee divers dangers and great evils to come, so gave they very earnest and often warnings hereof unto the disciples, unto the Churches, commanding the porter, yea every servant of the house, to watch, to beware and to take heed, showing them that many false christs should arise and many false prophets, showing great signs and wonders, whereby to deceive (if it were possible) the very elect. . . . but especially in that heavenly Book of the Revelation, wherein he most lively describeth these things, even from the original, in several visions, according to the several times it should ensue. Wherein he showeth the happy estate of the Church whiles God’s glorious throne was in the midst of the elders, and whiles it was enlightened with the burning lamps of God’s Spirit. . . . until Satan, I say, that ancient enemy of our happiness, had that great sword given him, wherewith he made and still shall make bloody war, and raise up grievous persecution against the woman and her seed without; within whiles they slept and were negligent, sowing his darnel of errors and tares of discord amongst them, raising up sects 1

{Much of what follows is a tissue of biblical allusions, many from the Apocalypse.}

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through the ambition and vainglory of some, drawing others into schism through pride and hypocrisy, others into heresies through their headstrong and unbridled affections; all into his snare, through the general default of all who slacked their duties and kept not their orderly watch one over another, and jointly over the whole, as they were commanded and prescribed by the apostles. . . . The people, upon a superstitious reverence and preposterous estimation unto their teachers and elders, resigned up all things, even their duty, interest, liberty, prerogative into their hands, suffering them to alter and dispose of all things after their own lusts, without inquiry or controlment; whereupon, the true pattern of Christ’s Testament . . . was soon neglected and cast aside, especially by these evil workmen, these governors, who . . . sought to draw an absolute power into their own hands, perverting those offices of more labor and care into swelling titles of fleshly pomp and worldly dignity. Thus wrought the mystery of iniquity; yea, so far were many of them carried with a vain opinion and ostentation of the excellency of their gifts as they, under holy pretexts of doing good unto others, sought also under this cloak a jurisdiction and regency over other congregations also, which was easily obtained—­the people, through the just judgments of God, being now so bewitched and blinded with their sweet tongues that they easily condescended. Then were these called bishops of such a city, and if they were cities of rule . . . then were they called bishops of such a diocese, etc., and had under them inferior or country bishops, as also deacons, subdeacons. Thus the whole Church, growing remiss and negligent, both people and officers, that heavenly pattern left by the apostles was soon violate, and upon new pretenses, more and more innovate . . . so that religion, which was erewhile so irksome to flesh and blood, so mightily persecuted by Satan and all the princes of the world, grew now so plausible to all sorts of men, so pleasing to their affections and appetites, that the great princes of the world and all their realms and countries flowed apace to the Church in this estate—­the gates and entry being as ill kept without as the watch within. . . . But Satan, having yet a further reach, ceased not here, but . . . contended to set up one chief, which variably fell out, sometimes to one, sometimes to another, until at length the lot rested upon the See of Rome, where the papacy, being uphold by and mixed with the Empire, and in the end swallowing it up, became the very throne of Antichrist, where he sitteth in his exaltation to whom the key of the bottomless pit was given; which being by him set wide open, the smoke of his cannons, devises, trumperies, and abominations darkened the sun, poisoned the air. . . . Thus Antichrist being now established and fortified in the midst of his strengths, his council of cardinals, his metropolitan and archbishops palatine and lord bishops in every country, he now received the great charter of his prerogative infernal, even the dragon his power, throne, and authority. He now boldly opened his mouth against God . . . bringing forth his harlot upon the stage of the world, stately mounted upon his beastly power, pompously arrayed, and gorgeously decked and adorned, the more to allure and entice; whose cup of fornications was carried far and near to many nations, people, and tongues, so that the kings of the earth committed fornication with her; the inhabitants of the earth were drunken with the wine of her fornications, which she conveyed unto them by the hands of her merchantmen, who are waxen rich with the abundance of her pleasures. Yet in all this defection, corruption, apostasy, hath God still reserved a seed, a little poor remnant, who have been marked with the mark of God on their foreheads . . . 252



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following the Lamb in white array wheresoever he goeth, and leadeth them from faith to faith. These, by the light of the word, read the harlot’s mystery written in her forehead, discover her skirts and all her abominations, and by that same light make her known to be that spiritual Babylon where Christ’s servants are kept in servitude from the free practice of his word; where the true temple his Church and all the vessels and instruments thereof are utterly ruinate, defaced, profaned, trodden under foot. These also do show by the same light, even from the ancient prophecies, her and all her synagogues to become the very habitation of devils, the hold of all foul and wicked spirits, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. ZIM and IIM and all harmful beasts shall lodge there, the dragon and the serpent, the harpies, screech-­owls and vultures shall there make their nest and bring up their young ones. And therefore these shall call all the Lord’s faithful servants out from amongst them, lest they be partakers of her sins and receive of her plagues; showing them that . . . God now remembreth her iniquities, and is ready to pour down his plagues upon her, as in the days of Noah and Sodom. . . . Therefore it is high time for the servants of God to look up and to lift up their heads, for their redemption draweth near. . . . We hear this voice round about us sounding in our ears: go out of her, my people, etc. . . . . . . It behoveth us therefore, whiles yet God vouchsafeth us time, carefully by the light of God’s word to examine our ways and to ponder our estate, whether we be in that broad way that leadeth to destruction amongst those multitudes over whom the Whore sitteth and reigneth, or in the straight and narrow way which leadeth unto everlasting life, with Christ’s little flock and marked soldiers, whom the Lamb leadeth and ruleth; whether we be in that great defection, in that spiritual Babylon under Antichrist and that Beast, or whether we be in the mount Sion, in the spiritual Jerusalem, where the commandments of God are kept, and the faith of Jesus. . . . Neither need we unto this business to go fetch our light out of men’s writings (as sundry of the chief builders of this corrupt age do) or curiously to enquire or dispute about I wot not what marks of the true Church, which, whiles some endeavored to set down, endless controversies and vain strife about words hath arisen amongst them, without end or edifying. Therefore let us, for the appeasing and assurance of our consciences, give heed to the word of God, and by that golden reed measure our temple, our altar, and our worshippers. . . . First, therefore, because every building consisteth of stones, let us examine of what kind of stones this Church of England (as they term it) consisteth and is compact: whether of such elect, precious, living stones which are gathered unto and built upon Christ Jesus and in him grow unto an holy and spiritual temple unto God, etc., or of common, Babylonish, reprobate stones, whereof the Lord hath sworn that not one of them shall be taken for a corner or for a foundation in his house. The material Temple (which was but a type of this) we read to be built from the very foundation of choice, costly, perfect stones, the beams and rafters of choice cedars, algummin trees; no common or vile thing was used towards it, neither might any profane and polluted enter into it. But of the incomparable beauty and unutterable excellency of this spiritual Temple, under the holy ministry and happy perfect government of Christ, all the prophets have with great delight spoken and foretold. . . . The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the excellency thereof, breaketh forth into these words, Behold 253



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I will lay thy stones with the carbuncle and thy foundations with sapphires and I will make thy windows of emeralds and thy gates of shining stones. . . . All the plants of this orchard shall be of the Lord’s planting; they shall all be incense and aloe trees, pomegranates and fir trees, which shall continually bring forth pleasant, new, and fresh fruit, because they grow by the sides of the river of life, are watered with the dew of heaven, and refreshed with the winds of God’s Spirit. They come not nor grow not here until they be first cut off from their corrupt natural stock where they grew before, and be engrafted into the true olive tree, the true vine; yea, and being planted and engrafted, that plant, that branch that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, shall be cut off and cast out, etc. Into this mountain entereth no venomous or harmful creature, the cockatrice and asp, the lion and leopard enter not and lodge not here until they have left their poison, their fierceness, etc. . . . There may none be admitted into the Church of Christ but such as enter by public profession of the true faith; none remain there but such as bring forth the fruits of faith. The forerunner, John the Baptist, first preached repentance to prepare the way and make straight the paths of the Lord before he baptized any. The like did our Savior Christ and his disciples. The apostles also first gathered a people (by preaching) unto the faith, then received and joined them to the Church, and administered unto them the holy pledges of the faith: baptism as a seal of their engrafting into Christ, the holy supper as a symbol of their communion with Christ and all his faithful servants. Thus see we what kind of stones, what manner of people the Lord will have built and received into his Church. Now it remaineth that we, by these rules, examine the stones and people of the Church of England: whether they be such chosen precious stones as we see here described, as the high priest carried in his broidered breastplate; whether they be such a chosen, redeemed, faithful, free, holy people as are called unto and walk in the faith of Christ Jesus; or they be rather of the refuse: common pibble chalk stones, which cannot be used to any sound and sure building; even all the profane and wicked of the land, atheists, papists, anabaptists, and heretics of all sorts, gluttons, rioters, blasphemers, perjures, covetous, extortioners, thieves, whores, witches, conjurers, etc. . . . All without exception or respect of person are received into and nourished in the bosom of this Church with the word and sacraments. None are here refused, none kept out. This Church (as the prophet saith) openeth her knees to every passenger, furnisheth a table to the multitude and drink offerings to the numbers; she keepeth open house to all comers: bread and wine and welcome. Neither is she more dainty of her stolen waters than of her hid bread, of her adulterate baptism than of her Sheshak supper {Jer. 25:26}, not denying baptism to the seed even of whores and witches. . . . This is their communion of saints, their holy fellowship; thus are they bound and enchained together in open sacrilege, idolatry, impiety . . . and folded one within another as thorns in an hedge, or rather wrapped and plighted together as thorns to the fire of God’s wrathful judgments. For whether we consider the whole estate or any particular part thereof, we shall find it wholly corrupt. . . . Truth falleth in the streets, and equity cannot enter. . . . All the laws of God are here broken and rejected, both of the first and second table, both of the ecclesiastical and civil estate. . . . Neither hath all kind of sin and wickedness more universally reigned in any nation at any time than here at this present in this land, where all are received into the Church, all made members of Christ. 254



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All these sins, and many more abominations (which a Christian heart abhorreth but to think or speak of) are amongst them winked at, tolerated, excused, covered, and cured with the Gospel preached and their holy sacraments. All this people, with all these manners, were in one day, with the blast of Q. Elizabeth’s trumpet, of ignorant papists and gross idolaters made faithful Christians and true professors—­upon whom these hungry priests, like ravening wolves and greedy foxes, flew to divide the prey: some getting them the rooms of archbishops; others caught bishoprics; others caught deaneries, arch-­ deaconries, fat parsonages, some more, some fewer, as their estimation and friends were. . . . Thus being enthronized, they show themselves plainly in their colors, both in establishing most of the pope’s canons and in adding new, as ill, of their own . . . which, howsoever they cannot nor dare not justify by the word, yet will they maintain them by the sword; which sword they now draw forth against Christ’s most faithful servants that will not bow down nor worship their beastly authority, but stand for the maintenance of the faith once given unto the saints and for the free and sincere practice of Christ’s holy Testament . . . . . . Neither may such be held the servants of Christ which stand subject unto his enemy Antichrist. . . . Or how may Christ’s true and faithful servants have any spiritual communion or fellowship with them in this estate, without open sacrilege, most heinous impiety, and high profanation of the holy things of God. For if into the material Temple no profane or polluted person might enter and offer until he had embraced the faith and been cleansed from his filthiness, how much more ought this profane, ignorant, unholy, wicked, disobedient rout be kept out of the Church of Christ and from all intermeddling with the holy things of God, which in this estate belong not unto them. But as these ungodly priests of these times have entered, and do administer unto this profane people, for the lucre of their goods tithes, wages, hire; so want not these Balaams sundry devilish shifts and cavils for the maintenance of their doings. . . . Amongst an heap of their forged excuses, they set this for doctrine in the forefront: that where a Christian prince is which maintaineth the Gospel, and the whole land or estate, not resisting this commandment, reverenceth the word and sacraments, there the whole multitude of such a land or state are without doubt to be esteemed and judged a true Church. This reason they confirm not with any proofs of the Scripture but by Mr. CALVIN’S authority, who giveth these reasons thereof: because (saith he) it is certain the word and sacraments are not without fruit, and that by this means unity is preserved to the universal Church.2 Touching the person of the author alleged, I gladly acknowledge him a painful and profitable instrument in the things he saw and times he served in, yet not without his many errors and ignorances, especially touching the planting, government, and ordering of the Church of Christ—­a nd no marvel, for being so newly escaped out of the smoky furnace of popery, he could not so suddenly see or attain unto the perfect beauty of Sion. But seeing my hope is God hath pardoned all his errors, etc., my purpose is not (with these wicked men) to revive and broach them afresh, or make them precedents and by them take boldness to commit the like or worse offences. . . . For as faith only 2

[Calvin, Instit. lib. 4, sect. 9]

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believeth and resteth upon the holy word of God, so are we by the same to examine all the doctrines and doings of men, yea of the whole Church, and accordingly to approve or refuse the same. . . . ‡ But is this doctrine so hard and strange to them: that one should be polluted with the known and suffered sins of another? Let them read in the Law whether he that touched but the garment of a polluted man or woman . . . was defiled thereby. If this were but by outward and bodily touching, how much more is that spiritual leprosy, that gangrene, these running issues and plaguy sores of sin infectious and deadly contagious, especially in so near commixture as that spiritual communion of the soul? If the word of God will not prevail, let common sense and experience persuade this. Yea, so spreading is this malady of sin, as being discovered in any one part of the body, if it be not with all speed cured or cut off, it becometh alike dangerous to the whole body;3 they all now, by this their negligence and toleration, becoming alike guilty, etc. . . . Was not all the congregation punished for the sin of some in Mount Peor? . . . Doth not the Apostle say that a little leaven leaventh the whole lump? . . .  This and such like detestable stuff hath M r Calvin in his ignorance, partly to suppress and confute that damnable sect of the Anabaptists (which fantastically dream unto themselves a Church in this life without spot . . .); partly also is this stuff brought to defend his own rash and disorderly proceedings at Geneva, whiles he at the first dash made no scruple to receive all the whole state, even all the profane ignorant people, into the bosom of the Church, to administer the sacraments unto them, which confuse rout could not fit with Christ’s heavenly government, neither could it by any means agree unto them in this estate, but that monstrous disorders and heinous enormities daily ensued thereof, whereby this their Church became a just reproach to all men. . . . . . . It is manifest that all the members of the Church have a like interest in Christ, in his word, in the faith; that they altogether make one body unto him; that all the affairs of the Church belong to that body together. All the actions of the Church, as prayers, censures, sacraments, faith, etc., be the actions of them all jointly and of every one of them severally, although the body, unto diverse actions, use such members as it knoweth most fit to the same. . . . All are charged to watch, exhort, admonish, stir up, reprove, etc., and hereunto have the power of our Lord Jesus, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, even the word of the Most High, thereby to bind their rulers in chains and their nobles in fetters . . . thereby to defend and maintain the faith and every iota of the word, to stand fast in their liberty, to try the spirits, to avoid such as teach contrary doctrine . . . or deny the power and practice thereof to admonish the greatest, even Archippus, to look to his ministry {Col. 4:17}, and (if need be) to plead with their 3 {Metaphors of contagion are a commonplace in arguments defending the necessity of religious coercion, going back to St. Augustine. The argument for separatism, however, in essence secluding the church from a sick world rather than purging sick members from a universal church, represents a new twist.}

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mother, etc.; yea, no further to follow her or an angel of light than they walk with God and have the word for their warrant. . . . Now then, seeing every member hath interest in the public actions of the Church and together shall bear blame for the defaults of the same; and seeing all our communion must be in the truth and that we are not to be drawn by any into any willing or known transgression of God’s law; who can deny but every particular member hath power—­yea, and ought—­to examine the manner of administering the sacraments, as also the estate, disorder, or transgressions of the whole Church; yea, and not to join in any known transgression with them, but rather to call them all to repentance, etc.; and if he find them obstinate and hardened in their sin, rather to leave their fellowship than to partake with them in wickedness. ‡ . . . So far is this Book {of Common Prayer} from being subject to the word of God, as it in all things overruleth the word of God, dismembreth, rendeth, corrupteth, perverteth, abuseth it to their stinted matins and evensong, to their idol days, fasts, feasts, etc. . . . Moreover, this book, in that it standeth a public prescript continued liturgy (not as yet to come to the particulars or meddle with the blasphemous contents thereof, but to speak generally of it), as if4 it were the best that ever was devised by mortal man, yet in this place and use, being brought into the Church . . . becometh a detestable idol, standing for that it is not in the Church of God and consciences of men: namely, for holy, spiritual, and faithful prayer; it being nothing less, but rather abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog. Now under the Law . . . every sacrifice must be brought quick {i.e., alive} and new unto the altar, and there be slain. . . . How much more in this spiritual temple of God, where the offerings are spiritual, and God hath made all his servants kings and priests to offer up acceptable sacrifices unto him through Jesus Christ, who hath thereunto given them his Holy Spirit into their hearts, to help their infirmities and teach them to cry ABBA, Father? How much more hath he which ascended given graces to those his servants (whom he useth in such high services) to the repairing of the saints, the work of the ministry, and the edification of the Church? Unto whom God useth them as his mouth; the Church again on the other side useth them as their mouth unto the Lord. Shall we think that God hath any time left these his servants so singly furnished and destitute of his grace that they cannot find words according to their necessities and faith to express their wants and desires . . . ? Can any read, prescript, stinted liturgy, which was penned many years or days before, be said a pouring forth of the heart unto the Lord? or those faithful requests which are stirred up in them by the Holy Ghost according to their present wants and estate of their hearts or Church? Unless they can say that their hearts and Church stand in the same estate now, and so still to their lives’ end shall continue, without either further increase or decrease, change or alteration, as they did then; yea, that their children’s children shall also so continue. . . . What a strange estate is this that always thus standeth at a stay? The way of the righteous (Solomon saith) shineth as the light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. . . . 4

{I.e., even if}

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‡ . . . If the prince’s laws be contrary or divers to the laws of God, then is not our conscience or body bound by or unto them;5 then are we not to obey such laws but stand for our Christian liberty and the maintenance of the faith in all patient manner, rather enduring the wrath of man than procuring the wrath of God. The vain pretence of civil policy will neither excuse them nor us before God. . . . He will have his laws, statutes, and judgments kept and not altered, innovate, or neglected according to human wisdom, the state and policies of times, and humors of men, which vary and turn with the wind, making laws today and abrogating them tomorrow. . . . But the statutes and judgments of God, which are delivered and expounded unto us by his holy prophets, endure forever . . . which laws were not made for the Jews’ state only (as Mr Calvin hath taught) but for all mankind, especially for all the Israel of God: from which laws it is not lawful in judgment to vary or decline, either to the one hand or to the other. . . . ‡ . . . It remaineth that we proceed in the examination of the public ministration of this famous Church of England. . . . They have yet the holy sacrament of marriage solemnly kept in the holy church (for the most part) upon the Lord’s day and an especial liturgy or communion framed to the same. This action is to be done by the priest, etc., who, instructing the parties to be joined in wedlock what to say and when to pray, etc., teacheth the man to wed his wife with a ring In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which ring must before by the man be laid upon the service-­book together with his offering unto the priest and clerk. The book serveth in stead of holy water to hallow the ring. The ring thus hallowed serveth in stead of an element to this sacrament, being joined to these words In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, especially when all the collects, special psalm, and blessings are said by the priest, the married couple devoutly kneeling in the meanwhile at the communion table, etc. But here will be answered that the reformed and better sort of priests will not marry with the ring; here must then be noted that they break their oath of their canonical obedience which they took before the bishop when they received their priesthood. . . . Moreover, these reformed and well-­conscienced priests, though they reject this ring as an idolatrous relic, yet dare they not by the word pronounce the unlawfulness thereof that others also might leave and detest the same. That would cost blows; the bishop would not suffer that; therefore they, for the peace of their Church, join to them in the communion, etc. that use this execrable idolatry. . . . But here in the meantime I would know of the learnedest of them where they find in the Old or New Testament that marriage is an ecclesiastical action, belonging to the worship of God in his Church, to be done by the minister as part of his office and {It seems unlikely that some, or anyone else, would have disagreed that if the prince’s law were contrary to the law of God, they were not to be obeyed; Some’s distinction between conscience and outward action applied only if the law were merely “divers”—­if, i.e., it mandated or forbade a matter indifferent, one neither commanded nor forbidden by God: the prince, on Some’s theory, could require all subjects to wear a green hat on Easter, because this would be merely an outward action, albeit “divers” from Scripture; the prince could not, however, require subjects to believe that wearing such hats conferred grace.} 5

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function . . . I have always found it the parents’ office to provide marriages for their children whiles they remain in their charge and government, and that the parties themselves affianced and betrothed each other in the fear of God and the presence of such witnesses as were present, and that in their parents’ or other private houses, without running to church to the priest after this manner. I ever took marriage for an ordinance and action of the second Table, and see not why they might not as well set up the tables of the money-­changers. . . . But see what these Balaamites will not do for gain . . . holding the people in such blindness and superstition, as they believe not themselves to be rightly married except it be done by a priest after the prescribed manner. . . . . . . These synagogues {i.e., English cathedrals} are built altogether to the form of the old Temple of the Jews. . . . They have unto it their folding doors and an especial Levite, the parish clerk, to keep the key. . . . Again, they have in the body of their church their hallowed font to keep the holy water wherewith they baptize, all other vessels and waters to the use of baptism being by express law forbidden. They have also their holiest-­of-­a ll, or chancel, which peculiarly belongeth to the priest and choir, which help the priest to say and sing his service. They have their rood-­loft as a partition between their holy and holiest-­of-­a ll. The priest also hath a peculiar door into his chancel, through which none might pass but himself. Now this church thus reared up is also thoroughly hallowed with their sprinkling water, and dedicate and baptized into the name of some especial saint or angel, as to the patron and defender thereof against all enemies, spirits, storms, tempests, etc. Yet hath it within also all the holy army of saints and angels in their windows and walls to keep it. Thus I think can be no doubt made, but that the very erections of these synagogues (whether they were by the heathens or papists) were idolatrous. . . . We see how suddenly, even in few days, they may be replenished and garnished with all their idols again. We had a late proof thereof in Q. Mary’s time, which is not yet taken out of the common people’s minds; who, in doubt of the like hereafter, partly upon superstition, but generally because they would not be at the like charge to buy new, have reserved the old relics still: some of them standing up in their church windows, others kept in their chests and vestries; yea, sundry of them are still in use: as their bells, font, organs, copes, surplices, the covering cloth of the altar, etc. . . . Their whole church also, is it not still a fit shrine to receive all the rest? what letteth that they might not be set up again (if the idols were in readiness) in one hour, seeing their very rooms still remain as they left them, and want but a little sweeping so that every saint may know and take his old place again? And as it standeth with the whole frame of their church . . . so standeth it in like manner with the whole ministry of this Church, from the highest bishop to the lowest priest, curate, preacher, or half-­priest. They may all together within the space of one hour, with a little changing of their copy, serve again in their old rooms which they held in the Church of Rome—­to which this ministry of theirs a great deal better fitteth than unto the Church of Christ, which can bear no such adulterate and anti-­Christian ministry. Well then you see what good reformation they have made, and how thoroughly they have purged their churches of popery and idolatry, and that not only spiritual idolatry . . . but even this gross material idolatry, which cleaveth to the whole frame and every part of 259



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those their churches, both within and without, from the very foundation to the covering stone thereof. So that now they must be driven either absolutely to justify these their cathedral and parish churches in this form . . . by the word of God, or else we may resolutely by the same word detest them as abominable idols, such as by the law of God are devote to utter destruction. . . . ‡ Moreover, sith every member hath like interest in Christ, in his word, the public doctrine and ministration of the Church, and shall all be held guilty and punished for the public transgressions and abuses of the Church . . . seeing they are commanded to reprove their brother plainly, to bind their sins by the word, even their princes in those chains and nobles in those fetters. . . . To conclude the point: seeing the prayers, sacraments, sermons of such wicked or heretical ministers are sacrilege and abomination in God’s sight, and that all which communicate, join to, hear, or suffer such ministers are alike guilty of this sin and sacrilege, who can doubt but that every Christian hath power and authority in due time and place (not disturbing Christ’s holy order in his Church) publicly to reprove any public transgression of any member of the Church, or of the whole Church; as also to discover and refute any error escaped or delivered in public doctrine—­yet this (as is said) in due time and order, giving leave and place unto the elders and prophets of the said congregation first, who, if they neglect or overpass such public transgression or error, then may anyone of the congregation, or any Christian whosoever (yea, he ought) to reprove such transgression and error, unless he will be guilty of betraying the faith of Christ, of the destruction of the whole congregation, knowing the danger of such leaven, the suddenness of the wrath of God for such things. Here will be grossly objected that the common people are ignorant, not able to judge betwixt truth and error, disordered, variable, easy to be divided and led into sects; and therefore they are not to intermeddle with the judgment and reproof of faults and errors escaped in the ministry, or with the censuring their persons. That their people are blind, ignorant, seditious, headstrong, I readily grant; neither can it be otherwise, having such blind guides and corrupt teachers as all they are. . . . But for the people of Christ, they are all enlightened with that bright morning star, that sun of righteousness. The eye of their faith is single, and the whole body is light. They are an humble, meek, obedient people; they will hear and follow the true shepherd, but a stranger they will not hear. . . . ‡ Moreover, we have showed how this power of excommunication, election, ordination, etc. is not committed into the hands of one particular person (as the pope and his natural children, our lord bishops, now use it); nor yet into the hands of the eldership only or of the pastors of many particular congregations (as the reforming preachers would have it), so much as it is given and committed to the whole Church, even to every particular congregation and to every member thereof alike. To which holy spiritual power of Christ, every member of the Church and servant of Christ must be subject alike, without exception or exemption of person. . . . 260



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But especially what injury do they unto their princes and magistrates that thus deprive and exempt them from the heavenly government of Christ. . . . Do they not hereby manifest that either princes and magistrates are not the servants and subjects of Christ; or else that themselves have the great charter of Antichrist (as well as their sire, the pope) to dispense with the breach of God’s laws. . . . Or else peradventure with their deep learning they are able to prove that Christian princes and magistates either cannot sin in such manner to deserve excommunication, or else are not liable to the same judgments of God as other Christians are for the like transgressions; or else that Christ hath not made one and the same covenant with all men, but hath appointed one way for princes and magistrates to be saved, another way for inferior Christians of lower callings.6. . . This is the care these good shepherds have of the souls of their prince and magistrates, to suffer them to run on in their sin without coercion or reproof; yea, to deprive them of the only means and cure that God in his mercy and wisdom hath provided for all his servants in that estate. But these politic divines make princes believe that it is no small injury and derogation to their persons and office to be subject to the reproof and censure of Christ in his Church. Excommunication of magistrates (say they) was an instrument to bring the necks of emperors and princes under the pope’s girdle, the only mean whereby he became so dreadful to all men and got to himself so great authority; therefore our English pope and l{ord} bishops, though they still retain in their hands this popish thunderbolt of excommunication, yet so warily do they use it as they will not affray princes or great personages therewith. Alas, and cannot these learned bishops, in all this light and free passage of the Gospel they boast of, as yet discern or put difference betwixt Christ’s most lawful, sacred, spiritual power, and the pope’s usurped, devilish, carnal powers? Should not magistrates be subject to the first, because they ought not to endure or suffer the second? . . .  . . . {Those who} be excommunicate yet still retain their civil estate dignity wherein God hath placed them, and still are reverenced and obeyed of the whole Church as such magistrates whom God hath set over them; only members of the Church they cannot be held whiles they presumptuously transgress or obstinately disobey Christ’s voice. . . . So then until they can prove that there can be no magistrates but such as are of the Church, or that this ecclesiastical excommunication is a depriving and deposing of the civil magistracy, they do but reproach the and truth and seduce the magistrate. As these spiritual judgments extend not unto, so the Church that pronounceth and executeth the same no way meddleth with, the office or person of the prince or magistrate. They are taught not to lay violent hands upon the Lord’s anointed but to be obedient unto the death. . . . . . . Now as we have by the light of God’s word . . . evidently found and seen these bishops, their courts and government, to be wholly antichristian and utterly unlawful, but especially this their High Court of Commission to be most blasphemous, the very throne 6 {Barrow here sides with both the Genevan and Roman Catholic view that temporal rulers are subject to the Church’s public ecclesiastical censures, including excommunication. The opposing English position, known as Erastianism, was that of the Zurich reformers. The matter is discussed at length in Book VIII of Hooker’s Laws of ecclesiastical polity.}

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of the Beast . . . so likewise, if we by the same rules but as lightly examine and measure the secret classes, the ordinary set synods and councils of ministers (as they term themselves), which these reformists now privily bring in and would openly set up, they shall no doubt be found as new, strange, and anti-­Christian, as prejudicial to the liberty of the saints . . . as these other, what show so ever of former antiquity or of present necessity they may pretend. . . . The persons assembled in these councils are only ministers, all other Christians being shut out. . . . The causes for which they are assembled and which they handle, not being doubts or questions which arise in the churches, but all the affairs, offices, and duties of the Church, and that without making the churches privy wherefore they assemble or what they will there handle. The time and place of these councils, they . . . make settled, continual, permanent; not leaving to the Church either the liberty when and where to keep these councils or whom to use in these councils. . . . Their decrees are peremptory, irrevocable, most holy, inviolable, to be received and embraced of all churches without contradiction or scruple; no power left to any church to examine, refuse, or reverse the same, be they found never so contrary to God’s word, but only either by the same council or by act of Parliament; in the meanwhile they all must practice and obey these decrees. The power of these councils is over all churches, persons, causes, doctrines, to give the right hand of fellowship (as they term it) or to send the bill of divorce, to ratify or reject whom and what they will. This council also executeth all the censures and duties of the Church: as to make or depose ministers, to censure, excommunicate, etc. To conclude, as all these councils have and exercise power and jurisdiction over the Church, so are they in authority one above another, as the synod above the classes, the council above the synod, to confirm, abrogate, or disannul whatsoever constitutions or actions the other hath made. Yea (as some report), upon the enormities and abuses that did arise in these councils and assemblies {of the first Christian centuries} . . . were devised and erected these new strange orders and degrees of bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, popes, and all their substitutes and courts. . . . Wherefore, seeing the whole Church and all the proceedings thereof must be built upon Christ’s Testament; seeing every soul and every action shall be judged by Christ’s Testament; seeing nothing is pleasing unto God . . . that is found disagreeing to Christ’s Testament; seeing also, even by this little search and superficial view we have taken of the present estate and pretended reformation of this their Church of England, all things appear to be out of frame, still in the old corruption . . . nothing being aright or according to the will of God amongst them; seeing we find . . . all the marks of that painted deceitful harlot, the false and malignant Church, to be found upon them, as also all the vials of God’s wrathful judgments to be poured forth upon them and all their doings; finally, seeing God vouchsafeth both to discover and to call all men forth out of Babylon . . . being ready to receive all that come forth unto him, to esteem, guide, and defend them as his dear children: it behoveth all such in whom is any care of their own salvation, any fear of God or love of that appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . to save themselves from this wicked and perverse generation by coming out from amongst them and fleeing out of Babel, and by gathering themselves unto the Lamb in Mount Sion, there amongst and together with his chosen, called, faithful 262



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servants, under his banner and conduct, to fight in all patient and constant manner that good fight of faith . . . following the Lamb wheresoever he goeth, that so he may lead them in the ways of life and peace, and at length bring them to the full fruition of that endless happiness which he hath prepared for all his in his Father’s kingdom, there to rest with him in perfect joy for ever and ever. . . . By the Lord’s most unworthy servant and witness in bands, Henry Barrow [\ T ext: Henry Barrow, A brief discoverie of the false church (Dort?, 1590 [1591?]) (NSTC 1517).

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THOMAS BILSON (c. 1546–­1616)

The perpetual government of Christ’s Church

Thomas Bilson, one of the most prominent establishment figures within the Elizabethan Church, was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. In 1572 he became headmaster of Winchester College, and in 1580 its warden, in which capacities he played a prominent role in educating some of the most important churchmen of the next half-century. His career as a theologian began with a 1585 defense of the Elizabethan government against the resistance theory of Catholics like Cardinal William Allen, who had argued that religion could provide legitimate grounds for political disobedience. In 1593 Bilson published the text excerpted here, a massive defense of the English Church against both puritans and Catholics, upholding England’s unique form of ecclesiastical government in which archbishops and bishops rule the Church under the authority of the monarch. Bilson was an ambitious man, and undoubtedly one of his motives for writing this sophisticated defense of the Church of England was the hope of promotion to a bishopric; his efforts proved successful when he was made bishop of Worcester in 1596. [\

The key point of controversy in these pages is the presbyterian argument that the Bible gave all ministers equal authority; hence, any superiority of one minister over another (for instance, in the forms of bishops and archbishops) was a form of anti-Christian tyranny. Bilson vigorously rebuts this argument on both historical and theoretical grounds. Much of his treatise is an exhaustive survey of Scripture and early histories of the Church to prove that in fact there had always been superiority of some ministers over others, and that the appointment of bishops in each city to maintain order over the churches was apostolic in origin. But Bilson also argues in more theoretical terms that there can be no order or government without sovereign authority. Likewise, he argued 264



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for the general authority of Christian princes over all matters of ecclesiastical polity,1 suggesting that bishops were not only successors to the apostles but officers of the crown delegated to enforce ecclesiastical law. While he admitted the possibility of clerical councils, and even of the election of bishops by their congregations, these intrinsically dangerous forms yielded whenever possible to the more orderly authority of Christian princes, and in no circumstance could the distributed authority of the many overrule the sovereign authority of the one. Perhaps most importantly, he denounced the dangers of democracy in the Church if local councils of ministers and lay elders, called presbyteries or classis, were given authority over their own affairs; the result would be a shattering of the Church in schism and rebellion. In Bilson’s account of Church government, then, we can see an early version of what would become a cornerstone of Anglicanism: the supreme spiritual authority of bishops in their dioceses, under the supreme spiritual and temporal authority of the monarch over the whole realm. It is thus particularly interesting that this argument was as dependent upon a political theory of absolute rule as it was upon a theology of apostolic succession. [\ Sources: ODNB; Lake, Anglicans and Puritans; William Lamont, “The rise and fall of Bishop Bilson,” Journal of British Studies 5, no. 2 (1966): 22–­32; Charles Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: the politics of religious controversy, 1603–­1625 (Cambridge, 2005); Ethan Shagan, The rule of moderation: violence, religion and the politics of restraint in early modern England (Cambridge, 2011).

1

Excepting the fundamentals of faith

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THOMAS BILSON

The perpetual government of Christ’s Church

1593

To the Christian reader I have been very unwilling (good Christian reader) to enter into these controversies of discipline that have now some space troubled the Church of England.1 I remembered the words of Abraham to Lot: Let there, I pray thee, be no strife betwixt thee and me, nor betwixt my men and thine, for we be brethren {Gen. 13:8}, and did thereby learn that all strife betwixt brethren was unnatural. . . . Yet, when I saw the peace of God’s Church violated by the sharpness of some men’s humors, and their tongues so intemperate that they could not be discerned from open enemies, I thought as in a common danger not to sit looking until all were on fire, but rather by all means to try what kind of liquor {i.e., liquid} would extinguish this flame. Another reason leading me to this enterprise was the discharge of my duty to God and her Majesty. For finding that some men broached their disciplinary devises under the title of God’s eternal truth, and professed they could no more forsake the defense thereof than of the Christian faith, and others defaced and reproached the government of the Church here received and established, as unlawful, irreligious and antichristian (for what lees are so sour that some hedge wines will not yield?), I was moved in conscience not to suffer the sacred Scriptures to be so violently arrested and overruled by the summons and censures of their new consistories, as also to clear this state of that injurious slander, as if not knowing or neglecting the manifest voice of Christ’s spirit, we had entertained and preferred the dregs of Antichrist’s pride and tyranny. These causes of great and good regard led me to examine the chief grounds of both disciplines, theirs and ours, and to peruse the proofs and authorities of either part, so that by comparing them might appear which side came nearest to the sincerity of the Scriptures and society of the ancient and uncorrupt Church of Christ. The which wholly {“Discipline” was a common term for Church government generally, and more particularly for the presbyterian scheme for Church government that Bilson opposed.} 1

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to propose by way of preface would be exceeding tedious. Shortly to capitulate {i.e., summarize}, so that the reader may know what to look for, will not altogether be superfluous. The main supports of their new devised discipline are: the general equality of all pastors and teachers, and the joining of lay elders with them to make up the presbytery that shall govern the Church. On this foundation they build the power of their consistory that must admonish and punish all offences, hear and determine all doubts, and appease and end all strife that any way touch the state and welfare of the Church. Against these false grounds, I show that the Church of God from Adam to Moses, from Moses to Christ, and so downward under patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, hath been always governed by an inequality and superiority of pastors and teachers amongst themselves, and so much the very name and nature of government do enforce. For if amongst equals none may challenge to rule the rest, there must of necessity be superiors before there can be governors.2 It was therefore a ridiculous oversight in our new platformers to settle an ecclesiastical government amongst the pastors and teachers of the Church and yet to banish all superiority from them. Some, finding that absurdity and perceiving confusion of force {i.e., necessarily} must follow where all are equal and no governor endured, confess it to be an essential and perpetual part of God’s ordinance for each presbytery to have a chief amongst them. And yet, lest they should seem to agnize {i.e., acknowledge} or admit the ancient and approved manner of the primitive Church retained amongst us, which is to appoint a fit man to govern each diocese, they have framed a running regency that shall go around to all the presbyters of each place by course and endure for a week or some such space. For the devise is so new that they are not yet resolved what time this changeable superiority shall continue. With this conceit they marvelously please themselves, in so much that they pronounce this only to be God’s institution, and this overseer or bishop to be apostolic. All others they reject as human, that is, as invented and established by man against the first and authentic order of the Holy Ghost. Thus far we join: that to prevent dissention and avoid confusion there must needs, even by God’s ordinance, be a president or ruler of every presbytery. Which conclusion, because it is warranted by the grounds of nature, reason, and truth, and hath the example of the Church of God before, under, and after the Law to confirm it, we accept as irrefutable and lay it as the groundwork of all that ensueth. But whether this presidentship did, in the apostles’ times and by their appointment, go around by course to all the pastors and teachers of every presbytery, or were by election committed to one chosen as the fittest to supply that place so long as he discharged his duty without blame, that is a main point in question betwixt us. Into which I may not enter, until we have seen what the apostolic presbyteries were, and of what persons they did consist at the first erecting of the Church. . . . ‡

{Bilson here takes the absolutist position against the commonplace medieval political theory that the origins of government lay in a grant from the community.} 2

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Chapter XIII: That some chief pastors in and ever since the apostles’ times have been distinguished from the rest of the presbytery by the power of ordination and right of succession, and placed in every city, to preserve the external unity and perpetuity of the Church, whom the ancient Fathers did, and we after them do call by the name of bishops Before I demonstrate the vocation and function of bishops to be apostolic, the ambiguity of the name of bishop, and community of many things incident and pertinent both to bishops and presbyters urges me to lay down and deliver certain peculiar marks and parts of the bishops’ power and office, whereby they are always distinguished from presbyters and never confounded with them either in Scriptures, Councils, or Fathers. Prerogatives there were many appropriate unto them by the authority of the canons and custom of the Church: as reconciling of penitents, confirmation of infants and others that were baptized by laying on their hands, dedication of churches, and such like. But these tended, as Jerome saith, ad honorem sacerdotis potius quam ad legis necessitatem, to the honor of their priesthood rather than to the necessity of any law. The things proper to bishops, which might not be common to presbyters, were singularity in succeeding and superiority in ordaining. These two the Scriptures and Fathers reserve only to bishops. They never communicate them unto presbyters. In every Church and city there might be many presbyters; there could be but one chief to govern the rest. The presbyters, for need, might impose hands on penitents and infants, but by no means might they ordain bishops or ministers of the word and sacraments. Neither are these trifling differences, or devised by me. The external unity and perpetuity of the Church depend wholly on these. As to avoid schisms, bishops were first appointed; so to maintain the churches in unity, the singularity of one pastor over each flock is commended in the Scriptures. And as bishops preserve the unity of each Church in that there may be but one in a place, so they continue the same unto perenuity {i.e., perpetuity} by ordaining such as shall both help them living and succeed them dying. Cyprian hath written a whole book3 to prove that the unity of each Church resteth on the singularity of the pastor. . . . The effect of all is contained in these words: Who is so wicked and perfidious, who so mad with the fury of discord, that believeth the unity of God the Lord’s vesture, the Church of Christ, may be torn in pieces or dare tear it? Himself in his Gospel warneth and teacheth [us], saying: There shall be one flock and one shepherd. And doth any man think there may be in one place either many shepherds or many flocks? In the aforesaid epistle (speaking of himself, not of the bishop of Rome as fondly and falsely the Papists conceive), he saith: heresies have sprung, and schisms risen, from none other fountain than this: that God’s priest is not obeyed nor ONE PRIEST in the Church acknowledged for the time to be judge in Christ’s stead. . . . Jerome saith as much. The dumb beasts and wild herds do follow their leaders; the bees have their kings; the cranes fly after one like an alphabet of letters. One emperor, one judge of each province. Rome, as soon as it was built, could not have two brethren to be kings. Jacob and Esau fought in one womb. Every Church hath but one bishop, one chief presbyter, one chief deacon. And each ecclesiastical order resteth on their rulers. In a ship is but one that directeth the helm; in a house but one master; in an army never so great, 3

{De unitate ecclesiae vel de singularitate praelatorum}

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the sign of one general is expected. Yea, the very safety of the Church dependeth on the dignity of the chief priest [or bishop] . . . to whom if there be not given a peerless power and eminent above all others, there will be as many schisms in the Church as there be priests. Thence is it, that except the bishop give leave, neither presbyter nor deacon have right to baptize. . . . This is a certain rule to distinguish bishops from presbyters: the presbyters were many in every Church of whom the presbytery consisted. Bishops were always singular: that is, one in a city and no more, except another intruded (which the Church of Christ counted a schism and would never communicate with any such), or else a helper were given in respect of extreme and feeble age—­in which case the power of the latter ceased in the presence of the former. And this singularity of one pastor in each place descended from the apostles and their scholars in all the famous churches of the world by a perpetual chair4 of succession and doth, to this day continue but where abomination or desolation, I mean heresy or violence, interrupt it. Of this, there is so perfect a record in all the stories {i.e., histories} and Fathers of the Church that I much muse with what face men that have any taste of learning can deny that the vocation of bishops came from the apostles. For, if their succession be apostolic, then their function cannot choose but be likewise apostolic. And that they succeeded the apostles and evangelists in their churches and chairs may inevitably be proved, if any Christian persons or churches deserve to be credited. The second assured sign of episcopal power is imposition of hands to ordain presbyters and bishops. For, as pastors were to have some to assist them in their charge, which were presbyters, so were they to have others to succeed them in their places, which were bishops. And this right by imposing hands to ordain presbyters and bishops in the Church of Christ was at first derived from the apostles unto bishops and not unto presbyters, and hath for these fifteen hundred years, without example or instance to the contrary until this our age, remained in bishops and not in presbyters. Philip preached and baptized at Samaria, but he could not give the graces of the Holy Ghost by imposition of hands to make fit pastors and teachers for the work of the ministry. The apostles were forced to come from Jerusalem to furnish the Church of Samaria with meet men to labor in the word and doctrine. The like we find by Paul and Barnabas in the Acts, who visited the churches where they had preached and supplied them with presbyters in every place that wanted. . . . ‡

Chapter XIV: The fatherly power and pastoral care of bishops over presbyters and others in their churches and dioceses I take it to be a matter out of question, confirmed by the Scriptures and confessed by the old and new writers, that the Son of God willed S. John the Apostle in his Revelation to write to the seven chief pastors of the seven Churches of Asia, calling them by the name of Angels. By the divine voice, saith Austen, the ruler of the Church [of Ephesus] is praised under the name of an Angel. . . . The Angels, saith Bullinger, are the ambassadors of God, 4

{Either the bishop’s throne, often referred to as his “chair,” or a misprint of “chain”}

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even the pastors of the Churches. The heavenly letter is directed to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna: that is, to the pastor. Now the stories witness that Angel & pastor of the Church of Smyrna to have been Polycarp, ordained bishop [there] by the apostles themselves: I mean, by S. John. . . . . . . The bishop, then, or president of the presbyters (for I stand not on names whiles I discuss their powers), is by Christ’s own mouth pronounced to be the Angel of the Church; that is, the chief steward over God’s household and overseer of his flock. And the authority that he hath in the Church is pastoral and paternal, even the same that hath continued in the Church since the beginning of the world. This fatherly kind of regiment began in the patriarchs, endured in the priests and prophets of Moses’ law, was derived to the apostles, and so descended to the chief pastors of Christ’s Church to this day, who are to be honored and obeyed in the word and sacraments as fathers of all their children. This power and honor, I trust, is so tolerable and Christian that you dare not spurn against it. If you did not give it only to them and take it from all others, we would not gainsay it so much as we do.5 That which is common to every pastor in regard of those that are under them cannot be denied the chief, to whose oversight and charge the whole Church in every place is committed. If you think the name of pastor cannot be common to many in one and the same Church, then the bishop must be pastor alone, for he is the Angel of God’s Church. If the pastoral charge may be common to many, then must he have it chiefly and above all because he is God’s Angel and superior to all. You remember your own positions. It is God’s essential and perpetual ordinance that one should be chief as well over presbyters as people. He cannot be chief in the presbytery, but he must be chief in the Church. And consequently, if the presbyters be pastors, he is chief pastor. We give him no power but to moderate the meetings and execute the decrees of the presbyters. That we are well content the bishop shall enjoy, but further we give him none. Blessed are your presbyters that must have their betters to execute their decrees. But, I pray you sirs, for God’s decrees, who shall execute them? Must the presbyters’ voices {i.e., votes} be asked before God’s laws shall be executed? Take heed, not of tyrannical, but of Satanic pride, if God’s will shall not take place in your Churches until the presbytery be assembled and agreed. You have provided a president to execute your own pleasures; now let God have one amongst you to execute his. Execution in all things we reserve to him that is chief. For as to consult and decree, a number is fittest; so to execute that which is decreed, one is the surest; lest, if execution be committed to many, their excusing themselves one on another, or dissenting from each other, do hinder the whole. You begin to be wise. The honor to determine, you keep to yourselves. The pains to execute, you lay on your chief ruler, to make him the gladder to be rid of his office that another, by course, may succeed in his room. And so, where by God’s ordinance you must have one chief, you take such order with him that he shall never be willing to stay long in it. We do it to prevent ambition in such as would seek for the highest place. You decrease the ambition of one that should be highest and increase the pride of a hundred that should be {This italicized sentence, and those at the head of the next several paragraphs, state the presbyterian arguments that Bilson is refuting.} 5

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lowest. For where we have one bishop in a diocese tied to the laws of God, the Church, and the prince, you would have three hundred in a diocese (in some, more), all of equal power and set at liberty to consult and determine of all matters at their pleasures. We subject our presbyteries to the laws of God, the Church, and the realm, as well as you do your bishops, and give them no leave to resist or reverse the decrees of any superior powers. You do well. For when the God of heaven hath declared his will, or the Church by her provincial or general councils determined doubts and made rules, or Christian magistrates by their laws redressed and ordered things amiss, besides the loss of your pains, it were more than pride for your presbyters in their assemblies to consult afresh and bring the selfsame things again to the question. What is decreed by superiors must not by inferiors be debated whether it shall take place or no, but be rather obeyed with readiness. So that in all cases determined by the laws of God, the Church, or the prince, consultation is both superfluous and presumptuous. Execution is only needful, and that must be committed to some persons that may precisely be challenged and punished for the contempt if that which is commanded be not performed. Now, who appoints you to execute the decrees of God, the Church, and the prince? The whole presbytery? Then upon the not execution of God’s or man’s law by any one presbyter, all must be punished, as well innocent as nocent, diligent as negligent. The blame must lie on all where the charge is in common. Were you but once or twice well followed for other men’s faults, you would soon wear weary of this general and confused execution. And though you would not, yet neither the equity nor prudency of God’s or man’s laws endure that wandering kind of execution. They note and specify the persons that shall have the charge and oversight to execute their decrees, that upon any neglect or defect the right offenders may be challenged. And since to avoid confusion and prevent delays you commit the execution of your own decrees to the care and circumspection of your president, what cause can there be why the laws of God, the Church, and the prince should not likewise be executed by the bishop or chief pastor of each place? There can be no doubt but the canons of councils and laws of Christian princes touching Church causes, from the apostles’ age to ours, have been committed to episcopal audience6 and execution. The question is for God’s law: who should be trusted with the execution thereof? And who rather, say we, than he that is authorized by God to be the Angel of his Church and steward of his house, at whose mouth the rest should ask the law, and be rather subject unto him than perch over him? The execution of God’s law by no means we grant to the bishop, for then we yield him all. But in that case, though each presbyter be inferior to him, yet the whole presbytery is above him, and may both overrule him and censure him. That is as much as if you had said: when the sheep list to agree (I will not say conspire), they must lead their shepherd, and when the children are willful, they must rule their father. Otherwise, if the bishop be pastor and father to each presbyter, he is the like to the whole presbytery, and consequently they must hear and obey him as God’s Angel so long as he keepeth within the bounds of his message. ‡

6

{I.e., judicial hearing}

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Chapter XV: To whom the election of the bishops and presbyters doth rightly belong, and whether by God’s law the people must elect their pastors, or no . . .

It cannot be denied but the prince of right hath, and ever had, as great interest in the choice of bishops as the people. There can no reason be pretended for the multitude, but it concludeth more strongly for the magistrate. If the people, by God’s law, were to choose their bishop, the king, as the principal part and head of the people, by the same law must be suffered to have the chief place amongst them. Did ever God’s or man’s law prefer the feet before the head? . . . Wherefore, though there were no princes christened in the apostles’ times, nor in 300 years after, to claim or use their right; yet against the head, that it shall not be head, to rule and guide the feet, {there} can be no prescription,7 by reason God’s ordinance for the head to govern the body is a perpetual and eternal law. And the usurpation of the members against it is no prescription, but a confusion and the subversion of that order which the God of heaven hath immutably decreed and settled. And even in the primitive Church, when leisure from greater affairs and occasion of popular uproars put Christian emperors in mind to use their right, they were by councils acknowledged to have good interest in the elections of bishops, and by the whole Church suffered, not only to have a several and sovereign consent, but by their laws to moderate, restrain, and punish the attempts and abuses as well of bishops and clarks that were electors and ordainers, as of the people that were the likers and supporters of the parties so corruptly or disorderly chosen. . . . We differ, you think, in some points from the manner of Geneva. We have great reason so to do. They live in a popular state, we in a kingdom. The people there bear the chiefest rule, here the prince. And yet there the people are excluded from electing their pastors. If the multitude have any cause to dislike, their allegation is heard and examined by the pastors and magistrates, but they have no free power to frustrate the whole by dissenting, much less to elect whom they like. Now, that our state hath far better cause to exclude the multitude from electing their bishops than theirs hath is soon perceived. The people there maintain their pastors. Our bishops are not chargeable to the commons but endowed by the liberality of princes without any cost to the multitude. Their pastors are chosen out of the same city and their behavior known to all the inhabitants. Our bishops are taken from other places of government and not so much as by name known to the people which they shall guide. . . . And lastly, if princes were not heads of their people, and by God’s and man’s law trusted with the direction and moderation of all external and public government, as well in religion as in policy, afore and above all others—­which are two most sufficient reasons to enforce that they ought to be trusted with elections, if they please to undertake that charge, whereof they must yield an account to God—­yet the people of this realm at the making of the law most apparently submitted and transferred all their right and interest to the

{In common law, “prescription” refers to the fixed time within which an action or claim can be raised; it is the loss of a title or right by failure to claim over a long period.} 7

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prince’s judgment and wisdom,8 which lawfully they might and wisely they did, rather than to endanger the whole commonwealth with such tumults and uproars as the primitive Church tasted of and lay the gap open again to the factions and corruptions of the unsettled and unbridled multitude. ‡

Chapter XVI: The meeting of bishops in synods, and who did call and moderate those assemblies in the primitive Church The necessity and authority of synods is not so much in question betwixt us as the persons that should assemble and moderate those meetings. The disciplinarians {i.e., presbyterians} themselves, if I be not deceived, are far from making their pastors or presbyteries in every parish supreme judges of doctrine and manners without all exception or revocation, and we be further. For what if the pastors or presbyters of any place maintain heresy or offer injury, which are cases not rarely incident but everywhere occurring, even in those that bear the names of Christians? Shall impiety and injustice so reign and prevail in the Church that none may withstand it or redress it? . . . Wherefore, as in civil affairs there are laws and powers to uphold justice and prohibit violence (without the which human societies could not consist), so in the Church of Christ, when it is without the help and assistance of a Christian magistrate, there must be some external and judicial means to discern error and redress wrong in case any particular person or church be infected or oppressed. Otherwise, there is no possibility for truth and equity to harbor long amongst the sons of men. The remedy which the primitive Church had and used against heresy and injury, she derived as well from the promise made by Christ’s own words as from the example of the apostles in the like case. Christ, willing such of his disciples as were grieved by their brethren after the first and second admonition to tell it to the Church {Matt. 18:17}, addeth for the direction and confirmation of all religious assemblies and conferences: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them; and, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose in earth shall be loosed in heaven {Matt. 18:18-­20}. Whether the name of the Church in this place he taken for the assembly of elders and rulers under Moses’s law, or of pastors and teachers under the gospel, to me it is indifferent. This is evidently the order which our Saviour willeth to be observed: from private admonition to go to witnesses, and from witnesses to assemblies. So the word ecclesia doth most plainly signify. And so the promise annexed doth clearly import: where two or three are assembled together in my name, I am in the midst of them. Neither could any other course be established in the Church. For since an end of controversies must be had amongst men, lest perpetual contention bring final confusion and pluck up the very roots of all charity and equity from amongst men, when neither private persuasion nor friendly mediation can appease the parties contending, what other order could be prescribed but a judicial hearing and determining of things in question? {Bilson refers to the Parliamentary Act Concerning Ecclesiastical Appointments and Absolute Restraint of Annates of 1533 (25 Hen 8 c 20).} 8

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Now, judges must needs be either single or assembled. And single judges of force must either be sovereign and supreme judges or else under superiors appointed by the same warrant. The bishop of Rome claimeth a single and sole commission to hear and conclude all causes concerning either faith or right; and were his proof as good as his challenge is proud, it were worth the discussing. But the more he claimeth, the more he sinneth, by reason he taketh unto himself, without commission, an infallible and inevitable judgment over all men and matters upon the face of the earth that any way touch the truth or the Church. Princes are single and sovereign judges of earthly things, and when they believe, the defense and maintenance of the Church and faith is by God himself committed to their power and care. But Christ did not settle the sword to be the general and perpetual rule to govern his Church. For then without a prince there could be no Church, and consequently neither in the apostles’ times nor three hundred years after had Christ any Church here on earth, since none of the Roman princes that were lords of the world publicly maintained the Christian faith before Constantine. Since we find no single nor supreme judges upon whom the Church of Christ must always depend for the debating and ending of ecclesiastical strife and contentions, of necessity there must either be none, which were the utter subversion of all peace and order amongst the faithful where there wanteth a Christian magistrate, or else the pastors and stewards of Christ’s Church, to whom the care and charge thereof is committed, must assemble together and with mutual conference and consent perform those duties to the Church in general, which otherwise they do to each particular place and person. For though pastors be affixed to their places and charges, yet that doth not hinder the common care they should have of all the members of Christ’s body. And therefore, when need so requireth, they must as well employ their travail abroad as bestow pains at home to direct or pacify the household of faith. This brotherly kind of succoring and assisting each other in troubles and dangers is sometimes performed by letters, but never so thoroughly and effectually as by meeting and assembling together, when, with deliberate and full advice, they may hear and determine what they think meetest for the safety and quietness of the Church of God. [\ T ext: Thomas Bilson, The perpetual gouernement of Christes Church (London, 1593) (NSTC 3065).

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RICHARD HOOKER (1554–­1600)

Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

As noted in the biographical overview of Hooker’s early career prefacing his sermon on faith , in 1585 Hooker became master of the Temple, the church belonging to one of London’s Inns of Court. The sermons preached during the early months of his tenure offended the Temple’s puritan lecturer, Walter Travers, who attacked the new master from the pulpit and was suspended for his pains, at which point Travers’ supporters picked up the baton. Their opposition causing Hooker “extreme grief,” in order to “unbeguile and win them, he designed to write a deliberate sober treatise of the Church’s power to make canons for the use of ceremonies, and by law to impose an obedience to them” (Walton, 231). The above is Izaak Walton’s late seventeenth-­century account, which has proved to be more hagiography than history, but subsequent research bears out its implicit claim that Hooker’s Laws was never an official or even semiofficial apologia for the Elizabethan Settlement. Whitgift, however, must have known about the projected Laws, given that Hooker’s volumes continued Whitgift’s controversy with Thomas Cartwright; and indeed, the Archbishop “placed his library at Lambeth at Hooker’s disposal.” At the end, Whitgift “personally licensed the work’s publication” (ODNB). In the mid-­1580s, and for nearly a decade thereafter, Hooker lived in the home of a prosperous London merchant, John Churchman; in 1588 he married Joan Churchman, whose considerable dowry cannot have been unwelcome to her scholar-­husband, whose will reveals an expensive taste in books.1 The couple had six children (another expensive habit), four of whom survived infancy. In order (presumably) to write with fewer interruptions, in 1591 Hooker resigned his mastership at the Temple, Whitgift having appointed him rector of St. Andrew’s in the tiny Wiltshire parish of Boscombe (current pop. 143), and subdean of Salisbury Cathedral, eight miles to the south, whose then dean was John Bridges, author of the Laws’ “Hooker’s estate was substantial, including what must have been a magnificent library, valued at £300” (ODNB). 1

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elephantine precursor, Defense of the government established (1587). Although Hooker resided at Boscombe only briefly, he did get to Salisbury, where he conferred with Bridges and took advantage of the cathedral library. The first draft of the Laws was, however, largely written at Churchman’s homes in London and Enfield, then a Middlesex village. Hooker’s former pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer—­the former already an MP—­served as an informal advisory team: their extensive notes on Hooker’s draft chapters recommend less philosophy and more polemic. Sandys also subvented the March 1593 printing of the first four books of the Laws. Given that Hooker needed this to get the work published, it seems highly unlikely that he had high-­placed backing. That Hooker never received any major preferment may only mean that his wife’s dowry “put him above vulgar careerism,” but it might also indicate that, like Sandys and Cranmer, the ecclesiastical establishment did not find the Laws sufficiently polemical. The title page to the 1593 edition already described the work as “in eight books.” To make good on this promise, in 1595 Hooker, along with his family, left London, the Queen having presented him with the living at St. Mary’s, Bishopsbourne, a tiny village five miles southwest of Canterbury. “In his few remaining years Hooker was an exemplary pastor at Bishopsbourne, while continuing to work on the Laws” (ODNB), its fifth book coming out, again with Sandys’ financial support, in late 1597. The following Lent he received his one known invitation to preach at court. He died on November 2, 1600 at Bishopsbourne. According to Walton, Hooker’s friend and confessor, Hadrian Saravia, visited him that morning and “found him . . . deep in contemplation . . . which gave the Doctor occasion to require his present thoughts; to which he replied, that he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order.” Then, after praying for God’s mercy and affirming his “blessed assurance” of having received it, “his spirits failed him; and after a short conflict betwixt Nature and Death, a quiet sigh put a period to his last breath, and so he fell asleep” (Walton 252). [\

At the time of Hooker’s death, only five of the Laws’ eight books had been published. Books VI and VIII came out in 1648, Book VII not until 1662. That the Laws required a subvention both in 1593 and 1597 suggests that it was not an instant success. Nor did it attract much immediate response. In 1599 an anonymous tract entitled A Christian letter—­a lmost certainly the work of a prolific and respected Calvinist conformist, Andrew Willett—­savaged Hooker’s treatise as a popish assault on the doctrinal pillars of the English Church. At his death Hooker was in the midst of replying to its charges.2 Shortly thereafter, William Covel’s Just and temperate defense (1603) championed Hooker’s cause. A year later a second edition of the Laws came out (Books I–­V ), followed by a third in 1611, and five more between 1618 and 1639, which for a work of its length

2

These notes, some only discovered in the late twentieth century, can be found in Hooker, FLE, vol. 4.

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and difficulty is impressive.3 By the mid-­Jacobean period, the Laws had become a book to conjure with. And so it remains. The ODNB, which is not given to rhetorical excess, terms it “the first major work in the fields of theology, philosophy, and political thought to be written in English.” The Laws is also a vast work—­nearly 1,500 pages in the definitive modern edition by W. Speed Hill—­covering an enormous range of theological, philosophical, legal, and political subjects. It can be read as a deeply polemical work, directly rebutting presbyterian pretensions, but it can equally be read as systematic, abstract, and generalizable. It can be read as politically progressive in its calls for distributed power and limited monarchy (especially in the posthumously published eighth book), but it can also be read as creating a structure of laws so rigid that none might stand for conscience against them. It has been read by modern scholars both as an epitome of Elizabethan Anglicanism and as an eccentric outlier that presaged elements of a position that would only coalesce into Anglicanism half a century later. The following excerpts set forth Hooker’s arguments as to the nature of the Church, since these, despite having been fiercely contested in his own day, have proved some of the most enduring elements of the work. Hooker, like his presbyterian opponents, divided the Church into two, partially overlappin, bodies: the institutional church(es) to which all those outwardly professing Christianity belong, and the mystical body of the elect whose membership is known to God alone. But unlike his presbyterian opponents, for whom the goal was often to make the visible Church more like the invisible so as to serve the needs of visible saints, Hooker imagined the visible Church in extremely broad terms, as simply anyone and everyone who was baptized and proclaimed Christ. From a legal standpoint, this meant that it was possible to imagine ecclesiastical laws as mutable and varied, properly made by men rather than God. While God himself is unchanging and eternal, within the visible Church with all its tumult, where laws largely existed to structure human relations rather than divine ones, laws could and should change to meet changing circumstances. From a constitutional perspective, the broadness of the visible Church meant that Church and state could freely comingle, ruled jointly as two sides of the same coin (or, as Hooker put it, two sides of the same triangle), rather than separately. Indeed, the modern phrase “wall of separation” was not originally Jefferson’s but Hooker’s; Hooker, however, used it negatively to describe the “walls of separation” that his opponents wrongly wanted to build between the commonwealth as it acted in religious contexts and the same commonwealth as it acted in civil contexts. Finally, and perhaps most important from Hooker’s own perspective, his emphasis on the broadness of the visible Church meant that much about Roman Catholicism could be redeemed. Rather than casting Rome in the role of Antichrist, as did so many of his contemporaries, Hooker imagined a family of visible Churches, all of them corrupt to some degree and in some respects, but all of them searching for the truth, including both Rome and England. Certainly he granted that Rome was, in his own day, far more in need of

There was also a Latin translation (c. 1650) by John Earle, which was long believed lost, but a considerable portion of the manuscript recently surfaced at the Folger Library. 3

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reform than the Church of England he defended; but this was a continuum of Christian Churches rather than a battle between good and evil. [\ Sources: ODNB; Patrick Collinson, “Hooker and the Elizabethan establishment,” in Richard Hooker and the construction of Christian community, ed. A. S. McGrade (Tempe, Ariz., 1997), 149–­82; Lee Gibbs, “Life of Hooker,” in A companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, 2008), 1–­26; Hooker, FLE; Ethan Shagan, The rule of moderation: violence, religion and the politics of restraint in early modern England (Cambridge, 2011); W. Speed Hill, “Works and editions II,” in Companion, 41–­50, and “Richard Hooker in the Folger edition: an editorial perspective,” in Construction, 3–­20; Izaak Walton, Lives (London, 1858).

278

RICHARD HOOKER

Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

1594

{Selections from books III and VIII} [3.1.1] Albeit the substance of those controversies whereinto we have begun to wade be rather of outward things appertaining to the Church of Christ than of anything wherein the nature and being of the Church consisteth, yet because the subject or matter which this position concerneth is a form of Church government or Church polity, it therefore behoveth us so far forth to consider the nature of the Church as is requisite for men’s more clear and plain understanding in what respect laws of polity or government are necessary thereunto. [3.1.2] That Church of Christ, which we properly term his body mystical, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural persons be visible) we do not discern under this property whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body. Only our minds by intellectual conceit are able to apprehend that such a real body there is, a body collective, because it containeth an huge multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of their conjunction is removed altogether from sense. Whatsoever we read in Scripture concerning the endless love and the saving mercy which God showeth towards his Church, the only proper subject thereof is this Church. Concerning this flock it is that our Lord and Savior hath promised, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hands [John 10:28]. They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense; only unto God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret cogitations, unto him they are clear and manifest. All men knew Nathanael to be an Israelite. But our Savior piercing deeper giveth further testimony of him than men could have done with such certainty as he did: Behold indeed an Israelite in whom is no guile [John 1:47]. If we profess, as Peter did, that we love the Lord, and profess it in the hearing of men, charity is prone to believe all things, and therefore charitable men are likely to think we do so, as long as they see no proof to the contrary. But that our love is sound and sincere, that it cometh from a pure heart and a good conscience and a faith 279



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unfeigned [1 Tim. 1:5], who can pronounce, saving only the searcher of all men’s hearts, who alone intuitively doth know in this kind who are his? [3.1.3] And as those everlasting promises of love, mercy, and blessedness belong to the mystical Church; even so on the other side, when we read of any duty which the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom this doth concern is a sensibly known company. And this visible Church in like sort is but one, continued from the first beginning of the world to the last end. Which company being divided into two moieties, the one before, the other since the coming of Christ; that part, which since the coming of Christ partly hath embraced and partly shall hereafter embrace the Christian religion, we term as by a more proper name the Church of Christ. And therefore the Apostle affirmeth plainly of all men Christian, that be they Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, they are all incorporated into one company, they all make but one body. The unity of which visible body and Church of Christ consisteth in that uniformity which all several persons thereunto belonging have, by reason of that one Lord whose servants they all profess themselves, that one faith which they all acknowledge, that one baptism wherewith they are all initiated. [3.1.4] The visible Church of Jesus Christ is therefore one in outward profession of those things which supernaturally appertain to the very essence of Christianity and are necessarily required in every particular Christian man. Let all the house of Israel know for certainty, saith Peter, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, even this Jesus whom you have crucified [Acts 2:36]. Christians therefore they are not, which call not him their Master and Lord. . . . [3.1.5] But our naming of Jesus Christ the Lord is not enough to prove us Christians, unless we also embrace that faith which Christ hath published unto the world. To show that the angel of Pergamus continued in Christianity, behold how the Spirit of Christ speaketh, Thou keepest my name, and thou hast not denied my faith [Rev. 2:13]. Concerning which faith, the rule thereof, saith Tertullian, is one alone, immovable, and no way possible to be better framed anew. What rule that is he showeth by rehearsing those few articles of Christian belief.1 And before Tertullian, Irenaeus: The Church, though scattered through the whole world unto the utmost borders of the earth, hath from the apostles and their disciples received belief. The parts of which belief he also reciteth, in substance the very same with Tertullian, and thereupon inferreth, this faith the Church being spread far and wide preserveth as if one house did contain them; these things it equally embraceth as though it had even one soul, one heart, and no more; it publisheth, teacheth and delivereth these things with uniform consent, as if God had given it but one only tongue wherewith to speak. He which amongst the guides of the Church is best able to speak uttereth no more than this; and less than this the most simple doth not utter when they make profession of their faith. [3.1.6] Now although we know the Christian faith and allow of it, yet in this respect we are but entering. Entered we are not into the visible Church before our admittance by the door of baptism. Wherefore immediately upon the acknowledgment of Christian faith, the eunuch (we see) was baptized by Philip, Paul by Ananias, by Peter an huge multitude containing three thousand souls, which being once baptized were reckoned in the number of souls added to the visible Church. 1

{A reference to the Apostles’ Creed}

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[3.1.7] As for those virtues that belong unto moral righteousness and honesty of life, we do not mention them, because they are not proper unto Christian men as they are Christian, but do concern them as they are men. True it is, the want of these virtues excludeth from salvation. So doth much more the absence of inward belief of heart; so doth despair and lack of hope; so emptiness of Christian love and charity. But we speak now of the visible Church, whose children are signed with this mark, One Lord, one faith, one baptism. In whomsoever these things are, the Church doth acknowledge them for her children; them only she holdeth for aliens and strangers, in whom these things are not found. For want of these it is that Saracens, Jews, and infidels are excluded out of the bounds of the Church. Others we may not deny to be of the visible Church, as long as these things are not wanting in them. For apparent it is that all men are of necessity either Christians or not Christians. If by external profession they be Christians, then are they of the visible Church of Christ; and Christians by external profession they are all, whose mark of recognizance hath in it those things which we have mentioned; yea, although they be impious idolaters, wicked heretics, persons excommunicable, yea, and cast out for notorious improbity. Such withal we deny not to be the imps and limbs of Satan, even as long as they continue such. [3.1.8] Is it then possible that the selfsame men should belong both to the synagogue of Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church which is his mystical body, not possible; because that body consisteth of none but only true Israelites, true sons of Abraham, true servants and saints of God. Howbeit of the visible body and Church of Jesus Christ, those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect of the main parts of their outward profession, who in regard of their inward disposition of mind, yea, of external conversation, yea, even of some parts of their very profession, are most worthily both hateful in the sight of God himself, and in the eyes of the sounder part of the visible Church most execrable. . . . God hath had ever, and ever shall have, some Church visible upon earth. When the people of God worshipped the calf in the wilderness, when they adored the brazen serpent, when they served the gods of nations, when they bowed their knees to Baal, when they burnt incense and offered sacrifice unto idols: true it is, the wrath of God was most fiercely inflamed against them, their prophets justly condemned them as an adulterous seed and a wicked generation of miscreants which had forsaken the living God, and of him were likewise forsaken in respect of that singular mercy wherewith he kindly and lovingly embraced his faithful children. Howbeit, retaining the law of God and the holy seal of his covenant, the sheep of his visible flock they continued even in the depth of their disobedience and rebellion. Wherefore not only amongst them God always had his Church because he had thousands which never bowed their knees to Baal; but whose knees were bowed unto Baal, even they were also of the visible Church of God. . . . . . . [3.1.10] What is but only the selfsame error and misconceit, wherewith others being at this day likewise possessed, they ask us where our Church did lurk, in what cave of the earth it slept for so many hundreds of years together before the birth of Martin Luther?2 As if we were of opinion that Luther did erect a new Church of Christ. No, the {Here Hooker responds to Roman Catholics’ sneering question, “Where was your Church before Luther?”} 2

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Church of Christ, which was from the beginning, is, and continueth unto the end; of which Church all parts have not been always equally sincere and sound. . . . We hope therefore that to reform ourselves, if at any time we have done amiss, is not to sever ourselves from the Church we were of before. In the Church we were, and we are so still. Other difference between our estate before and now we know none but only such as we see in Judah, which, having sometime been idolatrous, became afterwards more soundly religious by renouncing idolatry and superstition. . . . The indisposition therefore of the Church of Rome to reform herself must be no stay unto us from performing our duty to God; even as desire of retaining conformity with them could be no excuse if we did not perform that duty. Notwithstanding, so far as lawfully we may, we have held and do hold fellowship with them. For even as the Apostle doth say of Israel, that they are in one respect enemies but in another beloved of God; in like sort with Rome we dare not communicate concerning sundry her gross and grievous abominations, yet touching those main parts of Christian truth wherein they constantly still persist, we gladly acknowledge them to be of the family of Jesus Christ; and our hearty prayer unto God almighty is, that being conjoined so far forth with them, they may at the length (if it be his will) so yield to frame and reform themselves that no distraction {i.e., division} remain in any thing, but that we all may with one heart and one mouth glorify God the Father of our Lord and Savior, whose Church we are. . . . [3.1.12] In this consideration, the answer of Calvin unto Farel3 concerning the children of popish parents doth seem crazed. Whereas, saith he, you ask our judgment about a matter whereof there is doubt amongst you, whether ministers of our order, professing the pure doctrine of the Gospel, may lawfully admit unto baptism an infant whose father is a stranger unto our churches, and whose mother hath fallen from us unto the Papacy, so that both the parents are popish, thus we have thought good to answer: namely, that it is an absurd thing for us to baptize them which cannot be reckoned members of our body. And since Papists’ children are such, we see not how it should be lawful to minister baptism unto them. Sounder a great deal is the answer of the ecclesiastical college of Geneva unto Knox, who having signified unto them that himself did not think it lawful to baptize bastards or the children of idolaters (he meaneth Papists) or of persons excommunicate, till either the parents had by repentance submitted themselves unto the Church or else their children, being grown unto the years of understanding, should come and sue for their own baptism. . . . Their sentence was, Wheresoever the profession of Christianity hath not utterly perished and been extinct, infants are beguiled of their right, if the common seal be denied them.4 3 {Guillaume Farel (1489–­1565) was a French-­born Protestant leader who worked with John Calvin in Geneva in the 1530s before a dispute with Calvin over the Eucharist led to his banishment in 1538. On baptizing the children of popish parents, see Whitgift 16.4.2–­3 .} 4 {Hooker returns to the issue in Book V, concluding “Yet even through the common faith and spirit of God’s Church (a thing which no quality of parents can prejudice), I say, through the faith of the Church of God, undertaking the motherly care of our souls, so far forth we may be and are in our infancy sanctified, as to be thereby made sufficiently capable of baptism, and to be interessed in the rites of our new birth for their [the godparents’] piety’s sake that offer us thereunto” (Laws 5.64.5).}

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‡ [8.1.1] We come now to the last thing whereof there is controversy moved: namely, the power of supreme jurisdiction, which for distinction’s sake we call the power of ecclesiastical dominion. It was not thought fit in the Jews’ commonwealth that the exercise of supremacy ecclesiastical should be denied unto him to whom the exercise of chiefty civil did appertain; and therefore their kings were invested with both. This power they gave unto Simon when they consented that he should be their prince, not only to set men over the works and over the country and over the weapons and over the fortresses, but also to provide for the holy things; and that he should be obeyed of every man, and that all the writings in the country should be made in his name, and that it should not be lawful for any of the people or priests to withstand his words or to call any congregation in the country without him [1 Macc. 14:41-­42]. And if it be haply surmised that thus much was given to Simon as being both prince and high priest, which otherwise (being only their civil governor) he could not lawfully have enjoyed, we must note that all this is no more than the ancient kings of that people had, being kings and not priests. By this power, David, Asa, Jehosaphat, Ezekias, Josias, and the rest made those laws and orders which the sacred history speaketh of concerning matters of mere religion, the affairs of the Temple, and service of God. Finally, had it not been by the virtue of this power, how should it possibly have come to pass that the piety or impiety of the king did always accordingly change the public face of religion, which thing the priests by themselves never did, neither could at any time hinder from being done? Had the priests alone been possessed with all power in spiritual affairs, how should any law concerning matter of religion have been made but only by them? In them it had been, and not in the king, to change the face of religion at any time. The altering of religion, the making of ecclesiastical laws, with other the like actions belonging unto the power of dominion, are still termed the deeds of the king, to show that in him was placed supremacy of power, even in this kind, over all, and that unto their high priests the same was never committed, saving only at such times as their priests were also kings and princes over them. [8.1.2] According to the pattern of which example, the like power in causes ecclesiastical is by the laws of this realm annexed unto the Crown. And there are {people} which imagine that kings, being mere laypersons, do by this means exceed the lawful bounds of their calling. Which thing to the end that they may persuade, they first make a necessary separation perpetual and personal between the Church and commonwealth. Secondly, they so tie all kind of power ecclesiastical unto the Church, as if it were in every degree their only right, which are by proper spiritual function termed Church governors, and might not unto Christian princes any wise appertain. To lurk under shifting ambiguities and equivocations of words in matters of principal weight is childish. A Church and a commonwealth, we grant, are things in nature the one distinguished from the other: a commonwealth is one way, and a Church another way defined. In their opinion, the Church and the commonwealth are corporations not distinguished only in nature and definition, but in subsistence perpetually severed, so that they that are of the one can neither appoint nor execute, in whole nor in part, the duties which belong unto them which are of the other, without open breach of the law of God, which hath divided them; and doth require that, being so divided, they should distinctly and severally work, as depending both upon God, and not hanging one upon the other’s approbation for that which either hath to do. 283



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We say that the care of religion being common to all societies politic, such societies as do embrace the true religion have the name of the Church given unto every of them for distinction from the rest; so that every body politic hath some religion, but the Church that religion which is only true. Truth of religion is the proper difference whereby a Church is distinguished from other politic societies of men. We here mean true religion in gross, and not according to every particular; for they which in some particular points of religion do swerve from the truth, may nevertheless most truly (if we compare them to men of an heathenish religion) be said to hold and profess that religion which is true. For which cause, there being of old so many politic societies established throughout the world, only the commonwealth of Israel, which had the truth of religion, was in that respect the Church of God. And the Church of Jesus Christ is every such politic society of men as doth in religion hold that truth which is proper to Christianity. As a politic society it doth maintain religion; as a Church, that religion which God hath revealed by Jesus Christ. With us, therefore, the name of a Church importeth only a society of men, first united into some public form of regiment, and secondly distinguished from other societies by the exercise of Christian religion. With them on the other side, the name of the Church in this present question importeth not only a multitude of men, so united and so distinguished, but also further, the same divided necessarily and perpetually from the body of the commonwealth; so that even in such a politic society as consisteth of none but Christians, yet the Church and commonwealth are two corporations, independently subsisting by itself. We hold that, seeing there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England; therefore, as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the selfsame line is both a base and also a side (a side simply; a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest), so, albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given unto a multitude, yet one and the selfsame multitude may in such sort be both—­and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other. Contrariwise (unless they against us should hold that the Church and the commonwealth are two both distinct and separate societies, of which two the one comprehendeth always persons not belonging to the other), that which they do, they could not conclude out of the difference between the Church and the commonwealth: namely, that bishops may not meddle with the affairs of the commonwealth because they are governors of another corporation, which is the Church; nor kings, with making laws for the Church, because they have government not of this corporation, but of another divided from it, the commonwealth; and the walls of separation between these two must forever be upheld. They hold the necessity of personal separation, which clean excludeth the power of one man’s dealing in both; we of natural, which doth not hinder but that one and the same person may in both bear a principal sway. [\ T ext: For Book 3: The works of . . . Mr. Richard Hooker, 3 vols., ed. John Keble, rev. R. W. Church and F. Paget, 7th ed. (1888; repr. Hildersheim, 1977). For Book 8: Of the lavves of ecclesiasticall politie the sixth and eighth books (London, 1648) (Wing H2635A). Corrected against Hooker, FLE.

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PREDESTINATION

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WILLIAM PERKINS (1558–­1602)

A golden chain, or the description of theology

Perkins grew up in Warwickshire, presumably in comfortable circumstances, since he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1577 as a paying student. Later stories, perhaps apocryphal, depict him as a wild youth. At some point, however, he came under the influence of Laurence Chaderton, a leading puritan scholar and preacher who had been a fellow at Christ’s College until marriage forced his resignation c. 1578. Yet Chaderton remained at Cambridge (he would become the first master of Emmanuel in 1584), where he and Perkins became lifelong friends. Perkins received his BA in 1581, his MA in 1584. Soon thereafter he was elected a fellow of Christ’s College and appointed lecturer at the nearby Great St. Andrewes, where he proved an immensely popular preacher. He resigned his fellowship c. 1595 in order to marry; he retained the lectureship until his death. The Elizabethan Christ’s was a “renowned seminary for the training of Puritan ministers,” but also rife with nonconformity and presbyterian unrest (Bondos-­Greene 198–­200). Like other moderate puritans, Perkins resisted the allure of the conventicle, but preserved ties to the presbyterian insurgency throughout his tenure at Christ’s College. In 1587 he had a brush with serious trouble when, having preached against kneeling at Communion, he was cited before the vice-­chancellor. He kept a low profile thereafter, but the epistle to the Christian reader that opens A golden chain, dated “the year of the last patience of {the} saints,” seems a hostile reference to Whitgift’s ongoing anti-­presbyterian campaign. Between 1590, when Perkins published his first theological treatise, and his death twelve years later, Perkins had seven children and wrote approximately forty-­four separate works, many of which saw multiple reprintings in multiple languages. Armilla aurea, revised and enlarged at least twice, went through fifteen editions in Latin and English, within twenty years. Between 1590 and 1618 a quarter of the books printed in Cambridge were Perkins’ works. Modern assessments view him as “perhaps the most eminent English Reformed theologian” and “doubtless the most influential English theologian” 287



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of the period.1 As a preacher, tutor, and spiritual advisor, he had a profound impact on a generation of Cambridge students, including many celebrated Jacobean Calvinist divines. [\

Predestination is by no means a specifically Reformed concern. Most theologies in the West since Augustine affirm some version of divine predestination.2 In the sixteenth century, internal disputes over predestination roiled Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Churches alike. For most of the Middle Ages, however, predestination, although treated in scholastic summae, remained a side issue. Nor was it central to the early Reformation; prior to 1550, most Protestant confessions do not even mention it.3 Thereafter it quickly moved to the front and center of Reformed theology both in England and elsewhere for about a century. The 1590s, when Perkins is writing, represents the high-­water mark of English predestinarianism, the sudden death of the Lambeth articles in 1595 , a harbinger of what proved to be its long withdrawing roar.4 Predestination moved front and center during the second half of the sixteenth century because it was over this issue that Protestant unity fractured into hostile Lutheran and Reformed blocs.5 This rift haunts Perkins’ treatise: mentioned in the opening epistle, woven into the defense of absolute reprobation in chapter 52. In the early 1590s, when Perkins wrote the initial versions of A golden chain,6 the center of the conflict lay five hundred miles east of the Channel. However, by 1594, the year Samuel Harsnett assailed the fundamental teachings of A golden chain from Paul’s Cross’ celebrated outdoor pulpit , the night birds of discord had come home, not to roost, but for a cockfight. In 1595 William Barret’s “Lutheran” challenge sermon brought the bellum theologicum to Cambridge, where, in response, the Heads swiftly erected the defensive Great Wall of Orthodoxy known as the Lambeth articles, although to little avail. By the early seventeenth century, the stance that Perkins and his contemporaries term “Lutheran”—­no absolute divine decree of reprobation; affirmation of God’s universal saving will—­gets relabeled “Arminianism”; under this name it elicited sufficient hostility, fear, and loathing to fracture Protestant unity west of the Channel as well. Perkins’ version of Reformed predestinarianism, which makes the decree of reprobation logically prior to the Fall (supralapsarianism) and holds that Christ died only for the elect (limited Atonement), is a particularly strong one and, as Sean Hughes points out, should not, as it often is, be equated with English Calvinism tout court (231). Yet, 1 These assessments, the first by Richard Muller, the other by Carl Trueman, are quoted in Moore, “Predestination.” 2 See Sean Hughes, “The problem of ‘Calvinism’: English theologies of predestination c. 1580–­1630,” in Belief and practice in Reformation England, ed. Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot, 1998), 245. 3 E.g., the Augsburg Confession of 1530, the Genevan Confession of 1536, the Swiss Confession of 1536, the Saxon Confession of 1551 (Porter 338; Copinger 82) 4 The concluding phrase is from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” 5 Bullinger, Melanchthon, and Calvin are not far apart in their teaching on the Eucharist. The 1586 Reformed-­Lutheran Colloquy of Montbéliard (Mömpelgart) ended in disaster principally over the issue of predestination. 6 I.e., of Armilla aurea; Perkins himself wrote in Latin; the English version is a translation.

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although in the big pictures Hughes is surely right to see Perkins-­style supralapsarianism as a minority view, in the second half of the sixteenth century it was the stated view of the leading Calvinists on the Continent and also “the fashionable majority position” among Elizabethan theologians, especially at Cambridge (Moore 29; Wallace 25). Moreover, although seventeenth-­century Reformed theologies retreat from supralapsarianism and the limited Atonement, the thesis at the heart of Perkins’ tract was not a passing fashion but, as Hughes also notes, the sole distinctive Reformed contribution to the West’s theologies of predestination—­the key feature, that is, differentiating the predestinarianism of Beza and Perkins from that of Aquinas—­a feature that Hughes, tipping his hat to Perkins, terms the “golden chain,” the feature that makes predestination the basis of assurance . As Perkins’ final chapter makes clear, the “application” of predestination—­its point and human significance—­has everything to do with assurance. Those who, upon self-­ examination, find that they indeed are fully persuaded “that they are the children of God” can thereby be certain that this is the case, because such faith justifies; and those whom God justifies, he also will glorify. Hence the reprobate can never attain this full persuasion. But to make assurance depend on being fully persuaded of one’s election set the bar very high, as Calvinist ministers since Greenham well knew; and so Perkins then posits a second ground of assurance for those in whom “the testimony of God’s Spirit be not so powerful.” This second ground he calls “sanctification,” but it has nothing to do with good works, since, as he himself notes, reprobates can attain an “outward holiness of life” . Perkins’ sanctification is not holy living but anguish over one’s sins and failings, a desire to believe, a longing for grace, and the like. Having made the desire to believe (rather than full persuasion) grounds for assurance, he then lowers the bar a second time to allow any amount of faith, however small, be enough to dispel all “doubt of their election” . Such lowering of the bar makes obvious pastoral sense, but it also seems to follow from the golden chain, for if faith no greater than “a grain of mustard seed . . . is sufficient to engraft . . . into Christ,” and all so engrafted will be saved, then even this weak faith suffices for assurance. However, as Kendall pointed out in his seminal Calvin and English Calvinism, Perkins’ notion of temporary faith throws out the baby and bathwater together. Perkins holds that “the elect alone, and all they that are elect” will at some point attain full assurance of “election in Christ to eternal life” , whereas “the reprobate doth confusedly believe the promises of God made in Christ”: that is, “he believeth that some shall be saved, but he believeth not that he himself particularly shall be saved; because he, being content with a general faith, doth never apply the promises of God to himself” . Perkins needs the category of “temporary faith” to account for backsliders, but it also seems designed to bar heaven against Catholics, Lutherans, and old-­fashioned parishioners like Dent’s Asunetus : that is, to bar it against all who do not share the Reformed view that saving faith means believing in one’s own salvation. Hence, like a good Catholic, Lutheran, etc., the reprobate with an ineffectual calling “desireth to be saved,” has compunction for sin, and so forth . The only experience unique to the elect is full assurance of their election, which means that Perkins cannot lower the bar as he does in the final chapter of A golden chain. It may be that one 289



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who desires to be saved is among the elect, but the desire itself cannot be grounds for assurance, since a reprobate can also desire this. Perkins does not acknowledge the impasse;7 the final chapter seems to hold that merely the desire to believe is grounds for assurance. He cannot acknowledge that the imperfect faith of most Christians does not assure them of anything, given that one of the chief claims made by sixteenth-­century Reformers was that, unlike the “popish doctrine of doubtfulness of our salvation,” their doctrine offered comfort to (in Calvin’s words) “poor consciences that seek steadfast assurance of eternal life.” For both polemical and pastoral reasons, at critical junctures Perkins has to lower the bar, ignoring for the moment his own teaching on the reprobate’s temporary faith. [\ Sources: ODNB (q.v., William Perkins, John Copcot); Stephen Bondos-­Greene, “The end of an era: Cambridge puritanism and the Christ’s College election of 1609,” The Historical Journal 25, no. 1 (1982): 197–­208; Walter Copinger. A treatise on predestination, election, and grace (London, 1889); “The problem of ‘Calvinism’: English theologies of predestination c. 1580–­1630,” in Belief and practice in Reformation England, ed. Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot, 1998), 245; Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism; Lake, Moderate puritans; Jonathan Moore, “Predestination and evangelism in the life and thought of William Perkins,” available at evangelical-library.org.uk/lectures/evangelical-library-lecture-2008 -william-perkins/ (accessed June 18, 2014); Porter, Reformation; Dewey Wallace, Puritans and predestination: grace in English Protestant theology, 1525–­1695 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982).

7 As Kendall notes, Perkins cannot tell those who seek assurance to look to Christ, because the doctrine of the limited Atonement entails that Christ died only for the elect; one has to be sure of his/her own election before he/she can claim Christ as his/her savior (32, 75).

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A golden chain, or the description of theology

15911

Christian reader, there are at this day four several opinions of the order of God’s divine predestination. The first is of the old and new Pelagians, who place the cause of God’s predestination in man, in that they hold that God did ordain men either to life or death according as he did foresee that they would by their natural free will either reject or receive grace offered. The second, of them, who (of some) are termed Lutherans, which teach that God, foreseeing how all mankind, being shut up under unbelief, would therefore reject grace offered, did hereupon purpose to choose some to salvation of his mere mercy, without any respect of their faith or good works, and the rest to reject, being moved to do this because he did eternally foresee that they would reject his grace offered them in the Gospel. The third, of semi-­pelagian Papists, which ascribe God’s predestination partly to mercy and partly to men’s foreseen preparations and meritorious works. The fourth, of such as teach that the cause of the execution of God’s predestination is his mercy in Christ, in them which are saved; and in them which perish, the fall and corruption of man; yet so, as that the decree and eternal counsel of God concerning them both hath not any cause beside his will and pleasure.2 Of these four opinions, the three former I have labored to oppugn as erroneous, and to maintain the last, as being a truth which will bear weight in the balance of the Sanctuary. . . . 1 {Each of Perkins’ theological points is followed by a long conga line of proof texts, most of which have been omitted (their omission noted by ellipses).} 2 {Contrast with Hooker, Laws 1.2.4–­5: “The Lord hath made all things for his own sake. Not that any thing is made to be beneficial unto him, but all things for him to show beneficence and grace in them. . . . They err therefore who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides his will . . . inasmuch as he worketh all things . . . not only according to his own will, but the counsel of his own will. And whatsoever is done with counsel or wise resolution hath of necessity some reason why it should be done.”}

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The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ grant that according to the riches of his glory, thou mayst be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in thy heart by faith, to the end that thou being rooted and grounded in love, mayst be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height thereof; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that thou mayst be filled with all fullness of God. Amen. Farewell. April 18, the year of the last patience of {the} saints, 1591. Thine in Christ Jesus, William Perkins ‡

CHAPTER 10: Of the fall of angels The fall is a revolting of the reasonable creature from obedience to sin. Sin is the corruption, or rather deprivation, of the first integrity. More plainly, it is a falling or turning from God, binding the offender by the course of God’s justice to undergo the punishment. The fall was effected on this manner. First, God created his reasonable creatures good indeed, but withal changeable. . . . Secondly, God tried their obedience in those things about which they were conversant. . . . Thirdly, in this trial God doth not assist them with new grace to stand, but for just causes forsaketh them. Lastly, after God hath forsaken them and left them to themselves, they fall quite from God, no otherwise than when a man staying up a staff from the ground, it standeth upright, but if he never so little withdraw his hand, it falleth of itself. . . .

CHAPTER 11: Of man’s fall and disobedience Adam’s fall was his willing revolting to disobedience by eating the forbidden fruit. In Adam’s fall we may note the manner, greatness, and fruit of it. I. The manner of Adam’s fall was on this sort. First, the devil, having immediately before fallen himself, insinuateth unto our first parents that both the punishment for eating the forbidden fruit was uncertain and that God was not true in his word unto them. Secondly, by his legerdemain he blinded the eyes of their understanding. Thirdly, being thus blinded, they begin to distrust God & to doubt of God’s favor. Fourthly, they, thus doubting, are moved to behold the forbidden fruit. Fifthly, they no sooner see the beauty thereof but they desire it. Sixthly, that they may satisfy their desire, they eat of the fruit, which by the hands of the woman was taken from the tree, by which act they become utterly disloyal to God. . . . Thus, without constraint, they willingly fall from their integrity, God upon just causes leaving them to themselves and freely suffered them to fall. For we must not think that man’s fall was either by chance, or God not knowing it, or barely winking at it, or by his bare permission, or against his will; but rather miraculously: not without the will of God, but yet without all approbation of it. . . . 292



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CHAPTER 12: Of original sin3 Out of the former transgression ariseth another, namely, original sin, which is corruption engendered in our first conception, whereby every faculty of soul and body is prone and disposed to evil. . . . . . . . . . For as Adam received the image of God both for himself and others, so did he lose it from himself and others. That we may the better know original sin in the several faculties of man’s nature, three circumstances must be considered: 1. How much of God’s image we yet retain. 2. How much sin man received from Adam. 3. The increase thereof afterward. I. In the mind. The remnant of God’s image is certain motions concerning good & evil: as, that there is a God, and that the same God punisheth transgressions; that there is an everlasting life; that we must reverence our superiors and not harm our neighbor. But even these motions, they are both several and corrupt, and have none other use but to bereave man of all excuse before God’s judgment seat. . . . Men’s minds received from Adam 1. Ignorance: namely, a want, or rather a deprivation, of knowledge in the things of God, whether they concern his sincere worship or eternal happiness. . . . II. Impotency, whereby the mind of itself is unable to understand spiritual things, though they be taught. . . . III. Vanity, in that the mind thinketh falsehood truth, and truth falsehood. . . . IV. A natural inclination only to conceive & devise the thing which is evil. . . . . . . The increase of sin in the understanding, is I. a reprobate sense, when God withdraweth the light of nature. . . . The remnant of God’s image in the conscience is an observing and watchful power, like the eye of a keeper, reserved in man partly to reprove and partly to repress the unbridled course of his affections. . . . That which the conscience hath received of Adam is the impureness thereof. . . . This impurity hath three effects. The first is to excuse sin: as, if a man serve God outwardly, he will excuse and cloak his inward impiety. . . . Again it excuseth intents not warranted in God’s word. 1 Chro. 13:9, When they came to the threshing floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the Ark, for the ox did shake it. The second is to accuse, and terrify for doing good. This we may see in superstitious idolaters, who are grieved when they omit to perform counterfeit and idolatrous worship to their gods. . . . The third is to accuse and terrify for sin. . . . Though the conscience shall accuse a man truly, yet that will not argue any holiness in it. Which appeareth in that Adam in his innocency had a God, yet no accusing conscience. . . . In the will, the remnant of God’s image is a free choice. First, in every natural action belonging to each living creature: as to nourish, to engender, to move, to perceive. Secondly, in every human action: that is, such as belong to all men. And therefore man hath {This is what Reformed theology means by the “total depravity” of fallen man; note that the emphasis falls almost wholly on the perversion of the higher faculties, not on bodily desire.} 3

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free will in outward actions, whether they concern manners,4 a family, or the commonwealth, albeit, both in the choice and refusal of them, it be very weak. . . . The will received: I. An impotency whereby it cannot will, or so much as lust after, that which is indeed good: that is, which may please & be acceptable to God. . . . II. An inward rebellion whereby it utterly abhorreth that which is good, desiring and willing that alone which is evil. By this it appeareth that the will is no agent but a mere patient in the first act of conversion to God, and that by itself it can neither begin that conversion or any other inward and sound obedience due to God’s Law. . . .

CHAPTER 13: Of actual sin After original sin in Adam’s posterity, actual transgression taketh place. It is either inward or outward. Inward is of the mind, will, and affection. The actual sin of the mind is the evil thought or intent thereof, contrary to God’s law. Examples of evil thoughts, God (the only knower of the heart) hath in divers places set down in his word. I. That there is no God. . . . II. That there is neither providence nor presence of God in the world. . . . III. It imagineth safeguard to itself from all perils. . . . IIII. It esteemeth itself more excellent than others. . . . VI. To think uncharitably and maliciously of such as serve God sincerely. . . . VIII. That the pains of hell may be eschewed. . . . Many carnal men pretend their good meaning, but when God openeth their eyes, they shall see these rebellious thoughts rising in their minds as sparkles out of a chimney. The actual sin of both will and affections is every wicked motion, inclination, and desire. Gal. 5:17, The flesh lusteth against the spirit.5 An actual outward sin is that, to the committing whereof, the members of the body do, together with the faculties of the soul, concur. Such sins as these are infinite. . . . . . .

CHAPTER 15: Of election, and of Jesus Christ the foundation thereof Predestination hath two parts: election and reprobation. 1 Thes. 5:9, God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by the means of our Lord Jesus Christ. Election is God’s decree whereby, on his own free will, he hath ordained certain men to salvation, to the praise of the glory of his grace. . . . This decree is that book of life wherein are written the names of the elect. . . . The execution of this decree is an action by which God, even as he purposed with himself, worketh all those things which he decreed for the salvation of the elect. For they whom God elected to this end, that they should inherit eternal life, were also elected to those subordinate means whereby, as by steps, they might attain this end, and without which it were impossible to obtain it. Rom. 8:29-­30, Those which he knew before, he also 4 {“Manners” translates the Latin “moralibus”; it is also clear in the Latin that “of them” refers to “outward actions.”} 5 {Pre-­Reformation orthodoxy held that only voluntary acts could be sinful; Perkins, however, follows Luther and Calvin in breaking this link between sin and consent.}

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predestinate to be made like the image of his Son, that he might be the first born amongst many brethren; moreover whom he predestinate, them he called; whom he called, them he justified; and whom he justified, them also he glorified. . . . . . .

CHAPTER 18: Of Christ’s office . . .

Satisfaction is that whereby Christ is a full propitiation to his Father for the elect . . . Christ satisfied God’s anger for man’s offence:6 according to his humanity, by performing perfect obedience to the will of God; according to his deity, by ministering such especial dignity to his perfect obedience as was both of full merit and efficacy before God for the salvation of the elect. . . . Satisfaction comprehendeth his passion and fulfilling the Law. His passion is the first part of satisfaction, by which he, he having undergone the punishment of sin, satisfied God’s justice and appeased his anger for the sins of the faithful. His passion was on this manner. Somewhat before his death, partly fear arising from a sense of God’s wrath imminent upon him, partly grief possessing, as it were, each part of him, so disturbed his sacred mind that inwardly for a while it stroke into him a strange kind of astonishment, or rather oblivion of his duty imposed upon him; and outwardly made him pray unto his Father (if he would) to remove that cup from him, the which he did express with no small cry, many tears, and a bloody sweat trickling from his body unto the ground. But when he came again unto himself, he freely yielded himself unto his Father to satisfy upon the cross for the transgression of man. After this his agony was overpassed, by Judas his treachery Christ is apprehended. . . . This innocent thus condemned is pitifully scourged, crowned with thorns, scoffed, spitted at, spitefully adjudged to the death of the cross on which his hands and feet are fastened with nails. Here stayed not his passions, but after all these he became accursed to God the Father; that is, God poured upon him, being thus innocent, such a sea of his wrath as was equiualent to the sins of the whole world. He now being under this curse, through the sense and feeling of this strange terror, complaineth to his Father that he is forsaken; who notwithstanding, encountering then with Satan and his angels, did utterly vanquish and overcome them. When this was ended, his heart was pierced with a spear till the blood gushed out from his sides, & he gave up the ghost, and commended his spirit to his Father’s protection, the which immediately went into paradise.7 His body, whereof not one bone was broken, was buried and three days was ignominiously captivated of death. ‡

CHAPTER 32: Of the sacraments Thus much of the preaching of the word. Now follow the appendents to the same: namely, the sacraments. {This is the distinctive Reformed theory of the Atonement, usually known as “penal satisfaction.”} {Perkins here follows Calvin’s teaching, according to which Christ did not literally descend into hell following the Crucifixion but rather on the Cross experienced the full wrath of God, i.e., “hell.” See Form of prayers .} 6 7

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A sacrament is that whereby Christ and his saving graces are by certain external rites signified, exhibited, and sealed to a Christian man. Rom. 4:11, He received the sign of circumcision as the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had when he was uncircumcised. . . . We must not therefore surmise that there is any inherent force or efficacy of sanctifying in the visible and external sign of the sacrament as the bath waters have to cure diseases; for the power of sanctification is appropriate only to the Holy Ghost, and Christ hath ordained the sign to signify grace, not to confer it. ‡

CHAPTER 52: Of the decree of reprobation Thus much shall suffice for the decree of election. Now followeth the decree of reprobation, whereby God in his just judgment hath determined eternally to reject some, to the praise of his justice. . . . Some, fearing lest they should make God an unjust and cruel God, refer this word predestination only to the elect; as for the reprobate, they hold that God doth not predestinate them but only foreknow that they should be condemned. Of this mind is Heming{sen} . . . and Jacobus Andreas. These men turn the causes of salvation and damnation upside down, following this order: God’s decree, whereby he would that all men should be saved in Christ The fall of Adam, not preordained of God but only foreknown. Predestination, whereby God purposed with himself to justify and perpetually to glorify certain of Adam’s posterity, freely of his own mercy, not by their faith or works which he foresaw.

God’s foreknowledge of man’s incredulity and contumacy, whereby the rest of Adam’s posterity refuse that grace which is offered in the Gospel. The decree of reprobation, whereby God, foreknowing their contumacy, adjudgeth them to eternal damnation

A universal vocation, whereby grace & salvation is offered to all men without exception. But this description halteth right down, as may be proved by many reasons. First, it is untrue that God would have all men saved in Christ. For no man can be said to be elected, if God will that all men should be elected in Christ. For election is a singling out of some from others. . . . . . . Secondly, it is false that God will have none damned. For seeing that some men are condemned, it must needs be either with his will or without his will. If without his will, then violence shall be offered to the will of God, something being done against it, which is impious once to think. If with it, God must needs change his mind, which cannot be. Neither is there any cause why we should think that God is an accepter of persons if so be he ordain any to condemnation, because he was not moved hereunto by any inherent 296



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circumstance of any man’s person, neither oweth he ought to any man, and may do with his own that which seemeth good unto him. Neither must any think that hereby God hateth his creature; for he decreed to destroy his workmanship, not because he hated it, but upon just causes known to him he ordained it to be subject to his hatred. And God doth not actually hate anything for ought but sin. . . . If any oppose against this the place of Mal. 2:10, that God is the Father of all, they must consider that it is to be understood of God’s Church: out of which, all the corrupt posterity of Adam are the sons of wrath and children of Satan. . . . Last of all, this reason must not be urged, that God created any to the end he might destroy them. For the end of every man’s creation is the glory of God, to the manifestation whereof the wicked were ordained. Prov. 16:4. Thirdly, whereas they say that God did only foreknow and not from eternity decree the fall of Adam, it is most impious. For there is not the very least thing in nature but it cometh to pass by God’s decree. . . . Yea, those actions which are sin, the Lord hath in his counsel determined of them. . . . . . . Last of all, it is not true that all men are called to salvation, and that therefore that grace which is in Christ is offered to all. . . .

CHAPTER 53: Concerning the execution of the decree of reprobation In the execution of this decree there is to be considered the foundation or beginning, and the degrees or proceeding thereof. The foundation of executing the decree of reprobation is the fall of Adam, by which fall he was subject both to sin & damnation. . . . Here we must note that God hath so decreed to condemn some as that, notwithstanding, all the fault and guilt of condemnation remaineth in the men only. Further, whom God rejecteth to condemnation, those he hateth; this hatred of God is whereby he detesteth & abhorreth the reprobate when he is fallen into sin, for the same sin. And this hatred which God hath to man comes by the fall of Adam, and it is neither an antecedent or a cause of God’s decree, but only a consequent and followeth the decree. Reprobates are either infants or men of riper age. In reprobate infants, the execution of God’s decree is this: as soon as they are born, for the guilt of original and natural sin, being left in God’s secret judgment unto themselves, they dying are rejected of God for ever. . . . Reprobates of riper age are of 2 sorts: they that are called (namely, by an uneffectual calling) and they that are not called. In the reprobates which are called, the execution of the decree of reprobation hath 3 degrees: to wit, an acknowledgement of God’s calling, a falling away again, and condemnation. The acknowledgement of God’s calling is whereby the reprobates for a time do subject themselves to the calling of God, which calling is wrought by the preaching of the word. Matth. 22:14, For many are called, but few are chosen. And of this calling there are five other degrees. The first is an enlightening of their minds, whereby they are instructed of the Holy Ghost to the understanding and knowledge of the word. . . . The second is a certain 297



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penitency, whereby the reprobate, I. Doth know his sin. II. Is pricked with the feeling of God’s wrath for sin. III. Is grieved for the punishment of sin. IIII. Doth confess his sin. V. Acknowledgeth God to be just in punishing sin. VI. Desireth to be saved. VII. Promiseth repentance in his misery or affliction, in these words, I will sin no more. . . . The third degree is a temporary faith, whereby the reprobate doth confusedly believe the promises of God made in Christ; I say confusedly, because he believeth that some shall be saved, but he believeth not that he himself particularly shall be saved; because he, being content with a general faith, doth never apply the promises of God to himself; neither doth he so much as conceive any purpose, desire, or endeavor to apply the same, or any wrestling or striving against security or carelessness and distrust. . . . The fourth is a tasting of heavenly gifts: as of justification and of sanctification and of the virtues of the world to come. This tasting is verily a sense in the hearts of the reprobates whereby they do perceive and feel the excellency of God’s benefits, notwithstanding they do not enjoy the same. For it is one thing to taste of dainties at a banquet, & another thing to feed & to be nourished thereby. . . . The fifth degree is the outward holiness of life for a time: under which is comprehended the zeal in the profession of religion, a reverence and fear towards God’s ministers, and amendment of life in many things. . . . The second degree of the execution of God’s counsel of reprobation, in men of ripe age which are called, is a falling away again, which for the most part is effected and wrought after this manner. First, the reprobate is deceived by some sin. Secondly, his heart is hardened by the same sin. Thirdly, his heart being hardened, it becometh wicked and perverse. Fourthly, then followeth his incredulity and unbelief, whereby he consenteth not to God’s word when he hath heard & known it. Fifthly, an apostasy or falling away from faith in Christ doth immediately follow this unbelief. . . . This apostasy is sometimes sin against the Holy Ghost, which is when any man willingly through obstinate malice doth speak blasphemy against Christ and his divine truth which he hath certainly known. This obstinacy of the heart ariseth from the old and engrafted affections, hatred, envy, and malice directly against God himself and Christ. It hath his name not because it is committed against the person of the Holy Spirit, but because it is done against the gift of the Holy Ghost, namely, illumination. This cannot be forgiven because it excludeth all faith and repentance. . . .8 8 {The 1600 edition is considerably fuller: “The efficient cause of it . . . is a set & obstinate malice against God and against his Christ. Therefore when a man doth in the time of persecution, either for fear or rashly, deny Christ, he doth not commit this sin . . . as may appear by the example of Peter who denied Christ. . . . Neither doth he which persecuteth Christ and his Church upon ignorance fall into this sin. . . . Many of the Jews crucified our Savior Christ, who afterward, because they committed that grievous fact upon ignorance, repenting at Peter’s sermon, they did obtain remission of their sins. . . . For the malice of this sin is directed against the very majesty of God himself, and against Christ. . . . Therefore this sin doth directly respect the first table of the moral law, and is not some particular slipping aside . . . such as are some doubtings concerning God or of the truth of the Scriptures or of Christ, &c., but it is a general defection & apostasy from God, and that totally. . . . This sin is found in none at all but such as have been enlightened by the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good gift of God. . . . Neither is it in him a bare cogitation alone but . . . such a blasphemy against God as proceedeth from a malicious and obstinate heart. . . . The elect cannot commit this sin, and therefore they who feel in themselves a sure testimony of their election need never to despair; nay, this sin is not in every reprobate; for many of them die before they have this illumination by God’s Spirit. . . . This sin cannot be forgiven . . . because after a man hath once committed this sin, it is impossible for him to repent. For the gift of repentance proceedeth from the Holy Ghost, and the Holy

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After apostasy followeth pollution, which is the very fullness of all iniquity, altogether contrary to sanctification. . . . The third degree is damnation, whereby the reprobates are delivered up to eternal punishment. . . . The execution of the degree of reprobation in infidels which are not called, is this. First, they have by nature ignorance and vanity of mind. After that followeth hardness of heart, whereby they become void of all sorrow for their sins. Then cometh a reprobate sense, which is when the natural light of reason and of the judgment of good and evil is extinguished. Afterward when the heart ceaseth to sorrow, then ariseth a committing of sin with greediness. Then cometh pollution, which is the fullness of sin. Lastly, a just reward is given to all these: to wit, fearful condemnation. . . .

CHAPTER 54: Of the state and condition of the reprobates when they are dead The death of the reprobate is a separation of the body and the soul; of the body, that for a time it may lie dead in the earth; of the soul, that it may feel the torments of hell, even until the time of the Last Judgment, at which time the whole man shall be cast into the most terrible and fearful fire of hell. . . . . . . A corollary

And this is the full execution of God’s decree of reprobation, whereby appeareth the great justice of God in punishing sin; from whence also cometh God’s glory, which he propoundeth to himself as the last and chiefest end in all these things. Therefore let every Christian propound the same end unto himself. . . . . . .

CHAPTER 57: Of the application of predestination The right applying of predestination to the persons of men is very necessary, and it hath two parts. The first is the judgment of particular predestination, and the second is the use of it. The judgment and discerning of a man’s own predestination is to be performed by means of these rules which follow. I. The elect alone, and all they that are elect, not only may be, but also, in God’s good time, are sure of election in Christ to eternal life. 1 Cor. 2:12, 2 Cor. 13:5. II. They have not this knowledge from the first causes of election, but rather from the last effects thereof; and they are especially two: the testimony of God’s Spirit and the works of sanctification. 2 Pet. 1:10, Rom. 8:16. III. If any doubt of this testimony, it will appear unto them whether it come from the Spirit of God or their own carnal presumption, first, by a full persuasion which they Ghost remaineth in us through Christ apprehended by faith; now no man doth apprehend Christ that doth maliciously despise and contemn him. . . . It is very hard to know when a man committeth this sin because the root thereof (namely, set malice) lurketh inwardly in the heart and is not so easily discerned.”}

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shall have; for the Holy Ghost will not barely say it, but persuadeth such that they are the children of God, the which the flesh cannot in any wise do. Secondly, by the manner of persuasion: for the Holy Ghost draweth not reasons from the works or worthiness of man, but from God’s favor and love; and this kind of persuasion is far different from that kind which Satan useth. Thirdly, by the effects of that testimony. For if the persuasion arise from presumption, it is a dead persuasion; but contrarily, it is most lively and stirring if it come from the Holy Ghost. For such as are persuaded that they are elected and adopted children of God, they will love God, they will trust in him, and they will call upon him with their whole heart. IV. If the testimony of God’s Spirit be not so powerful in the elect, then may they judge of their election by that other effect of the Holy Ghost: namely, sanctification—­like as we use to judge by heat that there is fire when we cannot see the flame itself. V. And of all the effects of sanctification, these are most notable. I. To feel our wants, & in the bitterness of heart, to bewail the offence of God in every sin. II. To strive against the flesh; that is, to resist & hate the ungodly motions thereof, & with grief to think them burthenous & troublesome. III. To desire earnestly and vehemently the grace of God & merit of Christ to obtain eternal life. IIII. When it is obtained, to account it a most precious jewel. Phil. 3:8. V. To love the minister of God’s word in that he is a minister, & a Christian in that he is a Christian; and for that cause, if need require, to be ready to spend our blood with them. . . . VI. To call upon God earnestly & with tears. VII. To desire & love Christ’s Coming and the Day of Judgment, that an end may be made of the days of sin. VIII. To fly all occasions of sin and seriously to endeavor to come to newness of life. IX. To persevere in these things to the last gasp of life. Luther hath a good sentence for this purpose, He that will serve God, must (saith he) believe that which cannot be seen, hope for that which is deferred, & love God when he showeth himself an enemy, and thus remain to the end. Now, if so be all the effects of the Spirit are very feeble in the godly, they must know this, that God trieth them, yet so as they must not therewith be dismayed, because it is most sure that if they have faith but as much as a grain of mustard seed and as weak as a young infant is, it is sufficient to engraft them into Christ; & therefore we must not doubt of their election because they see their faith feeble & the effects of the Holy Ghost faint within them. VI. Neither must he that as yet hath not felt in his heart any of these effects presently conclude that he is a reprobate; but let him rather use the word of God and the sacraments, that he may have an inward sense of the power of Christ drawing him unto him, and an assurance of his redemption by Christ’s death and passion. VII. No man may peremptorily set down that he or any other is a reprobate. For God doth oftentimes prefer those which did seem to be most of all estranged from his favor to be in his kingdom, above those who in man’s judgment were the children of the kingdom. Hence is it that Christ saith, the publicans and harlots go before you; and, many an one is called at the eleventh hour, as appeareth by that notable example of the thief upon the cross.

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T ext: A golden chain, or the description of theology containing the order of the causes of salvation and damnation, according to God’s word. . . . Written in Latin by William Perkins, and translated by another (London, 1591) (NSTC 19657). Checked against A golden chaine. . . . (Cambridge, 1600); and Armilla aurea id est, theologiae descriptio mirandam feriem causarum & salutis & damnationis iuxta verbum Dei proponens (Cambridge, 1592).

301

SAMUEL HARSNETT (bap. 1561–­1631)

A sermon preached at S. Paul’s Cross

Harsnett came from godly Colchester stock, both parents having been indicted for heresy under Mary.1 His father was a chandler turned baker, but a wealthy lawyer from nearby Dedham made it possible for Harsnett to matriculate at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1576. He transferred to Pembroke ca. 1579, where he took his BA in 1581, followed by an MA in 1584.2 He took holy orders around the same time, but in 1586 was suspended for nonconformity—­he refused to wear the surplice—­and may even have gone to prison. He then returned to Colchester, the heartland of the Elizabethan puritan movement, to become its schoolmaster. Two years later, in October of 1588, he resigned, his letter explaining that it had pleased God, “whose pleasure is good, to change the thoughts of my heart, and to dispose of my purposes, besides my purpose, unto the study of divinity.” He returned to Pembroke only to reenter the historical record in 1594, when, from the pulpit of Paul’s Cross, he delivered “the most trenchant denunciation of Calvinist doctrine so far publicly heard under Elizabeth.” The chronology here is of some significance. When the sermon was first published in 1658, the title page gave the date as 1584. Given that Harsnett’s career over the following decade was decidedly unimpressive, the widely drawn inference was that he had been thrust out into the cold for attacking the Calvinist consensus,3 although, having paid his dues, after 1595 his fortunes improved. By that point, Francis Bacon had become both a friend and patron, and shortly after Bancroft was made bishop of London in 1597, Harsnett received the first in a series of preferments, all but one in Bancroft’s gift. The import of this sudden eminence looks quite different now that we know Harsnett preached not in 1584 but 1594, just six months before William Barrett’s Cambridge sermon precipitated the Lambeth articles . Since his fortunes improved only a 1 All the material relating to Harsnett’s life through 1595 comes from Brownlow 39–­48, which corrects the ODNB on a series of crucial matters. 2 His DD was by special grace in 1606, when he was already master of the College. 3 See Shuger, “Protesting,” 622n162.

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year later, it is clear that Harsnett did not suffer for his sermon. Moreover, given that Lancelot Andrewes—­like Harsnett, a Pembroke man—­a lso preached a very public anti-­ predestinarian sermon in 1594, it now appears that the pushback against Calvinist orthodoxy involved not only a couple of relative obscure Cambridge dons, but men “closely aligned with centers of ecclesiastical power around Whitgift, Bancroft and the court” (Lake 109). Yet Harnett years later recalled that after this sermon “of predestination negativé,” he was “checked” by Whitgift “and commanded to preach no more of it.”4 Whitgift’s own position at the time was probably closest to that of Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger, whose Decades (and not Calvin’s Institutes) he granted “a quasi-­authoritative position” in 1586.5 Bullinger disliked speculation regarding “what God has decreed before all eternity,” almost never mentioned reprobation, and maintained that no one was damned because of any “fatal necessity that proceeds from God’s will but because they willingly reject the grace of God.”6 Yet he confined his specific criticisms of Calvin’s theology to letters—­mostly letters to Calvin—and although his view of predestination seems close to the Lutheran one, when Lutherans and Calvinists clashed in Strasburg in the late 1550s, Bullinger—­whose Zurich, like all the Swiss cities, belonged to the Reformed tradition—­ reluctantly endorsed a predestinarian white paper in order to preserve a united Reformed front (White, 77–­78). On the Continent, the failure of the 1586 Montbéliard Colloquy left Protestantism bitterly divided into hostile Lutheran and Reformed camps, and fatally weakened in the face of a resurgent Catholicism. The gauntlet that Harsnett threw down had a similarly divisive potential, given that the sermon portrays Calvinism as more or less devil worship. Prior to 1594 Whitgift had embraced Bullinger’s reticence regarding the mysteries of predestination; thereafter, when faced with Whitaker’s hardline predestinarian riposte to the Lutheran challenge, he, like Bullinger, endorsed a document that satisfied the most orthodox of Calvinists—­yet one that Whitgift had had sufficiently revised in the interests of ambiguity that the anti-­Calvinist Peter Baro could claim its authority for his own views (see the Lambeth articles ). As for Harsnett: the Archbishop did not say he was in error, just that he should “preach no more of it”; and soon afterward Bancroft, Whitgift’s ally of long standing, took Harsnett under the wing of his patronage. His subsequent career belongs to the following era:7 by 1605 he had been chosen master of Pembroke, from whence he was raised to the episcopate in 1609. In 1628 he, together with John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, championed the Petition of Right in the House of Lords; later the same year Charles appointed him archbishop of York, where he served until his death in 1631. He seems to have been a consistent high-­church anti-­Calvinist, but not, strictly speaking, a Laudian. 4 Lords’ Journals, 19 May 1624, iii. 389 (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid =30422#s6 [accessed May 26, 2013]). 5 All unlicensed ministers were to provide themselves with the Bible and copy of Decades, and summarize a section of each weekly. See W. J. Torrance Kirby, The Zurich connection and Tudor political theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 7. 6 Venema 60, 67, 96–­98; White 79. 7 He is best known to Shakespeareans for his 1599 exposé of a fake exorcist (A discovery of the fraudulent practices of John Darel), scraps of which made their way into King Lear.

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The sermon opens by identifying the predestinarian position it targets as “a conceit among the Jews,” following the civility norm that forbade open censure of fellow ministers.8 After a striking, metaphor-­drenched prelude on God’s grandeur (which Dove’s counter-­sermon will echo and intensify), Harsnett turns to the issue of predestination by exploring what it means to say that humankind was created in the image of God. His answer centers not on the dignity of man as imago Dei but rather on God’s love for his image: both the image reflected in his Son and the human image of that divine Image.9 In so doing, Harsnett draws on a philosophical and theological tradition going back to Aristotle that sees love as the response to the reflection of oneself in another: a reflection that is not merely a coincidental likeness but one’s own image reflected back by the child one has nurtured, the young scholar one has taught, the artifact one has created. Parents, Aristotle observes, love their children and poets their poems, because “what a thing is potentially, that its work reveals in actuality”; we love what we conceive and create because these actualize, and thus reflect, our potential (Nich. Ethics 1167b–11­68a). Hooker, writing just a few years after Harsnett’s sermon, draws the theological corollary: as “all things . . . love their offspring as themselves are more or less contained in it,” so “when God had created all things, he looked upon them and loved them, because they were all as himself had made them” (Laws 5.56.3, 5.63.1).10 If, Harsnett argues, this is what it means to say that man is created in God’s image, then Calvinist predestination, which holds that God ordained the vast majority of the human race to eternal torment, is simply not possible. It makes no sense. God’s primary relation to humankind is that of Father, and fathers do not delight in the death of their sons. Moreover, Harsnett’s vision of humankind as mortal reflection of the divine Image, which places us within God’s extended family, closes up the ontological abyss between God and man implicit in the Calvinist analogy of potter and pot fundamental to its argument that God may do with us as he likes.11 Harsnett argues that God offers saving grace “effectually to all,” but that the offer can be refused; the damned are those who refused, and could have done otherwise. At points Harsnett edges close to the Roman Catholic and, later, Arminian affirmation of a cooperation or a “synergistic relationship between God and man in the effecting of salvation.”12 More often his sermon reflects the Lutheran position characteristic of Cambridge anti-­Calvinism in the 1590s, which held that all the initiative in salvation is on God’s side, although it may be resisted on ours.

Similarly Dove, in his counter-­sermon, does not name Harsnett but instead directs his attack against Samuel Huber, a Swiss Reformed pastor who sided with the Lutherans against Beza on the issue of predestination. 9 So John Donne, who might well have heard the sermon, later affirms that “God loves nothing more than the Image of himself in his Son, and than the image of his Son Christ Jesus in us” (Sermons, 10 vols., ed. George Potter and Evelyn Simpson [Berkeley, 1953–­1962], 9:2.854–­55). 10 See Shuger, Habits, 224–­27, 236–­39. 11 Dove softens the analogy by suddenly switching to an infralapsarian framework , but see Calvin’s “Articuli de praedestinatione,” quoted in the introduction . 12 Muller, 132; see also session 6, chap. 5 of the canons of the Council of Trent. 8

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Harsnett also rejects the standard Calvinist and Thomist distinction between effective and sufficient grace, according to which effective grace invariably results in salvation, whereas sufficient grace in some hypothetical sense could do so, but in fact and invariably does not; hence, the Molinists’ complaint that gratia sufficiens might more accurately be termed gratia insufficiens.13 Harsnett drops the category of sufficient grace: God offers effectual, albeit resistable, grace to all persons.14 The sermon thus insists on a person’s real, if negative, freedom to reject the outstretched hand; Harsnett’s aim, however, is not to defend human liberty but the truth of the angelic proclamation concerning God’s “good will towards man” (Luke 2:14). [\ Sources: ODNB; Frank Brownlow, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the devils of Denham (Cranbury, N.J., 1993); Peter Lake, “The ‘Anglican moment’? Richard Hooker and the ideological watershed of the 1590s,” in Anglicanism and the Western Christian tradition, ed. Stephen Platten (Norwich, 2003), 90–­121; Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek theological terms (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1985); J. Pohle, “Controversies on grace,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, at http://newadvent.org/cathen/06710a.htm (accessed October 31, 2012); Debora Shuger, Habits of thought in the English Renaissance: religion, politics, and the dominant culture (Berkeley, 1990); Shuger, “Protesting”; Nicholas Tyacke, “The rise of Arminianism reconsidered,” Past & Present 115 (1987): 201–­16; Cornelis Venema, Heinrich Bullinger and the doctrine of predestination (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2002).

Molinists, loosely speaking, are Roman Catholic Arminians (although the actual trajectory of influence goes the other way). Bellarmine, a Thomist, was the leading Jesuit theologian of the late sixteenth century. 14 The terminology at this point gets confusing, because what Harsnett means by “effectually” seems identical to what the Lambethani mean by “sufficiently”; see their commentary on article 7 of the Lambeth articles . 13

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SAMUEL HARSNETT

A sermon preached at S. Paul’s Cross

1594 (pub. 1658)

As I live (saith the Lord) I delight not in the death of the wicked

Ezekiel 33:11 There was a conceit among the Jews (as appeareth by the verse going before my text) that when they sinned, they sinned of necessity, so that they could not but sin; and so when Almighty God did send unto them his prophets early and late, calling and inciting them to repentance, they thought he did but dally and mock with them, for it was his pleasure they should sin and die therein. Almighty God was much offended with this their conceit, it being against his justice and fidelity both, and therefore bids his prophet here protest unto them, and bind it with an oath (no less than his life), that they did him wrong: As I live (saith the Lord) I do not delight in the death of the wicked. The text then {sic} I have in hand (right honorable, worshipful, and beloved) is a solemn protestation made by Almighty God in his own cause to clear himself of infidelity and injustice: that the Judge of this world doth not delight to see men sin, and then punish them with death because of their sin. As I live, saith the Lord, &c. The form of the protestation is in the nature of an oath: As I live, saith the Lord &c., and in it I consider these three things: 1. The oath itself that it pleased God to swear. 2. The manner of the oath he swears—­by his life: As I live, saith the Lord. 3. The matter of the protestation is an absolute negative made unto the Jews, avowing that it was all false they charged God withal: I do not delight in the death of the wicked. And in this negative, God doth avow five simple negatives, every one upon the credit of his oath: as, 1. I do not delight in death. 2. I delight not in the death of man. 3. I delight not in the death of a sinful man. 4. I delight not in the death of wicked sinful man. 5. I delight not in the death of any sinful man. Of these (by your patience) as God shall assist me. 306



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For the first: that the phrase of speech, As I live, is an oath, I show it plainly out of 1 Sam. 28:10, where it is said that Saul did swear, and he used no other words than these, As the Lord liveth. This form then of speech, As I live saith the Lord, is an oath by the life of the Lord. . . . Durum est (saith Vincentius) cum non tantum tribuamus Deo, quantum viro honesto: It’s hard when we will not give so much credit to God as we do to an honest man, for we will give credit to him upon his word, but we will not believe God though he swear. . . . There are two bonds (Heb. 6:18), λόγος and ὅρκος, God’s word and his oath, and the slighter of these two doth hold all things in the world (man only excepted). The sea rageth and roareth terribly (saith the Psalmist, 95:11), yet God’s word is his band, and in his greatest rage he never passed it, (Prov. 8:29). The sun riseth like a giant, and like a mighty man to run his race; yet Deus dedit legem, God’s word is his list, and in his greatest swiftness he never passed it. God himself, being infinite and having no bond, hath made himself finite . . . Isa. 11:5, He hath bound himself in the girdle of truth, and in his greatest might he never broke it.1 Only man (out of wantonness) broke his bond in Paradise; the Garden would not hold him, and so he put God to his second bond, his oath: and if that will not hold him, there is but a third in the Epistle of Jude, Vincula tenebrarum, Bonds of darkness, and they shall surely hold him, for they have held stronger than he, the angels of disobedience, and do hold them sure against the day of wrath. I will then shut up this point with the counsel of S. Jerome . . . If we will not believe God when he promiseth us life, yet let us believe him when he sweareth by his life that he wisheth us life, lest we provoking him to anger, he swear in his wrath we shall not enter into the Kingdom of Life. . . . . . . The matter of the protestation, I told you, was absolutely negative, and it issueth into five branches to be severally touched: The first: I delight not in death. . . . I touch my first branch: I delight not in death. . . . there are no two things so opposite as life and death; and it is plain, God (in his wisdom) made choice to swear by his life to let us see how far at odds he is with death. Fire and water, light and darkness, heaven and hell, God and Satan can stand nearer together than life and death; and therefore we read in the first of Job, that God would abide Satan standing at his right hand in heaven, but of Death, we shall never read of him in heaven but upon a horse posting from the presence of God. . . . And therefore if King David could truly say of the wicked, that he hateth the wicked with a perfect hatred because there was nothing like unto him in them, God may trulier say and swear of death that he hateth him with a perfect hatred because there is nothing in death like unto him. And indeed, how can he but hate him? . . .  The second branch of God’s protestation is, I delight not in the death of man. God had an Image before all worlds, for he had his Son, the ingraven image of his Father; and he was so delighted in his Image that he would needs have an image of his Image; and so he made man after his own Image. If any other than God had made man, or if he had not been made after the Image he eternally loved, it may be he would not have cared so much for him; but being the workmanship of his own hands and made after the Image he so 1

{A “list” is a border or boundary; a “bond” is a restraint or limit; a “girdle” is a belt.}

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tenderly loved, if he had not loved him for his workmanship sake, yet he must needs love him for his sake whose Image he bare; and loving him, could not delight to spoil him. Nature (God’s nurse) had bred in us such a fond desire of our image that it brought idolatry into the world, and when we cannot have a lively image, we will have an image though it be but of colors and clouts; and if we be kings, then none must paint that image but Apelles, and . . . whoso dishapes or defaces that image, the prince takes it as done unto himself, and it is capital: a matter of life and death. Tu Domine fecisti (saith S. Jerome): O Lord, we have this love (though not this fond {i.e., foolish} love) from thee; for thou tookest the blotting of thine image in Paradise as a blemish to thyself; and thou saidst to the blotter, Quia fecisti, because thou hast done it, on thy belly shalt thou creep and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life, Gen. 3:14. The h{oly} Fathers are wonderful in the contemplation of man’s excellency at the first: cedrus Paradisi, imago coeli, gloria terrae, dominus mundi, deliciae Domini.2 The cedar of Paradise was too good wood to be cut into chips for hell fire; the image of heaven was not made to be the vizard of hell . . . the lord of the world, the bond-­slave of Satan; the darling of the Lord of heaven, the scorn to all the fiends of hell. When the Holy Ghost had accounted the genealogy from Christ to Adam (Luke 3), at the last verse he brings up Adam to his Father and calls him by the name of the son of God.3 Can a man live to delight in the death of his son? David (a man after God’s own heart) denies it, 2 Sam. 19, O Absalom, my son, would to God I had died for thee, my son Absalom, my son, my son. And if David could have forgotten Absalom his son, yet God could not forget Adam his son; for he says not to him Would I had died for thee, my son; but I die for thee my son. Nay (that’s too little), I have died for thee before thou wert, that when thou wert, thou mightest not die. And so I may safely swear by my life that I do not delight in the death of man. When Ulysses played the mad-­man (because he would not go with the Grecians to the siege of Troy) and, getting a plow, he plowed and marred all that came in his way, it was Palimedes’ wise counsel that they should lay his young son in his way; which when they had done, and that the plow came to it, he took it up & would not let it hurt his son; and so they discovered that he was but counterfeitly mad. But if he had plowed up his son, they would have accounted him perfectly mad indeed. . . . There is a conceit in the world (beloved) speaks little better of our gracious God than this: and that is that God should design many thousands of souls to hell before they were, not in eye to their faults, but to his own absolute will and power, and to get him glory in their damnation. This opinion is grown huge and monstrous (like a Goliath), and men do shake and tremble at it; yet never a man reacheth to David’s sling to cast it down. In the name of the Lord of hosts, we will encounter it, for it hath reviled, not the host {i.e., army} of the living God, but the Lord of hosts. First, it is directly opposite to this text of holy Scripture, and so turns the truth of God into a lie. For whereas God in this text doth say and swear that he doth not delight in the death of man, this opinion saith that not one or two, but millions of men should 2 {These phrases are translated at the beginning of each of the clauses that make up the following sentence.} 3 {Luke 3:38, tracing back Jesus’ ancestors, reads “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (AV).}

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fry in hell; and that he made them for no other purpose than to be the children of death and hell, and that for no other cause but his mere pleasure’s sake; and so says that God did not only say but swear to a lie; for the oath should have run thus: As I live (saith the Lord) I do delight in the death of man. Secondly it doth, not by consequence but directly, make God the author of sin. For if God, without eye to sin, did design men to hell, then did he say and set down that he should sin, for without sin he cannot come to hell. And indeed, doth not his opinion say that the Almighty God, in the eye of his counsel, did not only see but say that Adam should fall, and so order and decree and set down his fall, that it was no more possible for him not to fall than it was possible for him not to eat? . . .  Thirdly, it takes away from Adam (in his state of innocency) all freedom of will and liberty not to sin, for had he had freedom to have altered God’s desigment, Adam’s liberty had been above the designment of God. And here I remember a little witty solution is made: that is, if we respect Adam’s will, he had power to sin or not to sin; but if God’s decree, he could not but sin. This is a silly solution. And indeed it is as much as if you should take a sound strong man (that hath power to walk and to lie still) and bind him hand and foot (as they do in Bedlam) and lay him down, and then bid him Rise up and walk or else you will stir him up with a whip; and he tell you that there be chains upon him so that he is not able to stir; and you tell him again, that that is no excuse, for if he look upon his health, his strength, his legs, he hath power to walk or to lie still—­but if upon his chains, indeed in that respect he is not able to walk. I trust, he that should whip that man for not walking were well worthy to be whipt himself. Or (if you will give Adam’s will a little more scope) this pretty solution makes it as a bird in a cage, and the door fast shut: if you look upon the wings of the bird, she hath power to fly and flap away; but if you turn your eye and look to the wicket of the cage, you may well see that she may flutter thither but she can get no further. Almighty God’s decree is stronger than the wicket, and chains too; for he that made the bonds of Orion so sure that no man can loose them hath made the bonds of his decree so sure that no man can break them; and therefore if God set it down for a decree that Adam should fall, Adam had no more liberty not to fall than the man in the chains had liberty to walk or the bird in the cage liberty to fly away. Fourthly, as God doth abhor a heart and a heart, and his soul detesteth a double-­ minded man, so himself cannot have a mind and a mind, a face (like Janus) to look two ways. Yet this opinion maketh in God two wills, the one flat opposite to the other: an hidden will by which he appointed and willed that Adam should sin; and an open will by which he forbad him to sin. His open will said to Adam in Paradise: Adam thou shalt not eat of the tree of good and evil. His hidden will said, Thou shalt eat; nay more, I myself cannot keep thee from eating, for my decree from eternity is passed; thou shalt eat, that thou mayst drown all thy posterity in sin, and that I may drench them (as I have designed) in the bottomless pit of hell. . . . Eighthly, the poets had a device of their old god Saturn, that he eat up his children as soon as they were born, for fear lest some of them should dispossess him of heaven. . . . Herod, for fear our Savior Christ should supplant him in his kingdom, caused all the young children in Galilee to be slain. Those had all some color for their barbarous cruelty. 309



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But if any of those had made a law designing young children to torments before they had been born, and for no other cause and purpose but his own absolute will, the heavens in course would have called for revenge. It is the Law of Nations, No man innocent shall be condemned; of Reason, not to hate where we are not hurt; of Nature, to like and love our own brood. . . . We are God’s kindred; he cannot hate us when we are innocent, when we are nothing, when we are not. Now, touching God’s glory (which is to us all as dear as our life), this opinion hath told us a very inglorious and shameful tale: for it saith the Almighty God would have many souls go to hell; and that they may come thither they must sin, that so he may have just cause to condemn them. . . . For who could digest it, to hear a prince say after this manner: I will beget me a son that I may kill him, that I may so get me a name; and that I may have some color to kill him, I will beget him without both his feet; and when he is grown up, having no feet, I’ll command him to walk upon pain of death; and when he braketh my commandment, I’ll put him to death. Oh beloved, these glorious fancies, imaginations, and shows are far from the nature of our gracious, merciful, and glorious God, who hath proclaimed himself in his titles royal: Jehovah, the Lord; the Lord strong and mighty and terrible; slow to anger, and of great goodness. And therefore let this conceit be far from Jacob, and let it not come near the tents of Joseph. . . . And so I come to the third branch: I delight not in the death of a sinful man. God could not delight in the death of a sinner, who parted with his delight to save a sinner. Old Jacob, when he should part from his youngest son Benjamin, Gen. 42{:38}, he told Simeon that he had as lief part with his life: Ye will bring my gray head with sorrow to the grave. Yet Jacob had many sons more alive. But to part with a son, an only son, a beloved son, this is more bitter than death itself. Ye shall see it plain in God’s temptation of Abraham: Take thy son, thine only son, thy son Isaac whom thou lovest, and offer him up to me upon the mount. And when as Abraham did but offer to offer him, God cried from heaven, Sufficit; It is enough—­as if he should have said, Thou, being man, canst do no more for God. But he, being God, did more for man, and sinful man too: for he took his Son, his only Son, his beloved Son . . . and he did not offer to part with him, but did part with him . . . and that which all the world doth wonder at, God himself was Pater & Sacrificulus, the Father & the Sacrificer too. For he slew him in heaven ere the Jews slew him on earth: . . . This is the Lamb of God slain from the beginning of the world. . . . Well mayst thou say thou willest not the death of a sinner, who diest thyself to save a sinner. . . . Pastor ille magnus vicinis angelis, &c. (saith S. Gregory), that great Shepherd of heaven was so full of joy that he could not keep it in, but out it must among his angels. . . . And what was the cause of such a shout in heaven? Drachma inventa est; the lost groat is found. . . . So great joy for so small a thing? How then could he joy to have it lost, that so much rejoiced to have it found? O Lord, the holy angels in heaven are thy witnesses that Thou delightest not in the death of a sinner. The fourth branch of God’s protestation is, I delight not in the death of a wicked sinner. . . . If our sins be as motes in our eyes and cause them to water, God hath his handkerchief wherewith he wipes away all tears from our eyes, Apoc. 7. . . . If they be of scarlet dye, he hath his fullers soap, Esay 1:18. Shall we then sin (saith the Holy Ghost) that grace may abound? God forbid. Yet if sin chance to abound, grace hath over-­abounded. . . . The mercy of God is above all his works. . . . When our Savior Christ sweat blood in the garden, it was but a preparative to his potion on the Cross; for there he sweat, not like unto blood, 310



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but blood and water: water to wash away the stains of our daily infirmities; blood to wash away our sins in grain—­and a deeper color than blood our sins cannot bear. If God could have delighted in the death of a sinful wicked man, he must needs have delighted in the death of Ahab; for he sold himself to work wickedness, and that before the Lord. But God was so far from such delight, that he took great delight in his feigned humiliation and withdrew his hand from the plague he had devised against him. . . . I think upon Peter, I consider the Thief, I behold Zachaeus, I look upon Mary (saith St. Gregory), and I see that an apostate, a thief, an usurer, an harlot, these are Christ’s favorites, and such darlings unto him that some of them must needs sup with him in Paradise at his installment: Hac nocte; this very night shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Fifthly, the last branch of God’s protestation is, I delight not in the death of any sinful wicked man. Si non impii, nullius (saith S. Jerome), if not in the death of a wicked sinner, not in the death of any sinner. . . . The fearful doom at the last day is Ite, non Auferte; Go your ways, not Carry them away—­go the way yourselves have chosen. And it is to the sheep, Venite benedicti Patris mei; Come ye blessed of my Father. And to the goats, Ite maledicti in ignem paratum; Go into the fire, ye cursed. But it is not, Ite maledicti Patris; Go ye cursed of my Father. God entitles himself to the blessing only. And the fire is prepared, but for whom? Non vobis, sed diabolo & angelis ejus; Not for you, but for the devil and his angels. So that God delighteth to prepare neither death nor hell for damned men. This last branch of God’s protestation (I delight not in the death of any sinner) I resolve into six consequences, as links depending on this chain. 1. God’s absolute will is not the cause of reprobation; but sin. 2. No man is of an absolute necessity the child of hell so as by God’s grace he may not avoid it. 3. God simply willeth and wisheth every living soul to be saved and to come to the kingdom of heaven. 4. God sent his Son to save every soul and to bring it to the kingdom of heaven. 5. God’s Son offereth grace effectually to save every one and to direct him to the kingdom of heaven. 6. The neglect and contempt of his grace is the cause why everyone doth not come to heaven; and not any privative decree, counsel, or determination of God.4 These six I will briefly discuss, and so commend you to the grace of God. For the first, Almighty God at the Creation, when he took a view of all his creatures . . . he found they were good; and when man was made, behold, They were very good, Gen. 1:31. . . . the fountain of goodness that God did see in man, what was it but radius divinae bonitatis, a beam of that goodness which issueth from the fountain God himself? Secondly, God’s hate does not arise as his love doth, for his love ariseth of and from himself. For being all beautiful and glorious (which cannot be but all lovely and amiable within), and seeing himself, cannot but love and like himself; so that he hath in him to move him to love, but he hath not in him to move him to hate; but that cometh from without, and there is nothing from without which God hateth but sin. . . . {Note the overlap between Harsnett’s consequences 1, 2, 3, and 6 with Baro’s articles I, IV, III, VII, and VIII (Lambeth articles ).} 4

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The second consequence is: No man is of absolute necessity the child of hell so as by God’s grace he may not avoid it. . . . Let us look back to the Garden from whence we came. God planted in the Garden of Eden a Tree of Life, and it was as easy to be found as the Tree of Death. Adam with the same ease might have reached out his hand to the Tree of Life and saved all, as to the Tree of Death and marred all. So that it was not absolutely necessary that any should go to hell. When Adam had erred in making choice of the wrong tree and had barred himself from the Tree of Life, God put him out into the open field of the world, and in it planted a Tree of Life (better than the tree in the Garden of Eden), a Tree that came down from heaven, Apoc. 2:7, and caused his herald to proclaim before it: . . . whosoever tasteth of this Tree shall not die, but have everlasting life. The tree which was in the Garden of Eden did never seek men and reach forth fruit unto them, but man was to seek and to reach forth his hand unto it, and so taste it. But this Tree seeketh us and reacheth forth fruit unto us. Nay, God himself plucketh off the fruit, and followeth us with it, as a nurse doth follow her child with meat (Psal. 81:10), Aperi os tuum late; Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. And if we will not be at the pains to open our mouth that we may be fed from heaven, Death will be at the pains to open her jaws that we may feed him in hell:5 They lie in hell and Death gnaweth upon them, Psal. 49:14. The third consequence is: God simply willeth and wisheth every living soul to be saved and to praise God for his goodness among the angels in heaven. And this truth the Holy Ghost hath taught us by the mouth of holy Paul, 1 Tim. 2:4 . . . God would have every man living to be saved, and none to die eternal death. And here the Genevian conceit hath dealt with this gracious bounty of God and this blessed saying, God will have all to be saved, as Hanan did with the ambassadors of David: he cut off their garments to the hips, and this hath curtailed the grace of God at the stumps; for it saith, It must not be meant that God would have every living soul to come to heaven, but one or two out of every order and occupation to come unto heaven. As if our gracious God were fallen out of liking with Christian souls, and suddenly fallen in love with orders and occupations.6 . . . But the spirit of Peter (a great deal wiser than that of Geneva) saith plainly, 2 Pet. 3:9, Deus non vult aliquem perire; God would not have any one to perish, but to come to the knowledge of the truth. And, since it hath pleased Almighty God there to say it, & here in my text to swear it, that he doth not delight in the death of a sinner: I trust we shall have grace to believe him, since himself can better tell what himself would have than the man of Geneva can. Now if any man’s mind doth put this doubt—­how it comes to pass that so many souls are damned, if it be God’s will that everyone should be saved (for who hath resisted the will of the Lord?)—­I will easily resolve and clear him that case. God’s will is plainly revealed in his holy book to be of two sorts: 1. his absolute will; and 2. his will with condition.7 His absolute will said, Let there be light, and there was light . . . Sun, stand thou still in Gibeon, and it stood still. This will, indeed, cannot be resisted, for it speaks but the word, and the thing is done. But God hath not this will in the matter of our salvation, for {Both the “her” and the “him” refer to death, which is feminine in Latin and masculine in Hebrew.} {This reading of “all” as “all sorts” rather than “all individuals” goes back to Augustine.} 7 {On God’s “conditional” will, see the introduction to the Lambeth articles and the preface to A book of Christian prayers .} 5 6

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then so should we be saved as the heavens were made; but in the matter of our salvation, God useth his will with condition. And he hath set us three conditions (according to our three states), which if we break, we justly forfeit our estate. The first condition was in Paradise . . . eat not, and thou shalt live; and that we would not keep. The second was under the Law . . . Do this, and thou shalt live; and that we could not keep. The third is under the Gospel, Believe, and thou shalt live; and that we may all keep—­and if we keep it not, we forfeit our estates in Christ and are willfully guilty of our own damnation. The reason is sweet out of S. Austin . . . He that created thee without thee, doth not save thee without thee; but thou must seek, and thou shalt find; ask, and thou shalt have; knock, and it shall be opened unto thee. For not one of every order or occupation, but every Christian soul that seeketh, findeth; that asketh, receiveth; and that knocketh, it is opened unto him. Fourthly, our next consequence is: That Almighty God (in his infinite love and mercy towards man) sent his Son to die and suffer hellish torments, not for Peter, James, and John, and a few of the elect only, but for the sins of every sinful soul in the world, and this doctrine is so clear in the Book of God as that the sun at mid-­day shines not more bright. . . . Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world (Joh. 1.29), who is a propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world (1 Joh. 2:2). And here the new synecdoche8 . . . would teach us thus to say: God would have all to be saved: that is, God would have a few to be saved; God would not have any to perish: that is: God would that almost all should perish; so God loved the world: that is, so God loved a small number in the world; this is the Savior of the world: that is, a Savior of an handful of the world. . . . When they are ashamed of this silly shift, they take up another as bad as this, and that is, sufficienter & efficienter: Christ died (say they) sufficiently for all, but not effectually; that is, he meant not the good of his death to all. This device (beloved) shadows the wisdom of our Savior Christ, and therefore they had as good have kept it to themselves. For I am sure ye are persuaded in soul that our Savior Christ by his death and passion made a full satisfaction for the sins of all the sinful souls in the whole world. Which, since he did, it stood as much with his ease and more with his goodness to communicate his goodness and the benefits of his precious death unto us all as to appropriate them to a few. But what an odd delusion were this, that a Christian prince should proclaim himself redeemer of all the poor Christians under the Turk, and should send over sufficient ransom for all their freedoms; and all the poor captives (hearing the proclamation) should verily think they should be redeemed, and then the prince should thus interpret himself: I proclaimed indeed sufficiently to all, but I meant effectually but to a few. . . . The fifth consequence is: Our Savior Christ offers saving grace effectually to all, to direct them to the kingdom of heaven; and all and every one may be saved that doth not despise nor abuse the grace of God. It’s a strange doctrine, we should see and say that our Savior Christ calls and invites all to repentance and amendment of life; and yet we should also say, and teach, that he meaneth not as he saith, for he would not have everyone to repent and amend. Is God as a man, that he should dissemble? The cripple that lay at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple and fastened his eyes upon Peter and John, if Peter and John had said unto him, Up, arise and follow us, and we will do thee good; and yet had neither given him strength to rise nor power to walk, would not the Scribes and Pharisees have scoffed 8

{A synecdoche is a rhetorical figure that puts the part for the whole or the whole for a part.}

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at them? We are by nature (beloved) poor and miserable cripples. . . . Alas! poor miserable creatures that we are! What meant our Savior so to say unto us? A nobleman invites to his table the honorable lord mayor and the aldermen his brethren, and (for the more grace unto them) sends his son and heir to meet them; and he tells them in his father’s name that they should be right welcome to his father’s house . . . and yet the nobleman (his father) hath a purpose to welcome but one or two . . . and shuts up the gate against the rest. Having so solemnly invited them all, would they now then think this nobleman had dealt nobly with them? It’s our case, beloved. The joys of heaven are a feast of joy; and the King of heaven hath sent no less a personage than his only Son and heir to invite us thither; and he tells us in his Father’s name that the king (his Father) had provided room and meat enough for us, and that the angels of heaven will be glad to see us at their Master’s house, and that there will be a great Jubilee in heaven at our coming thither; and yet the King his Father (saith this new device) hath a purpose to entertain but one or two . . . and shuts up the everlasting doors against the rest (though solemnly invited) eternally. Is this the royal word of a king? And here they come in with Bellarmine’s9 dreaming: that is, Christ offers grace to all sufficiently, but it is not effectual or saving grace. . . . First, there is nothing sufficient for anything, which is not efficient to that use too. Then where as we teach and say that our Savior Christ offers saving grace effectually to all, we plainly mean that grace which hath power, strength, and virtue to save all, though all in effect are not saved by that grace, and the want is not in the grace but in them who despise and abuse the grace. . . . . . . If thou blowest the spark (saith the wise man [Eccles. 28:12]), thou shalt have fire, and if thou spit upon it, it will go out; and both these came out of the same mouth. I am come (saith our Savior Christ) to send fire on the earth, and what is my desire but that it may be kindled? So he that hath least of this fire hath a spark at least. And there was never man so desperately wicked but, at some time or other, he felt this spark of God’s Spirit glowing in his heart. He that blows that spark may have a flame to light him to the kingdom of heaven, and he that spits upon it makes himself a brand fit to increase the fire of hell. The Apostle Paul therefore had a special care of this very thing, 1 Thes. 5:19, Quench not the Spirit. Sixthly, our last consequence is that contempt and neglect of grace is the cause why any man doth not come into heaven, and not any privative decree, council, or determination of God. God quits himself of our destruction by an universal assertion, against which (upon the Genevan supposition) the house of Israel might have said and answered with ease: O God of our Fathers, what meanest thou to say unto us, why will ye die, when thou hast from all eternity decreed that we cannot but die? Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem (saith our Savior), thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thee together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! . . . Now where as it is devised by some that our Savior should weep over these Jews as man and laugh at them as God (himself having decreed their destruction from all eternity), this is a very bad and profane device. For it would make our Savior Christ to shed crocodile’s tears, to laugh and lament both at once. And if this fancied decree of eternal 9

{The leading Jesuit theologian of the period. His position on predestination is Thomist.}

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designment to hell without sin had any sooth in it, then must it needs be that our Savior Christ was at that holy council in heaven when as this decree was pronounced and made; for God the Father (in wisdom) could not make a decree but by him who is the Wisdom of the Father; and if he was in the bosom of his Father at this decree, and himself gave his voice and consent unto it, that these Jews should never come to heaven, neither by the death nor mediation of our Savior Christ, then would he not of his goodness thus come down on the earth, and weep and lament that they would not be saved. . . . And now, beloved (as the H. Ghost saith), say not ye, when ye have sinned, that God incited you to sin, for God cannot tempt you to sin and then condemn you for sinning: every man is his own tempter, and his own tormentor. To conclude: let us take heed and beware that we neither (with the papists) rely upon our free will, nor (with the Pelagian) upon our nature, nor (with the puritan) curse God and die, laying the burthen of our sins on his shoulders and the guilt of them at his everlasting doors; but let us all fall down upon our faces, give glory to God, and say, Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy and forgiveness; unto us shame and confusion; for we have gone astray, we have offended and dealt wickedly, as all our fathers have done. But thou art the God of mercy that hast sworn by thy life that thou didst not delight in the death of a sinner. And this grace God grant unto us, &c. Amen. [\ T ext: Three sermons preached by the reverend, and learned, Dr. Richard Stuart . . . To which is added a fourth sermon, preached by the right reverend Father in God, Samuel Harsnett, Lord Arch-­bishop of York. The second edition corrected and amended (London, 1658) (Wing, 2d ed., S5527).

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A sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, the sixth of February 1596

Dove attended Westminster School, which was affiliated with Christ Church, Oxford, whence Dove migrated in 1580. There he remained for the next sixteen years, progressing in timely fashion through his BA, MA, BD, and DD, this final degree granted in 1596. In the preface to the 1597 Paul’s Cross sermon reprinted below, he relates with some bitterness that he had “resolved to die within the precincts of the college, like a monk shut up in his cell,” when he finally received the despaired of preferment. The sermon is dedicated to Lord Chancellor Egerton, who in 1596 freed Dove from his cloister by presenting him with the rectory of Tidworth, Wiltshire. He was only there briefly, if at all, for in November of the same year, Whitgift appointed him as rector of the London parish of St. Mary Aldermary, a post he held until his death. In addition to the 1597 sermon, Dove published a half-­dozen further items, all of impeccable conformist orthodoxy. [\

Nicholas Tyacke’s conjecture that Dove responds to Harsnett’s 1594 Paul’s Cross sermon on the same text has won wide acceptance (Anti-­Calvinists, 252). As its title page makes clear, Dove’s sermon defends Calvinist double-­predestination, which was at the time certainly more mainstream than Harsnett’s “Lutheran” view. Yet if Dove’s aim was to uphold a party line, his sermon, with its tonal shifts and sudden dissonances, is perhaps more interesting than he meant it to be. Like Harsnett, Dove’s sermon opens with a paean to God’s majesty and mystery; Dove, however, does it better, pulling out all the stops in a fireworks of biblical-­cosmological imagery—­the prose poetry of numinous awe one associates with Laudian sermons of the 1630s, not with Elizabethan Calvinist preaching. The prelude ends with the introduction of what Dove terms “the last and essential point,” at which point the sermon shifts into a celebration of “the infinite mercy of God showed to sinful men. . . . even to all sinners, for he so loved the world.” Here too the theology could be Laudian; it seems, moreover, identical to Harsnett’s. 316



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It is also instantly repudiated. The praise of God’s infinite mercy ends with the question of how it can be “that many are called and few are chosen.”1 Then follows the partition stating the predestinarian theses that the main body of the sermon will defend. Yet the first long paragraph after the partition exhibits a gentleness—­for example, the description of God gathering his children to himself—­and taste for antithetic wordplay that one rarely finds in Calvinist writers of this period; and indeed this entire paragraph comes from Peter Lombard’s twelfth-­century Sentences (bk. 1, dist. 46), a passage that in turn draws on St. Augustine. From the point that Dove introduces the distinction between God’s secret and revealed will, the sermon settles into the familiar grooves of Reformed predestinarianism; perhaps 90 percent of the remaining text echoes Calvin’s Institutes 3.21–­24. Given the likelihood that Dove is replying to Harsnett, one assumes that he would have been very careful to describe predestination in a way that safeguards the goodness and justice of God. Yet he seems repeatedly to do the opposite. He incorporates, often verbatim, Calvin’s harshest passages, and makes them yet harsher by compromising the moral basis on which Calvin’s argument rests: that, although the unfallen Adam’s will was “pliable in either direction,” yet “in the mind and will there was the highest rectitude” so that Adam “might have stood if he chose,” being endowed with the gifts and graces that would have “enabled him to rise up to God and eternal happiness” (Inst. 1.15.8), Dove, however, maintains that the unfallen Adam was “very prone and apt to sin.” No other Reformed theologian, to our knowledge, steps this close to the edge of the cliff that Beza explicitly warns against: for “had man been created crooked [pravus, i.e., not upright; the meaning is close to Dove’s “prone”] and bad, God would seem to have no just ground for punishing his [Adam’s] wickedness.”2 Dove seems to have taken to heart the Augustinian (actually pseudo-­Augustinian) maxim with which Calvin concludes his discussion of predestination: “it is perverse to make the measure of human justice the standard by which to measure the justice of God.”3 He makes no real attempt to meet Harsnett’s objections because they seem to him based on the false assumption that divine justice can be measured by a human standard. Rather than try to make the case for God’s goodness, Dove insists on the terrifying otherness of the Calvinist deity, and then ends his discussion of both the second and third “conclusion” by urging the comfort of assurance, for “every true Christian may by this doctrine of predestination—­that Christ died only for them whom he hath predestinated before—­comfort himself that he is one of them which are predestinated, forasmuch as he believeth” .

The printed version of Dove’s sermon lists the predestinarian “conclusions” on its title page, but Dove’s auditory at Paul’s Cross would have had no idea where this sermon was heading. 2 Theodore Beza, Confessio Christianae fidei et eiusdem collatio cum Papisticis haeresibus (Geneva, 1577), cap. III, art. vii. 3 “Vere enim Augustinus perverse facere contendit qui iustitiae humanae modo divinam metiuntur” (Institutes 3.24.17). Calvin’s marginal note cites Augustine, De praedestinatione et gratia, cap. 2. This work, which is not by Augustine, can be found in the appendix to Patrologia Latina 45 (Paris, 1865), the relevant passage on pp. 1666–­67. 1

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Sources: ODNB; Jean Calvin, Institutionis Christianae religionis libri quatuor (Geneva, 1617); Jonathan More, English hypothetical universalism: John Preston and the softening of Reformed theology (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2007); Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-­Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–­1640 (Oxford, 1987).

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A sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, the sixth of February 1596

15971

In1which are discussed2 these three conclusions: 1 It is not the will of God that all men should be saved. 2 The absolute will of God, and his secret decree from all eternity, is the cause why some are predestinated to salvation, others to destruction, and not any foresight of faith or good works in the one, or infidelity, neglect, or contempt in the other. 3 Christ died not effectually for all. By John Dove, Doctor of Divinity As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no delight in the death of a sinner. Ezek. 33:11 A protestation against the house of Israel. In which three things offer themselves to our consideration: the majesty of the person which doth protest, the manner how he maketh his protestation, and what he protesteth. The person being God; the manner, by swearing by himself; he protesteth that he hath no delight in the death of a sinner. Of the person, I say with Augustine . . . His majesty is an hidden mystery, whose depth & bottom the wit of man can not sound, the tongue of sinful man cannot utter, the whole world, being supposed to be but one library of books, would be a brief and compendious epitome not large and voluminous enough to express it.3 To whom Abraham, the nearer he approached, the more he perceived himself to be but dust and ashes; at whose presence the cherubins and seraphins do hide their faces as not able to behold his glory; at whose appearance the moon shall be abashed and the sun ashamed; whose face Moses could not see without 1 In the sixteenth century, the new year began in late March, not January. Hence, although the title page says 1596, the date is 1597 by modern reckoning. 2 {“Discuss” can mean debate, but also settle, decide.} 3 {Pseudo-­Augustine, Speculum sec. 7, in Augustine, Opera omnia, 6 vols. (Paris, 1837), vol. 6, part 2, 1414.} 

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present death; who is wise in heart, mighty in strength; removeth the mountains out of their places, causeth the pillars of the earth to shake; commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; closeth up the stars as under a signet; spreadeth out the heavens and walketh on the height of the sea; maketh the stars Arctuarus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the climates of the South; whose wonderful works are infinite and without number; whose perfection is higher than heaven, deeper than hell, longer than the earth, wider than the sea. When the Prophet saw the Lord sitting on an high throne—­and the seraphins stood upon it, and one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, the whole world is full of his glory, and the lintels of the door cheeks moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke—­he said, woe is me, for I am undone because I am a man of polluted lips, for mine eyes have seen the King and the Lord of hosts. . . . The philosophers compare him to a circle, because he is infinite, without beginning and without ending, but such a circle as is repugnant to the principles of geometry, whose centre is everywhere, but his circumference is nowhere: his throne is heaven; his footstool, earth; his holy city, Jerusalem. . . . He is great without quantity, good without quality, everlasting without time; in his greatness, infinite; in his power, omnipotent; in his wisdom, inestimable; in his counsels, terrible; in his judgments, just; his thoughts secret, his words true, his works holy; invisible, yet seeing all things; immutable, yet changing all things; immoveable himself, yet in whom all other things have their being and moving. . . . But I come to the last and essential point, where he protesteth, that he delighteth not in the death of a sinner. That he delighteth not in the death of a sinner, we need no further proof than this, that he sent his Son to die for the salvation of sinners. God sent not his Son to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved. And notwithstanding the enmity between God and us continued no longer than until we were reconciled unto him through his Son, yet unless he had of his free mercy loved us from the beginning, he had never sent his Son to reconcile us. For so writeth Augustine . . . Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God, for his love towards us did not then first begin when we were reconciled to him by the death of his Son, but his love was from the beginning, for he ordained us, when as yet we were not sons, to be heirs with his only Son. Ita Deus dilexit mundum, &c.; so God loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for us, that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. In which words of our Savior Christ, I note six things, which all do savor of the infinite mercy of God showed to sinful men. The first is, that God is the only author and efficient cause of the salvation of sinners. The 2nd is what moved God to save sinners: his great love towards them. The 3rd, how far this love of God is extended: even to all sinners, for he so loved the world. The 4th, the means how he wrought the salvation of sinners, by which salvation he made his love known unto them: by giving his Son, the highest degree of compassion. . . . The 5th, what sinners take hold of this his mercy: not simply all sinners, but all believing sinners. The 6th is the end of his compassion upon sinners: that they should not perish in their sins, but have life everlasting. . . . In so great a cloud of witnesses of God’s mercy, which is extended to all, and that he delighteth not in the death of any sinner, how can it be that many are called and few are 320



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chosen? . . . That when Esau and Jacob had done neither good nor evil . . . before they were born God loved Jacob and hated Esau? Chose one and refused the other? . . .  I have thought good to handle this point at large, and for the better discussing thereof, to collect and gather out these three conclusions: The first, that it is not the will of God that all men should be saved. The second, that the absolute will of God, & his secret decree from all eternity is the cause why some are predestinated to salvation, others to death and destruction, and not any foresight of faith or good works in the one, or of infidelity, neglect, or contempt in the other. The third, that Christ died not effectually for all. Of the first S. Augustine disputeth in this manner:4 that God will not have all men to be saved, it is manifest, forasmuch as our Savior wrought many works in the unthankful cities, Corazin, Bethsaida, & Capernaum, which he knew would not repent, but he refrained from showing any such examples in Tyre and Sidon, and Gomorrha and Sodom, which, if he had done there, Tyre and Sidon had repented in sackcloth & ashes, & Sodom had remained until this day. . . . But5 how then, saith he, shall we answer the objection of S. Paul? Quo modo dicit apostolus Deus vult omnes homines saluari quum plurimi non fiant salvi? If God will have all men to be saved, as the Apostle writeth, how is it that the greatest part are damned? . . . Our God is in heaven, and he doth what he listeth. If it be his will to save all, and his power is omnipotent to do what he will, why then are but a remnant saved? Some, saith August{ine,} do answer that the cause is in themselves, as if God will, but they will not—­as it is in the Gospel, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as the hen gathereth her chickens, but thou wouldst not? . . . As though the will of God could be crossed by the will of men, and the Almighty could be hindered of his purpose by the weakest vessels. How then was he omnipotent, if he were willing to gather the children of Jerusalem, but did it not? That text, being not understood, would at the first sight seem to import so much, as if the will of God were made frustrate and of none effect by the will of men. Where then were his omnipotency? . . . Nay, rather Jerusalem indeed, forasmuch as lay in her, would not have her children gathered together; but his will was not frustrate, forasmuch as he, against her will, gathered together as many of them as seemed good to his own will and pleasure. And in another place he {i.e., Augustine} doth answer it more fully, where he saith. . . . For their parts, & as much in as them lay, they did that which God would not have to be done; but if ye consider the omnipotency of God, they could not do otherways than was his will. For, inasmuch as they did contrary to the will of God, in them so doing was fulfilled the will of God. And it is a wonderful mystery to see that which is against his will is not otherwise than he hath willed; for but by his sufferance it could not be; neither doth he suffer it against his will, but with his will; neither would God, which is good, suffer anything to be done which is evil, unless his omnipotency were such that he could make good of that which is evil.6 Finally . . . where [Enchirid. cap. 95 & 97] {The rest of this paragraph paraphrases Peter Lombard, Liber primus sententiarum, dist. 46, c. 1–­2.} 6 [Augustine, Enchirid. c. 100] 4 5

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it is written that God willeth all men to be saved, and yet the greatest part of men are not saved, it is so to be understood: God willeth all men to be saved; that is, no man is saved against his {i.e., God’s} will, but whosoever is saved, it is by his will; not as though there were none whom he would not have saved, but that none are saved unless he will, and they only whom he will; and therefore he is to be prayed unto that he would, because it cannot otherwise be but they shall be saved if he will—­for the Apostle allegeth this as an argument that we should pray to him for the salvation of all men, because it is by his will that they are saved. . . . His second answer is this: That whereas he willeth all men to be saved, this word, all, is be understood, as it is oftentimes used in the Schools, not de singulis generum, sed de generibus singulorum; Not as if he would have every one in particular, of all sorts of people, to be saved; but of all sorts, some to be saved. For thus he sayeth . . . By ‘all men’ we must understand ‘all kind of men.’ . . . . . . To these two answers of Saint Augustine . . . I will add a third answer for the more fuller satisfying of all such as desire to attain unto the knowledge of the truth, & that is this: Forasmuch as God will have all men to be saved, we must distinguish of his will, which is two-­fold, voluntas revelata & voluntas beneplacita: his hidden or secret will, which is only known unto himself, and his written or revealed will, which is imparted unto man in his holy Scriptures. According to his written will, he willeth all men to be saved. For he saith: Come unto me all; drink of this all. . . . But according to his secret will, few are saved; and that is it of which the Apostle speaketh, saying: The foundation of God remainth sure, and hath this seal or privy signet: Solus Deus novit suos; only God knoweth who be his.7. . . In one and the selfsame action of the treason of Judas when he sold his Lord and Master appear two sundry wills of God, the one hidden, the other revealed, and one contrary to the other. His secret will was that Judas should betray him; his revealed will was that he should not betray him: and yet both these wills, in respect of God, were good and just. His revealed will was that Judas should not betray him. For it is not only forbidden in a generality, where it is written: Thou shalt not kill or consent to murther . . . but also he is forbidden by a particular caveat, where our Savior said as he sat at meat . . . woe be to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had never been born. . . . And yet Peter speaketh plainly, that God in his secret will had appointed that Judas should betray him: for, saith he, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved among you with great works and wonders . . . him I say, have ye taken by the hands of the wicked, being delivered by the determinate counsel and providence of God, and have crucified and slain. . . . This conclusion being thus determined, two doubts or scruples may arise. The first: these things be{ing} granted that God hath two wills, the one contrary to the other, whether it may be said at any time that God is contrary to himself? The second is: if whatsoever the wicked do be done according to the will of God, why are they not blameless for doing his will? To this first I answer . . . God is not contrary to himself, albeit his revealed will and his secret will are not one; for the will of God in itself is one, but it is said to be diverse as it appeareth unto us, whose dullness is such that we cannot conceive how

7

[2 Tim. 2:19. {The verse, however, makes no reference to the fewness of those to be saved.}]

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in diverse respects he will and he will not.8. . . But in respect of us his will is always one and the same, because for our parts he exacteth always the same duty at our hands to be performed, that thereby we may be void of excuse if we perform it not. He commandeth us always to do the same. If in his secret will he will put in our hearts to to do otherways than he hath commanded, it is either for our punishment, or the setting forth of his own glory, or the executing of his secret purpose. . . . To the second: If the wicked do but the will of God, are they therefore to be excused? Nothing less. For first: Licet Deus illud voluerit, tamen aliud ijs praecepit; Howsoever God willed one thing, he commanded another thing by them to be done. We must not inquire after his secret will, but we must follow his written commandment. Secondly, howsoever the wicked do the will of God, yet they do it not to that end, to obey his will, but to satisfy their own desire. . . . I come to the second conclusion: The absolute will of God and his secret decree from all eternity is the cause why some are ordained to salvation, others to death and destruction; and not any foresight of faith or good works in the one, or of infidelity, neglect, or contempt, in the other. This conclusion is the doctrine of no less doctor in divinity than Saint Paul himself, most learnedly and profoundly delivered in the Epistle to the Romans, cap. 9, from the 11 to the 23 verse, where he writeth in this manner: For before the children were born, and when they had done neither good nor evil (that the purpose of God might remain according to election, not by works but by him that calleth), 12 It was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. 13 As it is written, I have loved Jacob, and hated Esau. 14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15 For he said to Moses: I will have mercy on him on whom I will have mercy, and will have compassion on him on whom I will have compassion. 16 So then, it is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that showeth mercy. 17 For the Scripture saith to Pharaoh: for this purpose have I stirred thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared through all the earth. 18 Therefore he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. 19 Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet complain? for who hath resisted his will? 20 But O man, who art thou which pleadest against God? shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? 21 Hath not the potter power over the clay to make of the same lump one vessel to honor, and another to dishonor? 22 What if God would, to show his wrath and to make his power known, suffer with long patience the vessels of wrath prepared to destruction? 11

{Paraphrase of Calvin, Institutes 1.18.3: “sed quum una et simplex in ipso sit [voluntas Dei], nobis multiplex apparet, quia pro mentis nostrae imbecillitate, quomodo idem diverso modo nolit fieri et velit non capimus.”} 8

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And that he might declare the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he hath prepared unto glory?

23

In which words are contained three things. First, the conclusion itself. Secondly, that notwithstanding he loveth some and hateth others before they are born, when they have done neither good nor evil, yet God in so doing is not cruel or unjust. Thirdly, albeit God hardeneth the hearts of men to do evil, as he did the heart of Pharaoh, and that according to his own will and pleasure, and it is not in the power of man to avoid it—­for who can resist the will of God—­yet God’s wrath is justly kindled against them whom he hardeneth. . . . The reason why God loved the one and hated the other before they were born and when they had done neither good nor evil is alleged in the parenthesis: that the purpose or secret decree of God in choosing one & refusing the other might remain according to election, not by works, but by him that calleth, which is God alone. There is plainly set down the eternal decree of God in choosing some and rejecting others, proceeding merely from himself, without any respect or regard of the persons which are elect or reprobate . . . And here is prevented the answer of the papists, which confess that Jacob was loved before he was born, but ex praevisis operibus, for the good works which God foresaw in him, as also of Huberus and other Lutherans of our times, the broachers of strange opinions, which hold that some are predestinated to be vessels of honor, but ex praevisa fide, because of their faith which God did foresee to be in them; others of dishonor, but . . . not by any decree of God, but because he had in them a foresight either of neglect or contempt, as if the causes of their predestination were in themselves and not in God;9 whereas indeed these words, Not by works, but by him that calleth, do end all controversy, showing that the whole causes of election and reprobation are in himself and not in us. . . . Thirdly, he maketh it yet more plain by the words which follow, vers. 18, where he saith: he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. He maketh two causes of salvation and damnation, and both subordinate to an higher and more principal cause: the subordinate cause of salvation being mercy, because none is saved but by mercy; of damnation, hardening (or obdurating), for they which be damned are hardened in their sins that they cannot repent; and both those inferior causes are subordinate to his will as the highest cause, and only in himself; and these inferior causes do both proceed from his will.10. . . Secondly, to answer this objection, Is there iniquity with God? God forbid, he cleareth that two manner of ways. First, God is not unjust by being partial in saving. . . . For God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. Non potest peccare in delectu, cuius voluntas est justiciae regula; he cannot err in his choice, when that is just, whatsoever is his will.11 When two thieves have committed murder and both deserved death, may not the king 9 {This understanding of predestination as based on foreseen faith or foreseen rejection of grace, which is here ascribed to Roman Catholics and Lutherans, will within a decade be relabeled “Arminianism.” Note, however, that in chap. 52 of A golden chain, Perkins gives a somewhat different account of the Lutheran position—­that election is wholly of grace, but reprobation from foreseen neglect or contempt of offered grace. It is this latter position that the Lambethani and Harsnett defend.} 10 {Calvin, Institutes 3.22.11.} 11 {Calvin, Institutes 3.23.2.}

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without suspicion of injustice show mercy in pardoning the one and do judgment in executing the other? Jacob and Esau were both, as we all are, by nature the children of wrath. Could not God justly have compassion on Jacob and let Esau die in his sins? That any are saved it is his mercy, and he may have mercy on whom he will. . . . Wherefore, that God loved Jacob, it was free mercy and undeserved grace; that he hated Esau, it was no wrong, but justice, a punishment due unto his sins; which punishment, being due unto them both, was in justice inflicted upon one, and in mercy but upon the one. . . . Saint Augustine speaketh very fitly to this purpose . . . in his 157th epistle to Optatus,12 he proposeth this question, why God hath ordained so few to be saved? And foreseeing that so many millions of men are to be damned for their sins, why he doth create them? . . .  He maketh this answer . . . Indeed it might seem very injurious that any should be ordained to be vessels of wrath, if it were not that the whole lump of which the vessels of wrath are framed had been damned before in Adam. . . . But therefore God hath ordained, without all comparison, more to be damned than to be saved, for these two causes. First, that it might appear by the great multitudes of them which are damned how little God, which is most just, regardeth the outcries of whole multitudes of sinners,13 which are justly punished. Secondly, that they which are redeemed from that damnation may, by their own redemption, confess, when they see the greater part damned, that that damnation was due to the whole lump (and therefore to their own selves), which was adjudged to the greater part. Secondly, he is not unjust by any partiality in punishing, because, first, he may, because it is his will and pleasure, justly condemn some, as it appeareth by Pharaoh; secondly, as in election, so in reprobation: between his decree and the execution of his decree there be subordinate causes; for although his will be the first & principal cause that he decreeth who shall be saved and who shall be damned, yet . . . between his decree to condemn and the damnation, there is hardening that men cannot repent, but continue in their sins. So that albeit the cause why he decreed that men should be damned is only in himself (because his own will is the cause of that decree), there is found cause of damnation inherent in themselves. . . . as the Prophet speaketh: Perditio tua ex te, salus ex me Israel; Thy salvation, ô Israel, cometh only from me, but thy damnation from thyself [Hos. 13:9]. . . . Lastly, where it is written: Thou wilt say unto me, why doth he yet complain? for who hath resisted his will? he granteth two antecedents: that God hardeneth whom he will, and that no man hath power to resist his will. And yet the argument is denied as a weak consequent that therefore God’s wrath is unjustly kindled against them whom he thus hardeneth and constraineth to do his will, showing that man may not thus expostulate; which he proveth by two reasons. First, an argument called in logic, à comparatis, where he saith, Nunquid Deo non licebit quod figulo licet; The potter may of his own clay make vessels for the bed as well as for the board, and may not God much more of the same lump make vessels of wrath? The second is ab optimo fine divini concilii, drawn from the end {Epistle 190 in vol. 33 of Patrologia Latina.} {Dove here departs from Augustine’s Latin, which says “how little God, who is just, regards the numerousness of those justly damned.”} 12 13

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which God doth propose. . . . {for} he showeth that neither the salvation of the elect nor the damnation of the wicked is the last end of his eternal decree and purpose, but that he proposeth a further and better end, which is his own glory: that he may show his wrath and make his power known, as also he may declare the riches of his glory.14. . . ‡ . . . What then, if God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and caused him to sin, is not God the author of sin? Nothing less, forasmuch as God is goodness itself, his very essence is good, and nothing can proceed from him but that which is exceeding good. True it is, as the Prophet saith, Non est malum in urbe quod non fecit Dominus; There is no evil in the city but the Lord did it [Amos 3:6]. The Lord doth not only suffer the wicked to do evil, but himself is a doer and principal agent therein. I know there be some of greater modesty than judgment in divinity, which, for reverence to the person of God, do affirm that all the actions of Satan and the wicked are not done by the will but only by the permission & sufferance of God; by which opinion of theirs they fall into two absurdities: the one is, they deny his providence, which doth so moderate & dispose of all things that nothing can come to pass otherwise than he hath appointed and decreed before. The other is, they derogate much & detract from his omnipotency, as if he should suffer any thing to be done against his will. . . . God, which is infinitely good, doth use the ministery and service of them which are evil to their damnation whom he hath justly predestinated to death, and to their salvation whom he hath predestinated to glory. What then? shall we say with the wicked: If it be so that God hath predestinated me to die the death, to what end shall I conform myself to do his will and commandments? His counsel and eternal decree cannot be altered. If he have ordained me to be saved, I cannot be damned; if he have ordained me to be damned, I cannot be saved, what course of life soever I take; for my salvation dependeth not on my endeavors but on his decree, which must needs stand. . . . But we which are Christians must not be ignorant that in matters of our salvation God worketh by his means: as he ordaineth salvation, so he appointeth means to the attainment thereof, and these means are not to be neglected. God decreed that Abraham should be saved; therefore he gave Abraham the gift of faith, without which there is no salvation; and as he could not but be saved, so he could not but believe. For howsoever these things in respect of our knowledge are contingent, yet in respect of God’s ordinance they be necessary and cannot otherwise be, because he hath so appointed. He decreed that Pharaoh should be damned; therefore he hardened his heart that he could not turn unto the Lord, for if he had turned, he had been saved. . . . Wherefore let us, for our parts, follow the means which God hath appointed to salvation, as prayer, hearing the word, receiving the sacraments, faith, amendement of life, godly and Christian conversation, and then we may secure ourselves that as God hath vouchsafed us the means, so he hath predestinated us to salvation. But I come to the third and last conclusion: Christ died not effectually for all.15 Though the death of Christ were sufficient for the redemption of all mankind, yet he died not effectually for all, forasmuch as all men are not saved; therefore to many—­that 14 15

{Calvin, Institutes 3.23.1.} {Dove defends the distinctive Reformed doctrine known as the “limited Atonement.”}

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is, to them which are not saved—­the death of Christ is of no effect. We read that many are called, but few are chosen [Matt. 20:16]. . . . Our Savior Christ saith: I pray for them whom thou hast given me out of this world, but I pray not for the world. But to them which are only called and are not chosen . . . to those for whom Christ doth not pray, to them the death of Christ doth nothing avail; to those his death is of no effect. Huberus, a broacher of new and strange opinions, whereof this is one, that Christ died effectually for all, allegeth so many common places,16 being altogether frivolous and nothing pertaining to the purpose, as would be tedious for me to repeat them. . . . Himself divideth them into three classes, as he doth term them. The first tend to this purpose: to prove that Christ died effectually for all, in a generality without exception. The second, to show that he died as effectually for Cain and Judas as for Peter and Paul, for the godly as for the godless. The third, to show that he died for all, or else—­(as he saith) which is dictu horrendum, not to be spoken—­Deum gravissimorum scelerum reum peragi; that God is guilty of heinous crimes. A very strange and blasphemous speech. His places to prove that Christ died effectually for all in a generality are these that follow: The seed of the woman shall break the serpent’s head. . . . By death he hath abolished him which hath the power of death, that is the devil. . . . But these things (saith he) cannot be . . . if yet the greatest part of men are unredeemed. Moreover, the restoring again of man is in as ample manner as was the fall of man. But as by the disobedience of one (that is Adam) many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one (that is Christ) many are made righteous. Where, by many, all are understood: so then, as in Adam all are damned, so in Christ all are redeemed. . . . God willeth all men to be saved. He will have none to perish. He spared not his only begotten Son, but gave him for all. . . . Which places indeed are very sufficient to prove that Christ died for all, but not that his death appertained to all or that he died effectually for all, but only for the believers. And therefore they are but a fallacy in logic called petitio principij:17 they prove only that salvation is offered unto all, which we do not deny; but they do not prove that salvation is sealed to any more than to the faithful, which is the question in controversy between us. Besides that, some of these places are by him mistaken. . . . Saint Paul maketh comparison between our fall by the first Adam and our rising again by the second, and showeth that a greater good is derived to man by the obedience of the second than was the punishment which was inflicted by the disobedience of the first. But how? Not as that all which before in Adam were damned, now in Christ were saved. But as in Adam all were damned, so in Christ some18 are saved: for if all were saved in Christ, then were no use of hell, of the devil and his angels, which are appointed for the tormenting of wicked men. . . . Thirdly, although before the fall of Adam the righteousness of man was pure and perfect, now it is full of imperfections; it was then inherent, it is now but only by imputation (for as Paul speaketh of himself, in me, that is my flesh, dwelleth no good), yet that righteousness which was in man before his fall had not only annexed unto it possibilitatem peccandi, possibility to sin, but also proclivitatem ad peccatum, it was very prone and apt to {A passage of general application that may serve as the basis of argument} {Latin for “begging the question”} 18 {The Greek, however, is πάντες, “all” (1 Cor. 15:22).} 16 17

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sin, and continued in him but a very short time; but the righteousness which we shall be indued withal by the death of Christ in the life to come shall far exceed, because it shall also be inherent in us, and that not for a season but forever, and it shall have all possibility of falling taken away. So that, in a word, where the Apostle saith, By the disobedience of one man, many are made sinners, by many he meanth all: but where he sayeth, by the obedience of one many are made righteous, by many he meaneth not all, but some; yet we gain more by Christ’s death than by Adam’s fall—­I mean, we which are redeemed—­but the greatness of this benefit bestowed upon us by his death doth not consist in the multitude of them which are to be saved but in the great prerogative given to the paucity of them which are saved. For, if we weigh the number, Strait is the gate which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it, but broad is the way which leadeth to destruction, and many there be that enter in. In his second order of common places, he cometh nearer to the purpose to show that Christ died effectually for them which are damned, inasmuch as they were by him redeemed but afterward voluntarily & by their own free will they made an apostacy and renounced this benefit of their redemption, whereof they were once made partakers. His places are these, and others like unto them: . . . Through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died [1 Cor. 8:11]? . . . Ye are abolished from Christ whosoever are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace [Gal. 5:4]. . . . Upon which common places he inferreth this conclusion: They once believed . . . tasted of the heavenly gift, were washed, sanctified, made the temples of God, the members of Christ, the Lord bought them. Therefore, they were redeemed, and Christ died effectually for them; and that they are not saved, it is not any decree of God from everlasting, but the free will which was in themselves. . . . To these places I answer that indeed, in outward appearance, they were washed, sanctified, redeemed, made the members of Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost, but not in truth and in verity, forasmuch as they which are indeed the children of God can never revolt and start back from the faith and their state of salvation. . . . . . . In the third, he doth not so much dispute against the question as blaspheme against the majesty of God. As, if all mankind be not redeemed by Christ neither was by his decree ordained to life, that he may be justly accused of notorious cruelty and injustice. . . . He doth (saith he) moreover condemn men, their cause being not heard; or if it be heard, himself doth inforce them to offend and leadeth them into snares to be entrapped; he doth punish them for the contempt of that benefit of their redemption, to whom he never meant that it should appertain; he is like an housholder which chasteneth his family for refusing their dinner, for whom no dinner was ordained. . . . But to come to the reasons which he allegeth, setting aside his blasphemous words, he argueth in this manner: to hold with Calvin that Christ died not to save all, but only those which in his will be had predestinated. . . . were to take away all comfort which is derived unto us by the passion of Christ, to annihilate the vertue of his death, to overthrow the foundation of faith; for faith cannot stand, being grounded upon particulars, the universality of the redemption of mankind being denied, because then every man in particular may doubt of himself whether Christ be his Redeemer or no, when it is held that he hath redeemed but a few. Secondly, it were to abolish the ministery of the Gospel, forasmuch as the duty of the minister of God’s word is to preach repentance and to pronounce remission of 328



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sins through Christ unto all. . . . To these absurd conclusions, I may say with Jerome . . . the very recital is a sufficient confutation of their absurdities. For what man but meanly instructed in the rudiments of Christian religion can be ignorant that faith is grounded upon the truth of God’s promise in his Son Jesus Christ, but the application thereof must not be made to all in general, but to everyone in particular by his own self? For a true, lively, and justifying faith of a Christian man is thus defined to be a sure and certain knowledge of the love of God towards himself, which, being grounded upon the truth of God’s promise in Christ, is revealed and sealed by the Holy Ghost. And that is it which the Prophet speaketh, Justus sua fide vivet; The just man shall live by his own faith [Habak. 2:4]; and the Apostles’ Creed beginneth Credo, I believe; not Credimus, We believe. . . . So that every true Christian may by this doctrine of predestination—­that Christ died only for them whom he hath predestinated before—­comfort himself that he is one of them which are predestinated, forasmuch as he believeth, & the Spirit of God which is within him, even that Spirit of comfort, doth witness to his spirit that he is the son of God, and therefore assure himself of his own salvation—­without entering into the secrets of God, to judge of other men whether they shall be saved or no. As for the ministery of the Gospel, it continueth the same which it was ever from the first institution. For though few are chosen, yet many are called, and only God knoweth who are his. Therefore the minister must preach salvation to all. . . . And because God hath two wills, one secret and known to himself alone, the other revealed in the Scriptures and imparted to us: in his secret will he will have some to be saved; in his revealed will he commandeth that the Gospel should be preached to all; we must not inquire after his secret will which is known only to himself, but his revealed will which is known to ourselves. . . . Thus counselling everyone that will enter into the consideration of such deep points of divinity that they would sapere non altum, but ad sobrietatem; that they would be wise, but with sobriety, and confess with Saint Paul: O the deepness of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out? . . . (we must not demand reason in matters of faith, because faith goeth beyond reason), I conclude with the godly meditation of Saint Augustine: Miserum me, quo modo sic induruit cor meum. . . . Wretched man that I am, how is my heart hardened like the adamant, that mine eyes do not pour out streams of tears to consider that the servant expostulateth with his master, man with God, the creature with the Creator; he which is made of the mold of the earth, with him which made all things of nothing.19 To him one invisible and immortal God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be all glory and honor, for ever and ever, Amen. [\ T ext: John Dove, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the sixt of February. 1596 In which are discussed these three conclusions. 1 It is not the will of God that all men should be saued. 2 The absolute will of God, and his secret decree from all eternitie is the cause why some are predestined to saluation, others to destruction, and not any foresight of faith, or good workes in the one, or infidelitie, neglect, or contempt in the other. 3 Christ died not effectually for all ([London], 1597) (NSTC 7087).

{Chap. 34 of pseudo-­Augustinian Meditations, in Augustine, Opera omnia, 6. vols. (Paris, 1837), vol. 6, part 2, 1351.} 19

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THE LAMBETH ARTICLES (1595) AND GLOSSES (1595–­c. 1605)

The nine brief propositions that comprise the Lambeth articles were first drawn up by William Whitaker, an eminent Cambridge theologian and hardline supralapsarian Calvinist; these were then revised during a series of meetings held at Lambeth Palace presided over by Archbishop Whitgift, who signed off on the amended articles in late November of 1595. They instantly became, and remain, the epitome of “unrelenting Calvinist orthodoxy” (Lake 225). Since the story of the university crisis that led to the Lambeth articles has been told multiple times,1 we will give only the barest summary before turning to the five contemporary glosses on them, which have never received the attention they merit. In the early 1590s, for the first time a majority of the Cambridge heads (that is, the masters of the university’s fourteen colleges) were committed Calvinists, giving them control of the university. It was, however, a slim majority,2 and a fragile one. In 1594 Lancelot Andrewes and Samuel Harsnett, both Pembroke men, preached against double predestination, but in venues beyond the vice-­chancellor’s jurisdiction.3 However, when in April of 1595 a young don named William Barrett struck “at the heart of the Calvinist certainty” by preaching against assurance of salvation and other central Reformed tenets (Porter 281), the response was a concerted effort to bring him to recant and, when that failed, to force him out of the university. During the summer and early fall, the Calvinist heads and Barrett were both in regular contact with Archbishop Whitgift. At least initially he appears to have sided with Barrett on key issues; his June letter thus informed the heads that, like Barrett, he held “no one ought to be secure of their salvation,” and that “God by his absolute will doth not hate and reject any man without an eye to his sin.”4 In early November Whitaker, then master of St. John’s as well as regius professor of divinity, See Lake, Moderate puritans; Strype, Whitgift, vol. 2; Porter, Reformation. See Shuger, “Protesting,” 610–­12. 3 See the introduction to Harsnett’s sermon . 4 Strype, Whitgift, 2:240. On Whitgift’s own views, see also the introduction to Harsnett’s sermon 1 2

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together with Humphrey Tydall, the master of Queens’, went to Lambeth, bringing with them a draft version of what would become the Lambeth articles. Over the next three weeks, Whitgift, assisted by several unnamed divines there at the Archbishop’s invitation, worked on revising the draft articles. The unnamed divines—­sometimes referred to as the Lambethani—­proposed various seemingly small changes, at which point Whitgift sent the revised version to Lancelot Andrewes, master of Pembroke and Whitgift’s chaplain, and to the archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton to get their feedback. In the meantime, the heads agreed to the proposed changes—­the changes, that is, that the Lambethani had recommended to Whitgift5—­and, perhaps before hearing from Hutton and Andrewes,6 on November 20 the Archbishop approved the revised Lambeth articles. Immediately thereafter, however, trouble began. Before leaving London, Whitaker and Tyndall decided to show the Articles to Cambridge’s chancellor, Lord Burghley. Tyndall’s letter recounting the meeting describes the two men’s shock to find Burghley thoroughly unsympathetic to their views, which, he explained, using the “similitude from an earthly prince,” seemed to charge “God of cruelty.” Someone, probably Burghley, also alerted the Queen as to the newly minted Articles. She was not pleased. Whitgift must have had inklings of her displeasure, because he wrote a cover letter to accompany the Articles, which Whitaker and Tyndall were bearing to Cambridge, explaining that, although the heads were to “take care that nothing should be publicly taught to the contrary [of the Articles],” they were nonetheless to treat them as setting forth “their private judgments,” not as “laws and decrees” (Strype, 2:282). On December 4, Whitaker died. A day later Whitgift received notice of the Queen’s disapproval, at which point the Lambeth articles were officially a dead letter. At Cambridge, however, the Lambeth articles had already been received, and faculty judged likely to oppose them—­in particular, Peter Baro, the Lady Margaret professor of divinity for over two decades, whose anti-­Calvinist views were well known—­were already put on notice. Nonetheless, in late December Baro preached sermons that the heads regarded as attacking the new Articles. Baro, in turn, kept in close touch with Whitgift, a friend of many years standing, informing him, among other things, that he basically agreed with the document. However, on January 12, 1596, he preached a sermon that the heads considered a flagrant attack, at which point they began disciplinary procedures to secure his dismissal. Baro continued to deny that he was targeting the Lambeth articles and two days later sent Whitgift a paper setting forth his own reading of them—­ presumably to show that his sermon took issue with none of the articles, as he understood them. The attempted disciplinary action came to an abrupt end when Burghley weighed in, informing the heads that, with respect to their theological views, “as good and as ancient are of another judgment,” and with respect to Peter Baro, “ye may punish him, if ye will; but ye shall do it for well doing, &c. in holding the truth, in mine opinion” (Strype 2:303). Yet, despite the protection of both Whitgift and Burghley, within the year Baro left Cambridge, convinced that he would otherwise soon have been forced out.7 It seems inconceivable that Whitaker and Tyndall realized the implications of the Lambethani’s changes, so their deliberations must have occurred out of earshot. 6 The final version does not incorporate either of their suggestions. 7 The assumption may have been justified, yet the same year the university also elected Baro’s leading ally at Cambridge, John Overall, to succeed Whitaker as regius professor of divinity; and another Baro ally, Richard Clayton, received Whitaker’s post as master of St. John’s. 5

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We have already mentioned in passing the glosses of Andrewes, Hutton, and Baro, but there were two more. As noted above, Andrewes wrote up his view of the Lambeth articles for Whitgift probably in late November of 1595. Sometime before 1600 he sent his gloss, together with the manuscript Articles themselves, to Richard Hooker, who was writing on predestination—­an essay left unfinished at his death in late 1600. The essay ends with a terse restatement of eight of the nine Articles, the sixth, on assurance, having disappeared. The most valuable of the glosses, from a historical point of view, was however written up sometime after 1604 by one of the Lambethani, explaining the reasoning behind the various changes the committee made to Whitaker’s original draft, as well as their reasons for leaving some articles unchanged. The original 1651 Latin edition of the Lambeth articles included this gloss, which has received surprisingly little attention: partly, one suspects, because the sole English translation, that of 1700, attains only intermittent intelligibility. Although the revised Lambeth articles were neither authorized nor even printed,8 it circulated widely in manuscript and seems to have been universally viewed as a stiffly orthodox Calvinist formulary. The puritans at the 1604 Hampton Court conference asked that it be given confessional status, as did the fiercely Calvinist leadership of the 1629 Parliament.9 John Playfere’s survey of predestinarian theories in Appello Evangelium (published 1652, although written in the 1620s) groups the Lambeth articles with the supralapsarian hard-line position of Beza, Piscator, and Perkins. And Thomas Fuller’s 1655 Church history of Britain considers these articles, so understood, as “an infallible evidence what was the general and received doctrine of England in that age” (3:150). Fuller’s remains the dominant view of the Lambeth articles, which, whatever their original significance, are central to the modern debate regarding the nature of Elizabethan mainstream religion. Tyacke regards Whitgift’s endorsement of Whitaker’s propositions, with only a handful of small changes, as proof that “by the 1590s Calvinism was dominant in the highest reaches of the established Church” (202). Lake similarly considers Whitgift to have been in “almost complete doctrinal agreement” with Whitaker. Like Fuller and Tyacke, Lake thus sees the Lambeth articles as evidence for a Calvinist consensus. Yet, as Lake also notes, there are problems with this account of things. Whitgift had been archbishop for over a decade, and to this point had defended “an autonomous and broadly based national Church” against attempts to impose a “closely defined body of doctrinal orthodoxy” (211–­12); moreover, his initial response to the heads indicated agreement with Barrett on key points. So why would he then ratify a hard-­line supralapsarian document that could only prove divisive? And why, if his revisions to Whitaker’s text were mainly cosmetic, did he make the changes at all (225)? The second question is easier to answer. Whitgift did not make the changes; they were proposed by the Lambethani, as the glosses below make clear. This answer, however,

8 9

I.e., they were not printed in England before 1651; Fuller notes a Continental printing in 1613 (3:149). It was in fact incorporated into Bishop Ussher’s staunchly Calvinist Irish articles of 1615.

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merely leads to further questions: who were these Lambethani? Why did Whitgift invite them to comment: what, that is to say, was their remit? Why did they make the changes? The clues lie in the changes themselves. All the changes follow a single pattern, exemplified in the second article’s replacement of Whitaker’s “the absolute and simple will of God” as the efficient cause of predestination with “the will of God’s good pleasure (voluntas beneplaciti).” The “absolute will of God” is a Calvinist locution, its meaning announced on the title page to Dove’s assertively Calvinist 1597 Paul’s Cross sermon, which identifies “the absolute will of God” as “his secret decree from all eternity . . . [whereby] some are predestined to salvation, others to destruction.”10 In Dove, and in Calvinist theology generally, this absolute will of God stands in contrast to his revealed will, according to which God does not desire the death of a sinner, but would have all come to him. Moreover, Dove adds, God’s absolute or secret will is his voluntas beneplacita . Dove’s source here is the Sentences of Peter Lombard, whose distinction between God’s voluntas beneplaciti and voluntas signi—­the will of his good pleasure and his signified will—­corresponds to the Calvinist one between God’s absolute (or secret) and his revealed will.11 Hence the revision of the second Lambeth article can be viewed as merely nominal; the theological point remains unchanged. However, unlike “absolute will,” voluntas beneplaciti allows for a second possibility, because Aquinas and Bonaventure also use the term voluntas beneplaciti, but in a sense wholly different from Lombard’s. Drawing on St. John Damascene,12 both contrast God’s voluntas beneplaciti (which Aquinas also terms his “antecedent” will) to his consequent or conditional will. According to the former, which is what God primarily wills (i.e., without respect to individual merits or demerits), he “would have all persons come to be saved” (Deus velit omnes homines salvos fieri voluntate beneplaciti), for “God has not formed us for punishment”;13 yet as a just judge who wishes only good to his fellow men will nonetheless send a dangerous murderer to the gallows, so, Thomas explains, “God antecedently wills all men to be saved, but consequently wills some to be damned, as his justice exacts.”14 The phrase “absolute and simple will of God,” that is to say, evokes the predestinarianism of the secret double decree, whereas “the will of God’s good pleasure” allows both for this “Calvinist” sense and for a theology in which God’s primary will is that all persons be saved.15 As their commentary on the second article makes evident, the Lambethani understand God’s voluntas beneplaciti in this latter sense. Their revision of Whitaker’s original article does not alter its theology from Calvinism to something else—­or from a stiffer to a softer Calvinism—­but instead transforms an unambiguously Calvinist proposition into one susceptible of a non-­Calvinist reading. The Lambethani glosses on the other articles follow the same pattern. If one of Whitaker’s original articles can be taken in a non-­Calvinist sense, the Lambethani leave it This is the sermon reprinted . Lombard, Sentences, bk. 1, dist. 45. 12 See his De fide orthodoxa 2.29. 13 Bonaventure here is translating Damascene. See the former’s Commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences, bk. 1, dist. 46, q. 1. 14 Aquinas, Summa theologica 1.19.6, 1.19.11–­12. 15 Baro’s ally, the Lutheran theologian Niels Hemmingsen, understands the voluntas beneplaciti similarly; see his Tractatus de gratia universali seu salutari omnibus hominibus (Copenhagen, 1591), 7. 10 11

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unchanged. If, like the second, it cannot, they modify the wording to allow for alternative interpretations, including (and most obviously) a Calvinist one. Yet as their own glosses make evident, none of the Lambethani were Calvinists; they reject every one of the tenets that distinguish Calvinism from earlier predestinarian theologies (e.g., those of Augustine and Aquinas): namely, a)that God by an absolute and unconditional decree, i.e., without regard to foreseen sin, reprobates all those not predestined for life;16 b)that regeneration, justification, steadfast certainty of God’s favor towards us, and in general all saving graces are given to the elect alone; c)that such grace is irresistible; d)that it is also indefectible, so that those who once received justifying grace cannot lose it finaliter, but will persevere and in the end be glorified; and e)that, consequently, those to whom such grace has been given may be assured of their salvation.17 The Lambethani glosses, by contrast, adopt a position close to the one Playfere ascribes to Lutherans, Arminians, and “many Papists” (34–­35). For our purposes, the subtle distinctions between these matter less than what the Lambethani glosses reveal about Whitgift’s intentions. What seems clear is that when he received Whitaker’s original articles, he called together a group of divines from the opposite side of the theological fence and asked them to see whether they could tweak the articles in such a way that they could become, by a creative injection of ambiguity and equivocation, a consensus document. At least one assumes this is what he asked them to do, since it is what they did.18 Whitgift then sent the revised text to the Calvinist Hutton and the anti-­Calvinist Andrewes to get their reactions, since, if the Lambethani had succeeded in their task, both would have found the Articles at least tolerable, which, although they each had further suggestions, appears to have been the case. At the end of his own response, Andrewes indeed comments on the slipperiness of the Articles’ wording, pointing out that “everyone, as he stands affected or inclined, is going to wrest this or that word to support his own opinion; and, if the needed word is missing, he’ll fill the gap with his own interpretation.” It seems not to have occurred to him that this imprecision was deliberate. A quarter of a century later, the Arminian Playfere likewise observes that, despite their surface Calvinism, the Lambeth articles “are so composed as they comprehend most certain truths.” He goes on, however, to point out the fatal flaw in Whitgift’s plan: namely that, whatever their intended latitude, “all men will fetch the interpretation of them from Doctor Whitaker’s (the chief composer),” so that “his understanding of them must be taken for their meaning” (13). Whitgift’s aim may have been to craft a document that could be embraced by all parties within the English mainstream, but he badly miscalculated how harshly predestinarian its formulations sounded. The text certainly failed to paper over the gulf between Calvinists and those who, like Baro, believed that “God, in his infinite and unparalleled mercy towards the whole human race, wishes all to be saved” ; but the attempt, rather than revealing Calvinism “dominant in the highest reaches of the established Church,” points to the theological diversity among leading divines—­and to the This is the position Whitgift rejects in his June 8 letter to the heads. B through e constitute Perkins’ golden chain; hence, although Hutton explicitly rejects only b (see his gloss to article VI), he cannot consistently hold c, d, or e. 18 Hooker’s terse rewrite of the revised Articles seems likewise to be striving for a lowest-­common-­ denominator consensual platform, although the rhetoric of his version depends more on reticence than on equivocation. 16 17

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conviction at the highest reaches of the Church that, under the circumstances, fudging was preferable to fighting. [\

Note on the Text: The “Lambeth articles” reading that follows does not reprint a pre-­ existing text but is what we used to call a cut-­and-­paste job: that is, for each of the nine articles, we give, first, Whitaker’s original wording, then the Lambeth revision (if the article was revised)—­both in italics—­followed by the comments of the Lambethani and the several glosses of Hutton, Hooker, Andrewes, and Baro. The Lambeth articles, both the original and revised versions in parallel columns, first appeared in print in the 1651 Articuli Lambethani. This volume also included the glosses of the Lambethani and Lancelot Andrewes. It was translated in 1700, but very badly indeed. The text printed here is the 1700 translation corrected to bring the English into some reasonable agreement with the Latin, and with Baro’s and Hutton’s (translated) glosses braided in, as well as Hooker’s draft treatise, all three of which were first published in the nineteenth century. [\ Sources: ODNB (Baro, Barrett, Fletcher, Whitaker); Thomas Fuller, The church history of Britain, 3 vols. (London, 1837); Lake, Moderate puritans; John Playfere, Appello Evangelium for the true doctrine of the divine predestination . . . (London, 1652); Porter, Reformation and reaction; John Strype, The life and acts of John Whitgift, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1822); Nicholas Tyacke, “The rise of Arminianism reconsidered,” Past & Present 115 (1987): 201–­16.

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Pub. 1651

Whitaker & Lambeth I: God has from all eternity predestinated some to life, and reprobated some to death. Lambethani I: This article was admitted in the same words; for if by the first some be meant believers, and by the second some unbelievers, here is no occasion of contention, but it is a very true article. Hutton I: Most true. Hooker I: God hath predestinated certain men, not all men. Andrewes I: That God, in his eternal foreknowledge (or knowledge), whereby he sees things which are not as though they were, has predestinated some and reprobated others is (I think) without all manner of doubt. The words of Scripture are . . . before the foundation of the world; i.e., God has chosen us from all eternity; and when he had chosen, did predestinate us. . . . Now it was out of the world that he hath chosen us, John 15:19. And therefore he has not chosen all men in the world, but only some; otherwise it could not be called election. But then those whom he hath not chosen and, by choosing, favored (as the nature of election requires), he hath reprobated. . . . But it ought not seem as though there were the same reason for reprobation as for election, for one as for the other. And if this do not appear plain enough, I would add that some are predestinated one way: namely, through Christ; and others are reprobated another: namely, for their sins. Baro I: God from eternity predestined all the faithful to life and condemned to death unbelievers and obstinate sinners. For neither did God simply and absolutely predestine David and Peter to life, so also he did not simply and absolutely condemn Saul and Judas to death, but them as unbelievers and obstinate sinners. Those who do not believe shall be condemned.

1

{On the various texts pieced together here, see the preceding introduction.}

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۩ Whitaker II: The efficient cause of predestination is not a foresight of faith or perseverance or good works or of any other thing that is in the person predestinated; but it is the sole, absolute, and simple will of God. Lambeth II: The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not a foresight of faith or perseverance or good works or of any other thing that is in the persons predestinated; but it is the sole will of God’s good pleasure.2 Lambethani II: In this second article there was added by the Lambeth divines: 1. moving, 2. to life, 3. The sole, absolute, and simple will of God is changed into The sole will of God’s good pleasure, and that not without good reason: for the moving cause of predestination to life is not faith but the merit of Christ; since God designed salvation for those that are to be saved, not for their faith, but for the sake of Christ. The word moving agrees properly to merit, and merit is in the obedience of Christ and not in our faith. These words to life are added because, although a foresight of infidelity and impenitency be the cause of predestination to death—­and indeed {here the moving cause is foresight} of something which is in the persons predestinated to death—­yet there is no cause of predestination to life but the sole good-­will and pleasure of God, according to that of St. Austin: The cause of predestination is sought for and not found, but the cause of reprobation is sought for and found too. The absolute and simple will of God signifies something more than the sole will of God’s good pleasure. For the will of God’s good pleasure is conditional, and God would have us to do well if we wish not to miss of his grace; and it has pleased God to save all men if they would believe. Hutton II: Equally true. Hooker II: The cause moving him hereunto was not the foresight of any virtue in us at all. Andrewes II: The word of God by the Prophet is most true, that in me only is thy help; i.e., help is to be had from none but me; and from me you can have nothing else but help. As also that of the Apostle: Who is it that maketh thee to differ from another? i.e., from God alone we have whatsoever makes us to differ from others. But yet concerning that expression the sole will of his good pleasure, it may be asked: 1. whether it includes or excludes Christ; i.e., whether the act of predestinating be an absolute or a relative act. As to myself, I think it to be relative, and that there is no good pleasure of God towards men but by his Son, in whom he is well pleased; nor that any one is predestinated either before or without respect to Christ. But (as the Scripture has it) Christ was first foreknown, 1 Pet. 1:2, and then we in him, Rom. 8:29. Christ was first predestinated, Rom. 1:4, and then we by him, Eph. 1:5. Now we are not (as some imagine) in the first place elected, and Christ afterwards and for our sakes: for it were impossible for us to be predestinated into the adoption of sons but by a natural Son, neither could we be predestinated to be conformable to the image of his Son (as the Scripture speaks) unless the Son were first appointed, to whose image we are to be conformed. Wherefore to this article likewise I would choose to add, “the good pleasure of God in Christ.” And then in the second place, it may be asked likewise whether this sole will if his 2

{On this phrase, in Latin, the “voluntas beneplaciti Dei,” see the introduction to this section.}

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good pleasure includes or excludes the foreknowledge of God? I can by no means think that these two things, (viz. to foreknow and to predestinate) are to be separated, but we should rather (as the apostles do) join them together. But in this neither dare I give my opinion rashly or condemn the Fathers, who almost all do assert that we are both elected and predestinated according to a faith foreseen; which also Beza himself confesses, saying, that the Fathers are by no means in this matter to be regarded who refer it all to a foresight. In this, however, I should think that they spoke rather concerning the series and order that God made use of in the act of predestination than of the real cause of it: which order some dispose one way and some another, according to their different apprehensions. But the Fathers seem to me to have thought that there was no election but what was disposed in this following manner: 1. that God loveth Christ, and then loves us in Christ; as also the Apostle says, Eph. 1:6, that God hath accepted us in the Beloved; 2. those that are thus accepted, he does endue with grace and faith; 3. those that are so endued, and thereby distinguished from the rest, he does elect; and 4. the elect he does predestinate. Most certainly the nature of election supposes that there is some difference betwixt him that is elected and him that is rejected. . . . So likewise St. Austin: election does not precede justification (to wit, foreseen), but justification precedes election; for nobody is elected unless he be already at some distance from him that is rejected; whence is that saying, “That God hath chosen us before the foundation of the world.”3 But I do not see how that can be said, except with respect to his foreknowledge. And thus also the Schoolmen. Predestination (saith Tho. Aqu.)4 presupposes election; and election, love: assuredly, first God made them fit to be chosen, and then he chose them; he loved (dilexit) them, that he might give; and chooses (elegit) what he gave. And this likewise seems to be the opinion of the most reverend Archbishop of York {Hutton}, whose words are these: What was it that God loved in Jacob from all eternity, when he had as yet done no good? Without doubt it was something of his own, that he was about to give him. It is plain the Apostle does not fear to join together in this business his own purpose and grace given and that from all eternity [2 Tim. 1:9], where that grace given could not be but in foreknowledge: that is, with the eternal purpose of God, who foresaw before the beginning of the world that very grace which he would give. Nor do I think there is any inconvenience follows from hence, that God should so choose to bestow his gifts in us as to crown us with what he gives:5 namely, what first by loving us he gave, for the same, after it was thus given, he did elect us; so that love, {Augustine, “To Simplician—­on various questions,” 2.6, in Augustine: earlier writings, ed. J. H. S. Burleigh (London, 1953), 390–­91.} 4 {Summa 1.23.4. Aquinas writes, “Election and love, however, are differently ordered in God, and in ourselves: because in us the will in loving does not cause good, but we are incited to love by the good which already exists; and therefore we choose someone to love, and so election in us precedes love. In God, however, it is the reverse. For His will, by which in loving He wishes good to someone, is the cause of that good possessed by some in preference to others. Thus it is clear that love precedes election in the order of reason, and election precedes predestination. Whence all the predestinate are objects of election and love.”} 5 {The allusion is to Augustine’s famous dictum, “Dona sua coronat Deus non merita tua” (De gratia et lib. arb. 15; Confess. 9.34; De Trinit. 13.14, 15.21. See also chap. 16 of the Trent canons, sixth session.} 3

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which is an act of grace whereby God distinguishes us {from others}, as well as election, which is an act of judgment whereby he chooses those that are so distinguished, are both preserved. And thus election will remain. For that order which the Moderns make use of takes away all election, whereby God is made to deal with men—­considered neither as a single lump nor as made different from each other by his gifts—­so, as by an initial and absolute act, at one and the same time to adjudge some to salvation and others to everlasting destruction. After such a decree as this, I do not understand what room there can be for election, or how that decree itself can be called election.6 But this whole question (as I have said) is rather concerning the order in which God proceeds—­according to our capacity, who know only in part—­than of the cause of it, as to the act itself, which is one, and that most simple, in God. Or if it be about the cause, it must not be understood of the cause of a first and absolute act, but of the cause in respect to its entire effect (as they speak) in predestination. It is ask’d again, whether this be an integral act (according to our conception) consisting of various actions, or whether it be that one single act only? And if there be many and various ones, what is the order and series of them? Predestination (which must be joined with foreknowledge) supposes likewise good works. . . . Dare anyone say that God does not foreknow those to whom he will grant faith to believe? ({Augustine,} Of perseverance 14). Again, therefore on whomsoever God bestows his gifts, without doubt he foreknew that he should bestow them, and in his foreknowledge prepared accordingly, chap. 17. If there be no such predestination as we defend, men are not foreknown by God; but they are foreknown, &c. These [gifts] therefore which the Church does and always did ask of God, these God foreknew that he should give to those that are called, as in predestination itself he had already given them. Baro II: The moving or efficient cause of the predestination of the faithful to life is not faith nor perseverance nor good works, but the sole merciful will (or ευδοκία),7 extended towards all, of our good and great God. Yet there is no admission to heaven without faith, perseverance, good works. These, although not the cause of predestination, are nonetheless the means by which we are made partakers of this sacred and blessed predestination. ۩ Whitaker & Lambeth III: Of those that are predestinated, there is a determinate and certain number, which can neither be increased nor diminished. Lambethani III: In this article there is nothing changed, for it is most true, if it be understood of God’s fore-­knowledge, the which is never deceived; for neither more nor fewer can be saved than those whom God did foreknow. Hutton III: The words are those of Augustine, chap. 13, De corrept. et gra. Hooker III: To him the number of his elect is definitely known.

{Presumably because a choice (electio), unlike a decree, has to be based on something.} {The reference is to “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). See the introduction to this section.} 6 7

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Andrewes III: They are St. Austin’s very words: the number of those who are predestinated is so certain that none can be added to or taken away from them [De cor. & gra. 8]. And so saith St Ambrose, De voc., lib. 2, cap. ult.: The foreknowledge of God, which cannot be deceived, has lost nothing of the fullness of the members of the body of Christ. . . . for the Lord knoweth those that are his. Baro III: The number of the predestined is certain—­that is, to God, to whom all things are eternally present and, as it were, lie open. Their number, I say, is fixed in the divine mind and intellect. Notwithstanding, God, in his infinite and unparalleled mercy towards the whole human race, wishes all to be saved and to be partakers of his predestination: i.e., to believe and to come to the knowledge of truth. .

۩ Whitaker & Lambeth IV: Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall of necessity be condemned for their sins.8 Lambethani IV: In this article there is nothing changed, for it is most true, God having determined not to forgive sins but to such as believe. But if you would so interpret this and the former article as by a necessary consequence to deduce from predestination itself both the sin and the damnation, and imagine that it proceeds from thence,9 you would plainly contradict St. Austin, St. Prosper, and Fulgentius; and, with the Manicheans, unavoidably make God to be the author of sin. Hutton IV: Most certain; and yet if the word necessity were removed it would give less offense to the weak. Read Augustine, chap. 22, On the gift of perseverance, concerning how to speak about the reprobate.10 Hooker IV: It cannot be but their sins must condemn them, to whom the purpose of his saving mercy doth not extend. Andrewes IV: He that is not found written in the Book of Life (i.e., predestinated) shall be cast into the lake of fire, says St. John, Rev. 20. . . . And that he will be damned for his sins, nobody will deny; and that necessarily . . . not by an absolute but a conditional necessity. That is, as the article itself explains it, because of their sins. It is because they have sinned, and not because they are not predestinated. Though at the same time, I think we ought to avoid making use of the terms necessity and necessarily, which the Fathers and Schoolmen have carefully done, and to substitute in their room “certainly” or “without doubt,” for we must avoid, as much as may be, all new terms and phrases. Baro IV: Those who are not partakers of divine predestination as a result of their obstinacy in sin and their final unbelief are necessarily damned on account of their sins and unbelief. For it is necessary that they who do not believe perish. But this necessity is not 8 {Strype’s text (2:280) reads “damnabuntur” (will be damned), not, as the 1651 edition, “condemnabuntur.” “Damnation” can only refer to the postmortem sentence; no one ever suggested that damnation was decreed from all eternity or that a person might be damned irrespective of sin. “Condemnation,” however, could refer to reprobation itself, or to a subsequent eternal decree binding the reprobate over to eternal punishment because of their inevitable sins, or simply to the postmortem sentencing of unrepentant sinners; the first two possibilities imply double predestination, but the third does not.} 9 {See Perkins, A golden chain, chap. 53.} 10 {Some editions divide up the tract’s chapters differently, whereby chapter 22 becomes chapters 57–­62.}

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simple and absolute, but presupposes that they have delivered themselves over to their sins, refused the Gospel or, having received it, rejected it thereafter. ۩ Whitaker V: A true, lively, and justifying faith and the sanctifying Spirit of God is neither extinguished nor lost, nor does it depart from those that have been once partakers of it, either totally or finally. Lambeth V: A true, lively, and justifying faith and the sanctifying Spirit of God is neither extinguished nor lost, nor does it depart from the elect, either totally or finally. Lambethani V: In Whitaker’s own manuscript, the words are, those that have been once partakers of it, instead of which, the Lambeth divines put the elect, quite in another sense, and according to St. Austin’s sentiments; whereas in the manuscript they are according to Calvin’s opinion. For St. Austin was of the opinion that a true faith, which worketh by love, and through which adoption, justification, and sanctification come to pass, might fail and be lost too; faith indeed was a gift that was common both to the elect and reprobate, but perseverance was peculiar only to the elect. But Calvin’s opinion was that a true and justifying faith is to be found nowhere but in the elect and those that are to be saved. The eminent Dr. Overall likewise maintained, both in the University and at the meeting at Hampton Court,11 that a justified person, if he fall into grievous sins, before actual repentance is in a state of damnation. And there {at Hampton Court} likewise, the contrary opinion, which would bear us in hand that a justified person, though he fall into grievous sins, does yet remain justified, was condemned by the King’s Majesty. So in this article the opposite of Whitaker’s opinion is upheld. Hutton V: Equally true. Hooker V: To God’s foreknown elect final continuance of grace is given. Andrewes V: I suppose nobody ever said that faith may finally fail in those that are elected; for that, to be sure, it does not. But that it does not fail is, I think, from the nature of the person of whom it is predicated,12 not from its own nature {qua faith}; from something specific to the person, not to the thing. And {I say} this on account of apostates, who ought not to be blamed for falling from that faith which was never true and lively.13 But now, whether the Holy Ghost may not for a time be taken away {from the elect},14 I think it is not yet decided, and I confess I am in some doubt myself. Concerning faith, the Apostle says, Thou standest by faith; be not high-­minded, but fear; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. Would not this be an ironical precept, if he {I.e., the Hampton Court Conference of 1604} {The Latin is “subjectum,” the individual thing that is the bearer of properties, in this case, the person who has faith. Andrewes here echoes Barrett’s claim that “in fide nullam esse distinctionem . . . sed in credentibus (Strype, 3:318; see also Harsnett ). The claim matters, for if there is no intrinsic difference between temporary and saving faith, then assurance becomes impossible.} 13 {I.e., if a person’s loss of faith resulted from a defect in the faith itself—­if they received only temporary faith—­it seems hard to see how the person could be blamed for having lost it.} 14 {I.e., can the elect fall totally, albeit not finally?} 11

12

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could not fall off? Therefore consider these following texts. 1. Beware lest ye also being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness, 2 Pet. 3:17. . . . 4. Quench not the Spirit. Would not all these be ironical precepts and speeches, if we could in no sort fall off from the steadfastness of faith . . . ? Baro V: Three Reformed confessions (namely the Augsburg, Bohemian, Saxon) affirm that the sanctifying Spirit of God and justifying faith can both be totally lost.15 The English Confession {i.e., the Thirty-­nine articles} supports this view,16 and there is none that contradicts it. All the Fathers, none excepted, take the same view. . . . Justifying faith is therefore sometimes wholly lost. In the elect, however, as this article rightly teaches, it is not finally lost. . . . that is, it is not lost in the elect in that it is afterward restored through repentance. Whereas on the contrary there are some among the reprobate who lose faith not only finally but also utterly, i.e., so that there remains no place for repentance: for example, those who sin against the Holy Spirit. . . . ۩ Whitaker VI: A truly faithful man—­that is, one who is endued with justifying faith—­is certain, with the certainty of faith, of the forgiveness of his sins and of his eternal salvation through Christ. Lambeth VI: A truly faithful man—­that is, one who is endued with justifying faith—­is certain with a plerophory of faith, of the forgiveness of his sins and of his eternal salvation through Christ. Lambethani VI: There is nothing here changed, except that for certainty, the Greek word plerophory is put. Now some of the divines would have had “plerophory of hope” {Heb 6:11} put in the place of “plerophory of faith,” but the absence of some of them whilst the business was transacting caused the word faith to remain as Whitaker had written it. Now they make use of the word plerophory because it does not denote a full and absolute certainty such as is that of the science or principles of faith (since faith pertains to things of which there is evident and certain knowledge);17 but only a less degree of certainty, such as is admitted in judicial and court-­proofs.18 This article is very true, if you understand it of the certainty of one’s present state; nay, or of one’s future state, provided it be a conditional certainty. For the faithful believes that he has faith, and he believes that a believer shall be saved. He believes also that he shall persevere; but this, not altogether with one and the same certainty, because this certainty depends partly upon the promises of God, who does not suffer us to be tempted above our strength, and partly upon the sincerity of a pious resolution of obeying the commandments of God in holiness for the time to come. Otherwise, if the article should bear this sense—­that a man ought to believe that 15 {None of the three are, in the modern sense, “Reformed”: the first and third are Lutheran confessions; the second, that of the Czech Utraquists.} 16 {See article 16 .} 17 {“Cum fides sit talium rerum quarum est evidentia vel certa scientia”: a difficult claim to translate in an era where faith and science occupy such different domains, although we still say that we believe climate scientists or the fossil record.} 18 {In the 17th century, this will come to be known as “moral certainty.” See the introduction to William Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants, in Shuger, ed., Religion, 894–­96.}

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he shall be saved, or is elected, with the same certainty as he believes that Christ died and is the Savior of the world—­this assertion would plainly contradict the Confession of King Edward, in which may be read: that the decree of predestination is unknown.19 And that of St. Austin: Predestination with us, whilst we are in the present dangers of life, is uncertain. And in another place: The just, although they are certain of the reward of their perseverance, yet must own themselves uncertain of perseverance itself. Hutton VI: In Augustine, chap. 8, On the gift of perseverance, reprobates may indeed be called, justified, renewed by the waters of regeneration,20 and nonetheless fall away, because they were not called according to the purpose.21 Hence it would be good to add “called according to the purpose.” Hooker VI: {omitted} Andrewes VI: I am of opinion that with what certainty anyone is certain that he is truly faithful, or endued with justifying faith, with the same is he certain of his salvation by Christ. Now I think this should be rather said to be a full assurance of hope (as the Apostle has, Heb. 6:11) than of faith. And if you will have it in one word, I would call it persuasion rather than faith. For we cannot have the same certainty of those propositions which are conditional and require something on our part to make them true, such as . . . “if you believe you, will call upon God,” as we have of those which are not conditional but are purely positive and dogmatical, as that “God is omnipotent.” Concerning the former, the degree of certainty is less, and yet it does not hesitate in determining its assent to one or other side of the question. Baro VI: He who endowed with justifying faith is certain through faith of the remission of his sins and of life eternal to come: not, however, absolutely, but through Christ, as it says in the article (i.e., if he adheres to Christ unto the end). ۩ Whitaker VII: Grace sufficient to salvation is not afforded, communicated, or granted to all men whereby they may be saved if they will. Lambeth VII: Saving grace is not afforded, communicated, or granted to all men whereby they may be saved if they will. Lambethani VII: The assembly have altered grace sufficient to salvation, which was in Whitaker’s own manuscript, and put saving grace in its place, that it might plainly appear that they spoke of that grace which is finally saving, or actually efficacious, or such as of itself, without the addition of any new grace, worketh salvation. Now this is not afforded nor so much as offered to all men, since there are very many, such as pagans, &c., to whom the Gospel has not been preached either by an inward or an outward call. Therefore those words, whereby they may be saved if they will, are to be {Article 17 of the Forty-­t wo articles, the precursor of the Thirty-­nine articles, first published in 1553.} {Regarding baptismal regeneration, see the introduction to The form of prayers .} 21 {This is actually from chapter 9 (or, in some editions, 21) of De dono perseverantiae. The phrase “according to the purpose,” or secundum propositum is from Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (AV).} 19

20

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understood of the next and immediate power; for if they be understood of a remoter power, the words sufficient grace were brought in to no purpose. And that is wont to be call’d sufficient (not which is efficacious, and does of itself actually work salvation), but which is sufficient to lead a man to salvation, provided he do not himself put an obstacle in its way: and this was the opinion both of St. Austin and Prosper, who say that at least a small and secret grace is given to all, and indeed such as would suffice to cure and aid. Whence Fulgentius: That some are not helped by the grace of God must be attributed to themselves, and not to God. Hutton VII: It would offend less if if they will were removed. See Augustine, On the gift of perseverance, chap. 22 {the same passage referred to in his comment on article IV}. Hooker VII: Inward grace whereby to be saved is deservedly not given unto all men. Andrewes VII: I do not think that saving grace is bestowed upon all; but to all it is offered, in that certain initial dispositions towards it are not only offered but even conferred upon all. And if men themselves are not wanting to these, even saving grace itself would follow. The words afforded, communicated, granted, if they be relative and imply our receiving them, it is true that grace is not thus afforded, etc. But if they do not include any relation, but only the offering on God’s part—­that God is ready at hand to grant and communicate it—­in this sense, I think saving grace is communicated to all . . . for grace is not wanting to us, but we are wanting to it. . . . Baro VII: Saving grace, by which one is able to be saved, if he wishes (i.e., if he harkens to God unto the end), this grace, I say, although offered to each, is nonetheless not afforded, communicated, or granted to each. For many reject the offered grace, and do not suffer it to be afforded, communicated, or granted to them. ۩ Whitaker & Lambeth VIII: No man can come to Christ unless it be given him and unless the Father draw him; and all men are not drawn by the Father that they come to the Son. Lambethani VIII: In this article there is nothing changed; for all men are not drawn by the utmost degree of force and persuasion. But he that denies that all men are drawn by a remoter force takes away that general assistance or common aid, which, as St. Prosper saith, rouses the hearts and affections of all men. Now as to this force or drawing, the Lambeth divines did not, with Whitaker, understand to be a physical, irresistible determination, but a divine operation, such as co-­operates in the conversion of men, which does not take away the free nature of the will, but first makes it fit for a spiritual good, and then makes it good in itself. Hutton VIII: This article seems the same as the preceding one. Hooker VIII: No man cometh unto Christ whom God, by the inward grace of his Spirit, draweth not. Andrewes VIII: It is truly said that no man comes to the Son unless he be drawn; and all are not drawn that they come to the Son; i.e., so drawn that they do come. But then we must add this too: that the cause why all either are not drawn or not so drawn as to come to God is the corrupted will of those men and not the absolute will of God. 344



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Baro VIII: All are not drawn that they come; that is, all are not drawn in such a way that they come.22 For some refuse to come to his calling of them and drawing them by his word. And they resist the Holy Spirit, as Stephen says. On these he imposes no necessity of coming. ۩ Whitaker & Lambeth IX: It is not put in the will or power of every man to be saved. Lambethani IX: In this also there is nothing changed; for it is most true that our salvation is primarily not in ourselves, but from a grace preceding, moving, accompanying, and adhering to every good work; and, secondarily, from the judgment and will of man consenting and agreeing thereto. There can be no power of the will towards a spiritual good unless grace not only take away the impediments but furnish it with strength too. It is not therefore placed in the will chiefly and first of all; nay, in no sort is it placed in the will, that any man, whensoever he pleases, may attain salvation. But that there is sometimes a sort of power in the will subordinate and agreeable to grace, nobody will deny that has any regard to St. Austin: Whilst we have time, says he, whilst it is in our power to do good works; and in another place, speaking of the punishment of hell, There is a greater thing, says he, which you ought to fear, and which you have in your own power to prevent coming upon you. Hutton IX: Only Pelagians and semi-­Pelagians will deny this. Hooker IX: It is not in every, no not in any man’s own mere ability, freedom, and power to be saved, no man’s salvation being possible without grace. Howbeit, God is no favorer of sloth; and therefore there can be no such absolute decree touching man’s salvation as on our part includeth no necessity of care and travail, but shall certainly take effect whether we ourselves do wake or sleep.23 Andrewes IX: It is not placed either in the free-­will of anyone, unless redeemed by the Son, nor is it in the power of anyone, unless it be given him from above, to be saved. Baro IX: It is not put in our will and power (scil., natural). For that anyone is saved is the work of Christ, and supernatural grace. [\ T exts: A defence of the Thirty nine articles of the Church of England written in Latin by J. Ellis . . . now done into English; to which are added the Lambeth articles; together with the judgment of Bishop Andrews, Dr. Overall, and other eminent and learned men upon (London, 1700) (Wing E587). Checked against: Articuli Lambethani (London, 1651) (Wing A3891) {the 1700 Lambeth articles is an often faulty translation, which we have silently corrected ad libitum}; Richard Hooker, Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity: the fifth book, ed. Ronald Bayne (London, 1902), 692–­93.

{I.e., grace is not irresistible. Baro interprets the phrase to mean, not that God makes no attempt to draw some, but rather that all are not drawn irresistibly. Andrewes’ and the Lambethani readings agree with Baro.} 23 {In A short catechism . . . set forth by the King’s Majesty’s authority, the interlocutor poses the rhetorical question, “Doth then the Spirit alone, and faith (sleep we never so soundly or stand we never so reckless & slothful) so work all things for us, as without any help of our own to carry us idle up to heaven?” ([London, 1553], fol. 39).} 22

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“Dr. Peter Baro’s orthodox explanation of the nine propositions concluded upon at Lambeth, sent by him to the Archbishop,” in John Strype, The life and acts of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1822), 3:340–­2 {our translation}. Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of York, comments on Lambeth articles, in Strype, op cit., 2:281 {our translation}.

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CATHOLIC REFORMATION AND COUNTER-­REFORMATION

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THOMAS WATSON (1513–­1584)

Two notable sermons . . . concerning the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the blessed sacrament

Thomas Watson was a leading humanist scholar who in 1543 became domestic chaplain to Bishop Stephen Gardiner, and he was imprisoned with Gardiner for supporting Roman Catholicism in 1550 and 1551. After the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary in 1553, Watson became a prominent Catholic preacher, and he was sent by Gardiner to orchestrate the restoration of the old religion at Cambridge University. In thanks for his success at Cambridge, he was made master of St. John’s College. Later, partially as a result of the sermons excerpted here, which he preached before the Queen during Lent 1554, he was made bishop of Lincoln. He was active in the prosecution of heresy, and in attempts to revive traditional Catholic practices, throughout much of Mary’s reign. [\

Watson’s Two notable sermons are among the most cogent defenses in English of one of the central pillars of medieval Catholicism and perhaps the most contested theological issue of the Reformation: the “Real Presence” of Jesus Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the Catholic Mass. For Protestants, any claim that Christ’s body and blood were really present, or that the Mass was a sacrifice for sins, was blasphemous, because it implied that Christ’s original sacrifice on the cross was insufficient and that further propitiation was necessary for the remission of people’s sins. For Catholics, by contrast, any claim that Christ’s body and blood were absent from the mass was equally blasphemous, because it implied that Christ’s sacrifice was only a single historical moment rather than something continuously available to his followers for the remission of their sins. Between these two positions, little common ground was available. Watson defended the Real Presence on many grounds, but among the most important were a textual argument and a historical argument. Textually, the key issue was the meaning of Christ’s words instituting the sacrament, “This is my body,” and Watson provides 349



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reasons why these words must be understood literally rather than figuratively.1 But just as significant were his attempts to marshal the authority of ancient Fathers of the Church. The purpose of these historical arguments was not to suggest that ancient authorities were infallible, but rather to suggest that the Reformed argument against the Real Presence was itself a novelty. For in the debates of the Reformation, when all sides assumed that God would never allow his Church to subsist in error, if Catholics could show that their doctrines were the original teachings of the Church, it became much harder for Protestants to argue that they were only trying to reform recent corruptions. [\ Sources: ODNB; Eamon Duffy and David Loades, eds., The Church of Mary Tudor (Aldershot, 2006); Lee Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation (Cambridge, 2005); William Wizeman, The theology and spirituality of Mary Tudor’s Church (Aldershot, 2006).

1

For the Protestant view, see John Rainolds, The sum of the conference (London, 1584), 67–73.

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THOMAS WATSON

Twoo notable sermons . . . concerning the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the blessed sacrament

15541

Obsecro vos fratres per misericordiam Dei, ut exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam vivam, sanctam, Deo placentem, &c.

Romans 12 . . .

The end of this my matter is to destroy the kingdom of sin, for which purpose God’s Son was incarnate; to bring which thing to pass in us was all the life, the example, the passion, the resurrection of Christ, and all the doctrine & sacraments of Christ. Like as, contrary, to erect and establish this kingdom of sin is all the travail and temptation of the devil, now fawning like a serpent, transforming himself into an angel of light to entrap & seduce the simple and unware; now raging like a lion to overthrow the feeble and fearful; and not only is it his travail, but also it is the whole labor & practice of all his children by imitation, as infidels, Jews, heretics, schismatics, false brethren, counterfeit Christians; both in living and learning, laboring night and day with all wit and will to destroy the faith of Christ, the sacraments of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, as much as in them lieth—­which three be special means to destroy the kingdom of sin which they with all their power set up and maintain. . . . I have opened the decay of faith, good works, & penance, which be remedies against sin. One other remedy there is, that lieth in much decay . . . I mean the sacrifice of the Church . . . which he hath instituted in his last supper, and so (as Ireneus sayeth) . . . Christ confessing the cup to be his blood, hath taught the new sacrifice of the new testament, which sacrifice the Church, receiving of the apostles, doth offer to God throughout the whole world. There is nothing so ancient, so profitable, necessary, & so wholesome as this sacrifice is, that hath been of some men, & that of late, so assaulted . . . without cause or {Watson frequently quotes the Church Fathers in Latin before providing an English translation; we have generally omitted the Latin, its absence noted by an ellipsis.} 1

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any good ground why they should so have done but that they knew sin should decay if that were used. . . . This little time that I have now, I intend (God willing) to bestow in this matter . . . that knowing the necessity and goodness of it, we may follow the counsel of Saint Bernard, which said . . . Let us learn his humility, let us follow his meekness and gentleness, let us embrace his love, let us communicate in his passions by suffering with him, let us be washed in his blood, let us offer him the propitiation or a sacrifice propitiatory for our sins, for to this end was he born and given to us . . . . . . . Here the prayer was made. Now entering to speak of the sacrifice of the Church, I presuppose one thing, which is the foundation of the same, to be most certainly and constantly beloved of all us that be here present: which is, that in the most blessed sacrament of the altar is present the true body and blood of our Savior Christ, the price of our redemption, not in figure only, but in truth and very deed, which the learned men call really and essentially: that is to say, that thing, that substance, that was upon the cross, is now verily present in the blessed sacrament before we receive it. . . . For seeing the substance of our sacrifice of the New Testament is the very real and natural body of Christ, as may be proved by many authorities. Saint Cyprian sayeth . . . In that sacrifice that is Christ, no man is to be followed but Christ. Here he sayeth that Christ is that sacrifice that we offer to almighty God. . . . . . . . . . The sacrifice of the Church and New Testament is the very real body and blood of our Savior Christ, which is also testified by Chrysostom in his homily he writeth of the praise of God in these words . . . fear and reverence that table, above the which lieth that sacrifice (that is to say Christ) which for our cause was slain. By which words Chrysostom declareth his faith that the sacrifice of the Church is Christ, and also that Christ is not only in heaven, as some men damnably beareth you in hand, but is placed lying above the table of the altar as the substance of our sacrifice. . . . Whereupon I conclude that if we have not Christ’s body and blood present in the sacrament for our external sacrifice, whereby we may mitigate and please almighty God, and obtain remission of sin & spiritual grace & gifts, then should we be no better than the Turks, seeing all nations from the beginning of the world, both gentiles and Jews, have had one kind of outward sacrifice to declare and express their inward devotion and religion, either to the true God of heaven or to such as they fantasied or feigned to be gods, saving only the Turks (as Petrus Cluniacensis writeth). Whereby it appeareth that this sect that denyeth and destroyeth the Mass, which is the sacrifice of the Church, is verily the sect of Mahumet, preparing a way for the Turk to overrun all Christendom, as he hath done a great piece already. For what could the Turk do more against our faith, if he did overcome us, beside our thralldom and tyrannical oppression, but as these men do now to take away our sacraments and sacrifice, and to leave us nothing but the bare name of Christ, and if there be any good man that hath true religion in his heart, to compel him to keep it within him, that he shall not express it outwardly? . . .  352



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But for the avoiding of these absurdities and for such causes as I shall, God willing, declare hereafter, I presuppose this foundation of Christ’s body to be really present in the blessed sacrament, to be steadfastly believed of us all, upon the which I build all that remaineth now to be said. Which foundation, although it hath been undermined of many men and many ways . . . yet, as I intend not to occupy all this time in that, so I may not well so slenderly leave it, that hath been so much and often assaulted, but shall declare the sum of that moveth me to continue still in that truth I was born in, to keep still that faith I was baptized in and put on Christ: which faith, seeing it is universal, if I should leave it, I should forsake Christ and be an heretic, not following that form of doctrine I received of my fathers and they of theirs from the beginning, but choosing myself a new way and new masters that please me, being so condemned by mine own conscience & judgment, which is the very property and definition of an heretic. There be three things that hold me in this faith: the manifest and plain Scripture, the uniform authorities of holy men, and the consent of the universal Church. These three be the arguments that a Christian man may stick unto and never be deceived, specially if they be knit and joined together concerning one matter; but if they be separate, then some of them be but weak staffs to lean unto. As for example, the Scripture without the consent of the Church is a weapon as meet for an heretic as for a Catholic . . . because the very Scripture indeed is not the bare letter as it lieth to be taken of every man, but the true sense as it is delivered by the universal consent of Christ’s Church. . . . The consent of the Church is always a sure staff, the very pillar of truth, whether it be in things expressed in the letter of the Scripture or in things delivered unto us by tradition of the apostles. He that holdeth him by this staff cannot fall in faith, but stand in truth. Now concerning this matter of the present, I am able by God’s help to show all these three things joined and knit together so, that we cannot be deceived in this point except we will deceive ourselves, as many wilfully do. The Scripture by plain & manifest words, against the which hell gates shall never prevail, doth testify & confirm our faith in many places, but specially in the words of our Savior Christ himself in his last supper, saying to his disciples: Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many and for you in remission of sins: which most plain Scriptures many have gone about to delude, & to reduce them to a base understanding by figurative speeches, contending these words, This is my body, This is my blood to be spoken figuratively and not as the words purport, because other like sayings in the Scripture be taken figuratively, as these: I am the way, I am the door. . . . . . . Thirdly we may consider that these words be the performance of a former promise, where Christ (as it is written in the 6th chapter of S. John) promised to give us the same flesh to eat that he would give to the death for the life of the world, saying . . . The bread which I shall give unto you is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. Which promise we never read that Christ, which is the very truth and cannot lie, did ever at any time perform but in his last supper, when he gave his body and blood to his disciples; and to promise his flesh, & to give bare bread and not his flesh, is no performing, but a breaking of his promise, and a deluding of them to whom he made 353



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the promise: for as for the interpretation which some men make of Christ’s words, that he will give his flesh to us to be eaten spiritually by faith, {it}is but a vain and feigned gloss for that text. And although Christ do so give it to be eaten by faith, yet we may not exclude one truth by another truth, as sophisters do. For Christ gave his flesh to us to be eaten spiritually by faith ever from the beginning of the world, & also at that present when he spake those words; so that it were a very vain thing for Christ to promise to give a thing which he ever before, & also at that present and ever after continually doth give. . . . . . . But if they will look in the sixth chapter of S. John, they shall find this grace of the mystical unity promised, not to the receiving of bread and wine, but to the worthy receiving of Christ’s body and blood: where Christ sayeth, he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, he abideth in me, and I in him, and so is joined and incorporate into one mystical body with him. Our sacrament, therefore, that hath the promise annexed unto it, is not bread & wine, be they never so much appointed to signify heavenly things (as they say), but the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the bread that came from heaven. . . . Another effect is the immortality of our bodies and souls, the resurrection of our flesh to everlasting life, to have life eternal dwelling in us. This effect is declared in the sixth of S. John: He that eateth me, shall live for me; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life, and I shall raise him up in the last day. Upon this place Cyrillus saith . . . Christ saith, I (that is to say, my body which shall be eaten) shall raise him up; I that am made man by my flesh shall raise up them that eat it in the last day. . . . . . . The greatest argument that Ireneus could bring to prove the resurrection of our flesh to life eternal was to allege the cause of that resurrection, which was the nourishing of our flesh with the lively flesh of Christ in the sacrament, not to this temporal life, as other earthly meats do, but to eternal life, as only Christ’s flesh doth; and this cause was believed and confessed of all men at that time, both Catholics & heretics. Insomuch that these heretics of our time that deny this cause, that is to say, Christ’s flesh to be really given in the sacrament & eaten of our flesh, do give occasion—­yea, I am afraid do give more than occasion—­for us to think of them, that they deny also the resurrection of our flesh, which is the proper effect of it, although as yet they dare not impudently burst out with it in plain words, though they express the same evidently to all men’s eyes in their carnal & beastly lives. . . . The principal effect of all is to make us one body with Christ, which is declared in Saint Paul, in these words: . . . The bread which we break, is it not the communion of Christ’s body (that is to say) doth it not join & knit us in the unity of one body of Christ? . . . for the bread which we break—­t hat is to say, the natural body of Christ under the form of bread, which we break and divide amongst us, not taking every man a sundry part, but every man taking the whole and the same; and as Cyril saith, God’s Son going into every man, as it were by division of himself, yet remaineth whole without any division in every man—­t his bread (I say) is the communion of Christ’s body; that 354



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is to say, maketh us that be diverse in our own substance to be all one mystical body in Christ, endued all with one Holy Spirit, whereby the influence of Christ’s grace, that is our head, is derived and deduced unto us that be members of his body, flesh of his flesh, & bones of his bones. . . . Which unity of body S. Chrysostom expresseth by a similitude of dough and leaven, that we are made one body as meal of many grains and water, when it is kned, are made one dough or leaven. His words be these . . . Remember with what honor thou art honored, of what table thou eatest: for we are fed with that thing, at which the angels looking upon do tremble and quake, & without great fear be not able to behold it for the brightness that cometh from it; and we are brought into one heap of leaven with him, being one body of Christ and one flesh, for by this mystery he joineth himself to all the faithful. . . . Let my masters of the new learning tell me, how that these words can be any ways applied and verified of bread and wine with all their figurative speeches and hyperboles. . . . Beside these effects gathered out of the New Testament, there be also other mentioned in the psalms. Whereof one is that this sacrament is an armor and defense against the temptations of our ghostly enemy the devil, as it is written in the 22nd psalm . . . Thou hast prepared in my sight a table against them that trouble me. By this table (sayeth Chrysostom upon this place) is understanded that thing that is consecrated upon the altar of our Lord . . . which doth arm and defend us against the devil, which sometimes craftily lieth in wait for us, sometimes fiercely and cruelly assaulteth us that be fed at Christ’s table. . . . . . . As S. Ambrose writeth . . . When thy adversary shall see thy house and lodging (of body and soul) occupied with the brightness of Christ’s heavenly presence, perceiving every place to be shut up from his temptations, he will fly and run away. . . . And (as Cyril sayeth) . . . It driveth away not only death, but also all sickness; it stilleth and pacifyeth the raging law of our members, it strengtheneth devotion, it quencheth the froward affections of the mind, and those small sins we be in, it regardeth not; it healeth the sick, it restoreth the bruised, and from all falling it lifteth us up. O what wonderful effects be these which by this blessed sacrament be wrought in the worthy receiver, against the devil and his temptations, against the flesh and her illusions, against the vicious affections of our corrupt mind! What conscience had these men, our late teachers & pastors, destroyers of Christ’s flock, to rob us of this treasure? . . . What meant they that took away this armor of Christ’s flesh and blood from us but to leave us naked and unarmed against the devil, that he should prevail against us in all temptations, and that the kingdom of sin should be erected, and the kingdom of grace destroyed? . . . For bread, be it never so much appointed to signify things absent, is not able to defend us from the devil. . . . . . . Finally considering the promises of Christ to his Church, that he will be with them to the world’s end and that the Holy Ghost shall lead them into all truth, then may we justly say that if this our faith be an error, it hath prevailed universally not one hundreth year, but two, three, four, yea a thousand year, & more than that, even to the ascension 355



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of Christ, as appeareth by the testimonies of all holy writers; and then may we say, Lord, if we be deceived, thou hast deceived us; we have believed thy word; we have followed the tradition of the universal Church; we have obeyed the determinations & teachings of those bishops and pastors whom thou hast placed in the Church to stay us in unity of faith, that we be not carried away with every wind of false doctrine. Therefore if we be deceived, it cometh of thee, O Lord; our error is invincible. But good people, we are sure God deceiveth no man. Let us all beware we do not deceive ourselves, as S. James sayeth. . . .

The second sermon . . .

Concerning the third point, which is the consent of the catholic Church . . . I shall but move you to consider certain things, whereby the consent may appear. First the possession of the Church in this doctrine so many years, in such quietness, without contradiction, that no reason nor yet injunction, nor no new device that the devil or his dearlings can invent to the contrary, either can or ought to remove us out of possession, except we will wilfully lose our own right and claim, seeing that we that live now universally throughout all Christendom have received this faith of our fathers, and they of theirs, and so forth even to the apostles and our Savior Christ himself, by whose mouth this doctrine (as S. Cyprian sayeth) was first taught to the world: that Christian men in the new law be commanded to drink blood, which the Jews in the old law were forbid to do. . . . Thirdly, we may know the consent of the Church by the determination of the general councils, where the presidents of God’s Churches & the rulers and learned priests of Christendom, assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, representing the holy Church of God militant, being led not with private affection, but by God’s Holy Spirit to his glory, instant in prayer, fervent in devotion, purely, diligently, and freely have intreated & determined those things that pertain to the faith of Christ and the purging of his Church, to whose determination as to God’s ordinances we are bound to obey. Wherein appeareth manifestly the consent of the Church. The first general council, both for the calling and also for the cause, was holden at Nice in Bithynia, by 318 bishops in the time of Constantinus Magnus, twelve hundred and thirty years ago, where it was determined and published to the world in these words . . . Let us lift up our minds, understanding and considering by faith that the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world is situate and lieth upon that holy table, which is offered of the priests without the shedding of blood, & that we, receiving verily his precious body & blood, do believe them to be the pledges or causes 2 of our resurrection. . . . Likewise the general council called Lateranense {i.e., the Lateran Council}, holden at Rome the year of our Lord 1215, determined this matter in the same terms that we express it now: . . . There is one universal Church of all faithful people, without the which no man is saved 2

{“Pledges or causes” in Latin is “symbola.”}

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at any time, in the which Jesus Christ himself is both the priest and the sacrifice, whose body and blood be truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiate into his body, & the wine into his blood by the power of God. This form of doctrine, after this sort, & in these terms, hath been taught, professed, & believed throughout the whole catholic Church ever since that time, howsoever some heretics . . . leaning to their sensuality and blind reason against faith have repined and barked against the same. But I put no doubts but by God’s grace, if the time would suffer me, to make this matter of transubstantiation as plain as the other of the real presence.3 . . . Here the prayer was made. Against the blessed Mass, which is the sacrifice of the Church, many words of many men have been said, but sufficient reproof of it hath not yet been heard. Scripture never once was yet alleged against it, saving one out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where S. Paul writeth that Christ entered into heaven by his own blood once, and afterward he saith: Christ was once offered up to take away the sins of many; and all the argument consisteth in this word once, which I shall (God willing) discuss hereafter. But in very deed that same Scripture, that they bring against the Mass to no purpose, is the very foundation of the Mass. . . . Like as there is one God the Father, one Christ our redeemer, one body and Church which is redeemed, so there is but one only sacrifice whereby we be redeemed, which was once, & never but once, made upon the altar of the cross for the sins of all men. This sacrifice is propitiatory, and a sufficient price & ransom of the whole world, as S. John sayeth, he is the propitiation for our sins, & not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. . . . The vertue of this sacrifice began when God promised that the seed of Adam should bruise and break the serpent’s head. Without the merit of this sacrifice there is no salvation, for God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This sacrifice is common to both the Testaments, whereof both take their effect, whose vertue is extended from the beginning of the world to the last end, for the Lamb was slain from the beginning of the world, as S. John saith. It is also a bloody and passible sacrifice, extending to the death of him that offered himself; & it was promised to the fathers and performed in the fullness of time [Galat. 3-­4], the merits whereof receiveth no augmentation, because it is perfect; nor yet diminution, because it is eternal. And although this sacrifice be sufficient to save all men, yet it is not effectual to the salvation of all men: it is able to save all, but yet all be not saved, for what doth it profit the Turks, Saracens, unfaithful gentiles, & counterfeit Christians? The fault is not in God, being merciful to all his works, who created us without us; but the fault is in ourselves. Therefore that this sacrifice of Christ, as it is sufficient for all, so it may be effectual and profitable for all. God hath ordained certain means whereby we may be made able to receive the merit of it, and whereby the vertue of it is brought and applied unto us in the New Testament, after his Passion; as it was to the fathers in the Old Testament, before his Passion. 3

{Watson does not, in fact, go on to deal with transubstantiation.}

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Of these means, some be inward, some be outward: the inward be common to both the Testaments, of which the first & principal is faith, for without faith it is not possible to please God [Heb. 11]. . . . Charity also is a mean, for he that loveth not, remaineth in death; he that hateth his brother is in darkness, & walketh in darkness, and cannot tell whether he goeth [1. Jo. 2-­3]. . . . He is not, therefore, partaker of Christ’s merits in the remission of sin, that lacketh charity. And so may we say of hope, without the which no man receiveth mercy at Christ’s hand. Amongst the inward means there be other spiritual sacrifices, as the sacrifice of a contrite heart [Ps. 50], which God doth much regard; the sacrifice of our lips [Hosea 14], which is prayer & praise of God, whereby we attain remission of sin, having a plain promise that whatsoever we ask of God in the name of Christ, we shall obtain it [Luke 11, Mat. 7]. And the sacrifices of alms & benevolence, which Saint Paul would not have us to forget, because God is gotten and won by such sacrifices [Heb. 13]. All these and other such like do not fully deserve grace and remission of sin, but be means that the vertue and merit of Christ’s passion may be derived and applied unto us, as he hath ordained. There be also other outward means, as sacraments and sacrifices. Of sacraments, some be proper to the Old Testament, some proper to the New: without the which, ordinarily there is no remission of sin nor collation {i.e., conferral} of grace. As circumcision was to the fathers, so baptism is to us—­without the which, this bloody sacrifice taketh not away original sin, not because it cannot, but because God hath so ordained. For as it is said in the Old Testament [Gen. 17], whose flesh is not circumcised, his soul shall be put away from the people; so it is said in the New Testament, except a man be born again of the water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot see the kingdom of God; and except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye shall not have life in you; and except ye do penance, ye shall all likewise perish [John 3, 6; Luke 13]. And so must we think of all other sacraments of both the Testaments: that they be means ordained of God to attain that grace they signify, which grace is fully purchased and deserved by the passion of Christ, whereof only they take their effect. . . . . . . But to our purpose: that the oblation of Christ’s body and blood in the Mass is the sacrifice of the Church and proper to the New Testament, I shall prove it you by the best arguments that we have in our school of divinity: that is to say, first by the institution of our Savior Christ, then by the prophecy of Malachi the prophet, thirdly by the figure of Melchisedech in the old law; and this shall I do, not expounding the Scriptures after mine own head, but as they have been taken from the beginning of the most ancient & catholic Fathers in all ages. This sacrifice was instituted by the commandment of Christ saying to his apostles, do this in my remembrance. Our new men laugh at us where we say that this commandment of Christ doth prove the oblation of the sacrament. But we pity them that set so light by that they are bounden to believe & cannot disprove, seeming evidently not to regard & weigh the fact of Christ and their obedience to his commandment. When Christ said, Do this, by this word this must needs be understand all that he did concerning the institution of this sacrament. Let us now see what Christ did. First 358



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he did consecrate his precious body and blood by blessing the bread, saying, this is my body, this is my blood, for if this consecration be not comprehended under this word hoc (this), then have we no commandment nor authority to consecrate this sacrament. . . . Secondarily Christ did offer that he did consecrate, which appeareth by these his words: This is my body, which is given for you. And although this oblation may be proved sufficiently otherwise, yet to my simple judgment there seemeth to be no little argument in this word datur (is given): for seeing the Scripture sayeth, it is given for us, and not to us, as Zwinglius and our great Archbishop his disciple {i.e., Cranmer} would have it, we must needs understand by given for us offered for us; so that in this place and many other, to give is to offer. And although it be true that Christ was given & offered for us to the Father upon the cross the next day following, yet because the word datur is in Greek in all the Evangelists . . . in the present tense . . . therefore methink I may certainly conclude, because Christ saith, datur pro uobis, is given for you, that even then in the supper time he offered his body for us to his Father. Thirdly, Christ did deliver to his disciples, to be eaten & drunken, that he had before consecrated and offered, and this appeareth by his words, Take, eat, and drink ye all of this. The first and third, which be the consecration & receiving, be out of all controversy, confessed of all men. The second, which is the oblation, is of late brought in question, which I have partly proved by the plain words of Scripture, as it seemeth to me, so that I may well reason thus: Christ’s action is our instruction (I except his wonderful works and miracles), specially when his commandment is joined unto it. But Christ in his supper offered himself verily and really under the forms of bread and wine after an impassible manner, and commanded us to do the same till his Second Coming. Methink, therefore, that in the Mass we do and ought to do sacrifice, and offer Christ unto his Father, which oblation is the external sacrifice of the Church, & proper to the New Testament. . . . Some Scriptures they abuse; what they be, ye shall hear, they allege Saint Paul to the Hebrews: Christ was once offered to take away the sins of many. With one oblation he hath perfected for evermore all that be sanctified. These be the Scriptures they allege against the Mass; & they say Christ’s oblation is perfect; no man can offer Christ but himself, which he did but once and never but once—­as though we should say that Christ was crucified twice or often times. . . . . . . We answer them, that their argument is of no strength, to confute one truth by another, when both may be true: as to reason, Christ was but once offered upon the cross; ergo he was not offered in the sacrament. And we tell them that they do not consider how Christ is offered three ways of himself, and also three ways of man. First, he offered himself upon the cross really and corporally, as Isaias sayeth, oblatus est quia uoluit.4 This is manifest enough. And here their exclamations of once, once hath very good place. Secondly, he offered himself figuratively in the paschal lamb. For the Scripture saith, the Lamb was slain from the beginning of the world, and the fathers in the old law in all 4

{The Vulgate reading of Isa. 53:7a}

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their sacrifices did offer Christ, not in substance, but in figure; and so Christ offering the paschal lamb at his supper offered himself in figure. Thirdly Christ offereth himself in heaven really and so continually, as the same chapter which they bring against the Mass doth testify [Heb. 9], Jesus entered not into a temple made with man’s hand, a figure of the truth, but into heaven, that he might appear now to the countenance of God for us. What is this appearing in the sight of God for us but an offering of himself for us to pacify the anger of God with us; to represent his wounds and all that he suffered for us, that we might be reconciled to God by him? This is the true and perpetual oblation of Christ; in comparison of this in heaven, the bloody oblation upon the cross is but an image. . . . So that it is very plain, without all controversy, that Christ doth offer himself now most perfectly in heaven for us, being our advocate to the Father, face to face; and as S. John sayeth . . . He is a sacrifice propitiatory for our sins [1 Jo. 2]. He saith not he was, but is, and after the most perfectest manner that can be, in respect whereof the very true and real oblation for our redemption upon the cross is an image. So that by this we see by the plain Scripture that Christ offered himself three ways, beside the oblation of himself in his supper, which is the point we be about to declare. . . . The like argument they make against the real presence: it is a sign; ergo, not the thing whereof it is a sign. The foolishness of this reason every baker can tell, who setteth one loaf upon his stall to signify there is bread to sell within his house; which loaf is both a sign of bread to be sold, and also is very bread to be sold itself, of the same baking the other is. Even so the body of Christ in the sacrament is Christ’s very body in deed and also a sign of the same body. . . . . . . They say we make oblation for measled swine, for sick horses, for murrain of cattle, and thus with these vile and odious words they go about to bring the Mass in hatred with the simple people that cannot tell nor judge what it is, saying we have certain peculiar Masses for all those things in our Mass book. The matter of this accusation is true, but not the manner. For there be not in our books peculiar Masses for these things, but in certain Masses there be some peculiar prayers for these and such like things, and that by good reason. For in the presence of Christ’s body, when our prayers be most effectual, then we pray for the attaining of all goodness of soul and body, and the outward felicity of this world is as expedient for us, according to the will of God; and also we pray for the turning away of all evils of body and soul and worldly goods, always referring ourselves to his will, as he our Father thinketh meet for us. . . . To the due consecration four things be required: the matter, form, minister & intent. The necessary matter is bread of wheat, which is due as it ought to be, if it be pure, sweet and unleavened. . . . . . . . . . The intent also to do that the Church doth without mocking, dissimulation, or contrary purpose is required. For although the priest in the consecration may have his thoughts distract to some other thing & so lack attention, which is a great negligence in 360



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the work of God & deadly sin to the minister, yet if he lack intention—­not intending to do that God commandeth and the Church doth—­there is no consecration nor no sacrament at all. And for this point: what intention shall we think these men had of late that utterly denied to consecrate or receive Christ’s body and blood under the forms of bread and wine, but only to receive the creatures of bread and wine, & thereby to be partakers of Christ’s body and blood? For in the book of their last communion,5 these were the words of the invocation: Good Lord, grant us that we, receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine according to thy Son’s institution, may be partakers of his body and blood. Was there ever heard of any such institution? Look throughout all the Scripture and show me where ever Christ did institute, that by eating of bread & wine, men should be partakers of his body and blood. And if it cannot be showed, as I am sure it cannot, then it was a plain forged lie bearing men in hand that Christ instituted that he never thought; whereby appeareth that they had not this intention which is required to the due consecration; & also that they, in words pretending to have a zeal to maintain Christ’s institution, in their deeds showed themselves enemies & adversaries to the same. . . . ‡ . . . Now because the time is far past, shortly to conclude, I shall most humbly beseech you to consider and regard the salvation of your souls, for the which Christ, God’s Son, hath shed his precious blood; which salvation cannot be attained without knowledge & confession of God’s truth revealed to his holy Church, & by her to every member of her & child of God; whose sentence and determination is sure & certain, as proceeding from the pillar of truth & the spirit of God, by whom we be taught and assured in God’s own word that in the blessed sacrament of the altar, by the power of the Holy Ghost working with God’s word, is verily & really present the body and blood of our savior Christ under the forms of bread & wine; which is, by Christ’s own commandment & example, offered to almighty God in sacrifice, in commemoration of Christ’s passion and death; whereby the members of the Church, in whose faith it is offered, both they that be alive and departed, perceive plenteous and abundant grace and mercy; and in all their necessities and calamities, relief and succor. Our most merciful Father, grant us to persist steadfast & constant in the true catholic faith and confession of this most blessed sacrament and sacrifice, and with pure devotion as he hath ordained to use & frequent this holy mystery of unity & reconciliation, that we may thereby remain in him and he in us for evermore. To whom be all glory and praise without end. AMEN. [\ T ext: Twoo notable Sermons, made the thirde and fyfte Fridayes in Lent last past, before the Quenes highnes, concerninge the reall presence of Christ’s body and blood in the blessed Sacrament: & also the Masse, which is the sacrifice of the newe Testament by Thomas Watson, Doctor of Divinitie (London, 1554) (NSTC 25115.3).

5

{The 1552 Book of Common Prayer}

361

ROGER EDGEWORTH (c. 1488–­1560)

A perfect exposition of S. Peter’s first epistle, in twenty treatises or sermons

Roger Edgeworth was born in the marches of Wales and lived most of his life in the west country, except for his years at Oriel College, Oxford and a brief stint as a parish priest in Buckinghamshire. He was a noted preacher and theologian at Oxford, becoming doctor of divinity in 1526, leading to his appointment to a variety of important clerical livings, including becoming a canon of Wells Cathedral in 1536. Importantly, like many Catholic intellectuals and churchmen of his generation, his rise continued even after the break with Rome, despite his continued theological adherence to the old religion. He made his peace with Henry VIII’s regime by taking its ostensible doctrinal conservatism at face value and defending the Catholic religion against heresy: for instance, preaching against the most radical of the west country reformers, Hugh Latimer. In Edward VI’s reign, however, as the possibility for that sort of rationalization faded, he chose prison rather than yield to open heresy, and in thanks for that loyalty to the Catholic faith, he was made chancellor of Wells in 1554 after Queen Mary’s accession. [\

This excerpt, taken from Edgeworth’s collected sermons, is typical of Catholic controversial preaching in Queen Mary’s reign, insofar as it is not merely a polemical attack on Protestants but also is intended to convict Edgeworth’s Catholic readers and auditors of their own sins in allowing heresy to flourish. England was, in Edgeworth’s view, a nation whose faith had critically wavered, and the more informed among his audience would not have been unaware of his own record as a reluctant and unintentional facilitator of heresy, if not a heretic himself. The sermon itself is thus, like so many others in the period, equal parts confident assertion and sorrowful lament, an example or demonstration of the sort of reliance on Christ rather than self that it recommends to others.

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Sources: ODNB; J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (New York, 1964); J. Wilson, “The sermons of Roger Edgeworth: Reformation preaching in Bristol,” in Daniel Williams, ed., Early Tudor England: proceedings of the 1987 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1989).

363

ROGER EDGEWORTH

A perfect exposition of S. Peter’s first epistle, in twenty treatises or sermons

1557

The twentieth treatise or sermon Omnem solicitudinem vestram proiicientes in eum.1 Where Saint Peter, considering that the world doth unquiet many a man, and doth alienate his mind from the exercise of humility toward God and of other godly virtues by overmuch cumbrance of mind with solicitude, cark {i.e., anxiety}, and care of the world, exhorteth us to cast all our solicitude, thought, and care upon almighty God, for he hath cure over us and careth for us. The world doth even as Christ speaketh of the seed sown among the bushes, thorns, or briars: it cannot prove {i.e., thrive}, for the thorns suffocate it, stifle it, hinder it, and marreth it. Solicitude and care of the world is the thing that the world cumbreth us with. To exclude this, Saint Peter here counseleth us to cast upon God all our care, all our solicitude and cumberance of mind; let him alone with it. Yea, sir, shall I do so? This is a good, easy way if it would serve. I have father and mother, a great charge of household to care for, shall I let God alone with them, and go play and make merry? Shall I look whether he will send them meat by the birds, as he did to Helie {i.e., Elijah} by the crows and ravens {1 Kings 17} . . . ? No, that were to tempt God, etc. But I must do what pertaineth to man’s industry and to man’s labor and diligence, and then no further to cumber my mind or to wear away my self with cark, but then to cast all the rest of my care upon him, even as the mariners cast their anchor unto the land to moor and set fast their ship and to stay it fast, for there is sure hold. When we have done our diligence, let us lay all the rest in his lap, for he careth for us as a merciful father for his children. So that moderate solicitude is not reproved, but solicitudo obruens et confundens intellectum, such solicitude as doeth overwhelm and confound a man’s wit. And because that mundus per immoderantiam sauciat, the world woundeth man by excess and superfluity, therefore Saint Peter biddeth us be sober, contrary to gluttony, which killeth more than doth the sword. {1 Pet. 5:7b: “Casting all your care upon him.” The following notes translate only the Latin that Edgeworth does not himself turn into English.} 1

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And this sobriety is the same virtue that we call temperance, which is one of the 4 cardinal virtues, of which the wise man speaketh, among the praises of sapience, saying that the godly sapience, sapientia increata, the wisdom of the Father, the second Person in Trinity, of whose wisdom every man and woman hath a spark that lighteneth and inclineth him to goodness and to eschew ill: this heavenly sapience and wisdom (sayeth the wise man) sobrietatem et prudentiam docet et iustitiam et virtutem quibus utilius nihil est in vita hominibus.2 Heavenly wisdom, the increate wisdom of the Father of heaven, teacheth a man soberness: that is, temperance and prudence and justice and virtue or power (that is, fortitude). And these be the 4 cardinal virtues, unto which all moral virtues be reduced. Et vigilate, watch, take heed that you fall not to sin; beware, for you have a shrewd whelp to bite you, to bring you to sin if he may: adversarius vester diabolus tanquam leo rugiens circuit querens quem devoret.3 Where St. Peter useth the devil’s own term, a word of his own confession: Cum venissent filii Dei ut assisterent coram Deo adfuit inter eos etiam Satan, cui dixit Dominus, unde venis? Qui respondens ait, circuivi terram et perambulaui eam (Job 1). When the children of God, the good angels, came to stand afore God our Lord, the adversary the devil was also among them. The good angels be called here the children of God, in as much as they be made like unto him by participation of his glory, and for the gracious favor and love that he hath toward them and they toward him. The ill angels were not ill by creation or by name, but of their own froward will, declining and going away from the favor of God. To show that as well all good things that men do inclined by the good angels, as also all ill unto which they be moved by the ill spirits, be openly known to almighty God . . . it is said, Cum assisterent coram Deo filij Dei, adfuit inter eos etiam Satan; Satan the devil was among them. . . . And even so you must understand the other saying that Satan answered God again: not that he gave any knowledge to almighty God that he had not afore. But it is as much to say as that Satan considered and understood that all his doings were plain and open to the sight of God. Let us consider his answer: Circuivi terram et perambulavi eam; I have compassed or gone about the earth, and have walked through it. By this circuit or going about the world of Satan is understand {sic} his callidity {i.e., shrewdness}, wiliness, and subtlety to search whom he may deceive and bring into his snares. And this is it that Saint Peter meaneth, Adversarius vester diabolus tanquam leo rugiens circuit querens quem devoret. Wily persons goeth compass about the bush; Psalm {11:9}, in circuitu impii ambulant: in a compass, like as in all crooked things. . . . So they that be just and straight, when they intend a thing or say it, in their doings and setting forward toward that end or purpose, they swerve not by wrenches and wiles and bypaths, but goeth as straight as they may to the thing that they intend or promise, and to bring their purpose to pass and to good effect. But the wily pie {i.e., magpie}, the false shrew, in his beginning will pretend a goodly and godly matter, as for the glory of God, for a commonwealth, or for some work of mercy or some other; albeit in his process he will exorbitate {i.e., deviate}, he will go awry, he will compass the matter so that it shall finally end in a money matter: for to get lands or possessions, or for to rob men of their livings, or some such devilish purpose. 2 {Wisd. of Sol. 8:7: “She teacheth temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life.”} 3 {1 Pet. 5:8: “your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”}

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The devil (saith St. Peter) goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking for his prey whom he may devour and incorporate to himself, making him one body with himself; for the devil hath his mystical body, compact and made of such as he hath ravened {i.e., consumed} and swallowed up by their sins; they be counted and taken as his limbs and members. And for to get such he goeth about by compasses, wrenches, and wiles . . . as pretending some common project, or some honesty or commonwealth, or some particular pleasure or honest gayness, or such like—­but in prosecuting of his purpose, he will clean go compass and awry from justice and from charity, and will end finally upon some money matter for a private lucre to himself, with the spoiling, robbing, or undoing of their poor neighbor. Examples of this we have seen in our time more than I can have leisure to express or to rehearse at this time. In the acts of Parliaments that we have had made in our days, what goodly preambles hath gone afore in the same? Even quasi oraculum Apollinis,4 as though the things that follow had come from the counsel highest in heaven; and yet the end hath been either to destroy abbeys or chantries or colleges or such like, by which some have gotten much lands and have be made men of great possessions, which (by God’s just judgment) they have but a short while enjoyed; but many an honest poor man hath been undone by it, and an innumerable multitude hath perished for default and lack of sustenance; and this misery hath long continued, and yet hath not an end. Thus the devil goeth about, as he said by himself (Job 1), when God asked of him where he had been, he said he had compassed about the earth and walked through it. . . . And over some of them he doeth prevail, perverting them and bringing them to sin, which holy Job calleth perambulation or walking through them; and they may be understand by the said earth, which the devil said that he compassed about and walked through. And that he doth like a roaring lion, because that when he cannot by his privy lurking and temptations overcome them, he goeth to work with manifest and open terrors, bearing men in hand that they rebel against the king and against the king’s proceedings, which was wont to be their sheet-­ a nchor5 when they had none other argument. . . . And thus they have shaken poor men and made them either to say as they say, or else to hold their peace and say nothing. The devil, the author of these troubles, Saint Peter biddeth us resist by faith . . . in all things taking the shield or buckler of faith, with which ye may quench all the fiery darts or weapons of the most wicked devil. But Saint Peter addeth and putteth to more than Saint Paul doth, exhorting us to be strong in faith, and by that to resist the fiery darts of temptation: meaning that many have faith, and yet they resist not the devil’s roaring and fierce temptation; and because they be not fortes in fide, strong in faith, but very weak in faith, therefore they be soon overthrown and overcome.6 And that is the cause that heresies so much prevail among us, and perverteth and turneth the most part of people, as sayeth that great ancient Father, Tertullian . . . Hereses apud eos multum valent qui in fide non valent. Where he imputeth (as he well may) all the strength of heresies to the weakness of the people, saying: heresies be of great strength among them that be of no strength in faith, or that have no strong faith. He {As the oracle of Apollo} {An anchor of last resort for use in emergencies} 6 {Note that for Edgeworth “faith” seems to mean belief in the traditions and teaching of the Church, which is not at all what Protestants mean by the term; see, e.g., Tyndale, An answer .} 4 5

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putteth an example of these tournaments, as fighting with battle axes, or jousting at the tilt, or at proving of masteries, as wrestling or such other. Not he that is most strong hath ever the best game or hath the victory, but is many times overcome of a very wretch and of a weak man; and he that doth overcome, doth not always overcome because of his own strength, but because he met with a wretch or with a weak man that had no strength. And therefore it proveth many times that he that now overcame, when he shall be afterward matched with a man of good strength, shall have a foil and be overcome. So sayeth Tertullian: . . . even so heresies getteth and hath of the weakness of some persons that they {the heresies} be so strong as they be; and should be of no strength, if they should match or chance upon a faith that is mighty and strong.7 Therefore if you will resist the roaring of the devil and quench the fiery darts of the most wicked, you must do it by faith, and that by strong faith, for a faint and a weak faith will not be able so to do. How many, think you, of this audience here present be there—­a great many, I am sure—­that would have said once within this twenty years that no man living, no nor an angel of heaven, or all the devils in hell, should never have perverted you from the sure affiance and fast faith that you had toward the blessed sacraments of the Church. But after that there came among you a great multitude of pleasant preachers preaching liberty, and so pleasures following of such lewd liberty, how soon you have been overthrown and turned another way, judge you, and all for lack of strength in faith. Therefore I shall most heartily pray, you that will be saved by your faith, adorned and decked with charity, that you will be strong in faith, and not to follow every puff or blast of new doctrine, that so you may receive finem fidei vestrae salutem animarum vestrarum; the end and reward of your faith that is the health of your souls.8 That shall never fade nor fail, as he said afore in the first chapter of this epistle. And like as in the beginning of this present chapter he persuaded by example of himself, the pastors, prelates, and priests, even so now he exhorteth them that he write to by example of the brotherhood of other faithful people, to the sufferance and perseverance in persecution, saying: Scientes eandem passionem ei que in mundo est vestre fraternitati fieri; knowing that you have the same passion and suffering in you that hath be laid on your brotherhood.9 Here St. Peter induceth a strong persuasion to this purpose, that we should strongly resist all temptation, knowing that the same pain and passion that you have, also have your brotherhood that is abroad in the world; your brothers in Christ, faithful people, men and women, suffer like temptation by the devil our ghostly enemy as you do. They suffer like persecution of infidels and heretics as you do, yet they persist and stand strongly in the fast faith in which they have been instructed by true faithful people, and by true preachers. Therefore, considering that they stand steadfastly, it were shame for you that you should lightly be overthrown. And because that, even from the beginning of the world, good men have been assaulted, persecuted, and tempted, and yet have not been overthrown, therefore you should be ashamed, if you only should be worse than all men, and the very refuse and dogbolts {i.e., contemptible people} of all your brothers, not able to suffer anything. And because such sufferance, with perseverance in the same, hath need of help to succor man’s weakness, {Tertullian, The prescription against heretics, chap. 2} {1 Pet 1:9} 9 {1 Pet 5:9} 7 8

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therefore the blessed apostle Saint Peter hath recourse and runneth to God’s help and assistance, saying: Deus autem omnis gratiae qui vocavit nos in eternam gloriam suam in Christo Iesu modicum passos ipse perficiet, confirmabit, solidabit;10 Almighty God the giver of all grace which hath called us by our savior Christ into his eternal glory, which he would us to receive finally after this present life. Modicum passos, although we have suffered but little—­for all that we can suffer is very little and almost nothing in comparison of the everlasting glory that is prepared for us—­he shall make you perfect in that you be unable of your self, adding and putting to more virtues to them that ye have already; he shall confirm and make sure your weakness; for of ourselves we be but weak and ready to be overthrown by every suggestion or temptation; of him and by him we be strong and able to suffer tribulation and trouble. Solidabit. And where we have now but as loose limbs or members, shaken with fear and with errors, and scarce agreeing every man within ourselves in our opinions and in matters of our faith, but as it were one while of one mind and anon of another mind, and very wavering and unsure. And this is the very property of heresies: they be ever unsteadfast and not agreeing among themselves, but some take one way and some another, and that {i.e., what} pleaseth at one time displeaseth at another time. For example, how many manners and diverse ways of ministering the communion have we had among us? I have known one while the priest to take the bread upon the paten of the chalice,11 and turned his back to the altar, and his face down to the people, and said the words of consecration over the bread, and then laid it upon the altar, and afterward done likewise with the chalice and the wine. Then, because there seemed too much reverence to be given to the sacrament by this way, the people were all driven out of the chancel except the ministers, that the communion should not be commonly seen nor worshipped. And anon that way seemed not best, and therefore there was veils or curtains drawn, yea and in some churches the very Lent cloth or veil hanged up, though it were with Hallelujah in the Easter time,12 to hide it, that no man should see what the priest did nor hear what he said. Then this way pleased not, and the altars were pulled down and the tables set up, and all the observance said in English, and that openly, that all men might hear and see what was done, and the bread commanded to be common{ly} used bread leavened with salt, barm,13 and such other. And then soon after were all corporaces14 taken away to extenuate the honor of the sacrament, and it laid down on the profane board cloth. And at the said tables the priest one while turned his face eastward, another while turned his back eastward and his face toward the west, as the Jews useth to worship. And anon by commandment turned his back southward and his face to the north, and finally, after the last book that was set forth,15 he turned his face to the south. And this book made sweepstake16 of the blessed sacrament, {1 Pet 5:10} {A paten is the plate and a chalice is the cup used in communion; paten of the chalice refers to a matched set.} 12 {The “hallelujahs” are traditionally dropped from the liturgy during Lent, during which season the images in the church are veiled.} 13 {Barm was the residue of fermentation, often used as a leavening agent.} 14 {A kind of altar cloth} 15 {I.e., the 1552 Book of Common Prayer} 16 {A clean sweep; total removal} 10 11

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declaring there to be nothing else but bare bread and wine. This pulling down of altars and setting up of boards was used by the heretics that were of Arius’ sect, as Saint Basil rehearseth in diverse places. . . . All such wavering and inconstancy in opinions, if we convert ourselves to the God of all grace that of his great mercy hath called us by our savior Jesus Christ, he will solidate, stay it, and settle us sure, contrary to all such inconstancy. To him be glory and imperie {i.e., command} world without end. Amen. [\ T ext: Roger Edgeworth, A parfite exposition of S. Peters fyrst epistle, in twentie treatises or sermons, printed in Sermons very fruitfull, godly, and learned, preached and sette foorth by Maister Roger Edgeworth (London, 1557) (NSTC 7482).

369

WILLIAM ALLEN (1532–1594)1

A defense and declaration of the Catholic Church’s doctrine touching purgatory and prayers for the souls departed

Allen “wrote some of the best prose of the Elizabethan age.” C. S. Lewis places him with Richard Hooker as the two theologians of the era who rose “above the usual controversial methods of the time.”2 For much of Elizabeth’s reign he was the “unquestioned religious leader of the English Catholics.” His writings have been largely ignored, however, because most of them present an intractable problem: Allen’s defenses of his seminary priests—­of their innocence of the treason charges against them, of their saintly martyrdoms, of the cruelty of the English persecutors who put them to death—­date from the same years that he was (fingers crossed behind his back) urging and orchestrating a series of projected Spanish or French invasions of England to depose the Queen and expel Protestantism from the land. Although most of the priests on the English Mission (that is, the mission to return England to the Catholic faith) probably knew little of these plots, Allen understood their ministry as, among other things, the propaganda arm of a reconquista; as he told the Pope in 1586, the seminary priests’ labors “had made the Catholics in England ‘much more ready’ for an invasion,” for “no good Catholic now ‘thinks he ought to obey the Queen as a matter of conscience, although he may do so through fear. . . .’ The priests, he added, ‘will direct the consciences and actions of the Catholics . . . when the time comes.’” Given Allen’s vehement claims for the apolitical character of the English Mission, everything he wrote from 1569 onward stands suspect of what Duffy politely calls being “economical with the truth.” The 1569 date matters, both as the first year of the English College at Douai, which Allen founded for training the Mission’s priests, and as the year Pius V issued the bull Regnans in excelsis excommunicating Elizabeth and absolving English Catholics of their allegiance to her. The first of Allen’s invasion proposals, all which depend on this bull for 1 There are several fine recent overviews of Allen’s life (see bibliography), all of which turn out to be versions of Eamon Duffy’s splendid ODNB entry on Allen, from which all quotations in this biographical section, unless otherwise noted, derive. 2 Duffy, “William, Cardinal Allen,” 266; Lewis, 438.

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their legitimacy, dates from 1572. His Defense touching purgatory, however, comes out in 1565, at which point Allen was not yet even a priest; he only took orders in 1567. If Allen’s problematic subsequent career has little bearing on the Defense, his early life retains its potential relevance; and so, having begun in medias res, we will now return to the beginning. His family were minor gentry in Lancashire, one of “the most religiously conservative regions of England”; childhood memories of its rural Catholic devotion “would remain Allen’s fundamental ‘England of the mind’” throughout his decades of exile. He left at fifteen for Oriel College, Oxford, graduating BA in 1550. Like many at Oxford, Allen welcomed the university’s return to the Catholic fold at Mary’s accession in 1553. In 1556 he became principal of St. Mary Hall, also serving as university proctor in 1556 and 1557. In both capacities he seems to have “wholeheartedly endorsed the uncompromising religious vision of Marian Catholicism, including the persecution of Protestants.” Little more than a year after Elizabeth’s accession, Allen, like many of Oxford’s Catholic fellows, fled to the Low Countries. He matriculated in the University of Malines (Mechelen) on May 27, 1563. Shortly thereafter a serious illness led him to return home. Here to his horror he discovered many Catholics “attending prayer-­book services, some even communicating”—­an indifference to the sacred boundary between true religion and heresy that Allen feared would lead, and lead quickly, to “the extinction of Catholicism in England” (Bossy, “Character,” 45). He may well have begun A defense while in Lancashire. By 1565 Allen had returned to Mechelen, where he taught theology at the Benedictine college there. Planning for the English College at Douai was underway in 1567; the first students entered in the next fall, and by 1580 the college was ordaining close to two dozen priests annually, many of whom would return to England, where more than half would be imprisoned and close to a quarter executed. Allen himself remained on the Continent. From 1572 on, he was an active player in Counter-­Reformation politics, allied with the Jesuits, Spain, and the Guise. As part of the run-­up to the Armada invasion, in 1587 Sixtus V made him a cardinal; had things gone according to plan, Allen would also have become lord chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury. Things, however, took a different turn, and in his final years Allen seems to have relinquished his dream of Catholic England in exchange for the more modest hope of Catholic toleration. He died in Rome in 1594. [\

Only the saints went directly to heaven. Purgatory, perhaps “the defining doctrine of late medieval Catholicism,” was where those who “died repentant for their sins and having love of God,” but without having “made satisfaction for things they have done or omitted,” were cleansed thereafter by punishments generally held to be more or less the same as those endured by the damned in hell.3 The sacrament of penance, to be sure, remitted the culpa or guilt of sin, which would otherwise procure damnation. Divine justice, however, required that some penalty (poena) be paid, either by penance in this life or by suffering in purgatory hereafter. What this entailed in practice was that the contrite Duffy, Stripping, 8; canon on Purgatory from the Council of Florence (1438–­1443) at http://www .catholicessentials.net/purgatory.htm (accessed December 12, 2012). 3

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sinner would confess to a priest and receive absolution of his guilt; but to satisfy God’s justice, the priest would also impose a penance, often but not always a symbolic one (e.g., “say five paternosters daily”). If one did not complete the assigned penance, or if it were insufficient, or if one failed to confess the endless venial sin of ordinary human fallenness, one would make up the penalty under the harder conditions of purgatory. However, this period of suffering could be lessened by Masses said for one’s soul, by the prayers made on one’s behalf, by good works, almsgiving, indulgences, pilgrimages, and the like. These are the basics. Allen’s Defense lays out the underlying theology with impressive clarity. What follows merely summarizes his main points, with some addition of context or background. Penances are, first of all, understood as retribution for violations of divine justice; that is, their purpose is not to make amends to those whom one has harmed nor to restore the sinful soul to health4 but rather to punish it for having sinned. God, Allen explains, punishes the sins he has forgiven “for some satisfaction of God’s justice, against the eternal order whereof we unworthily offended” . This conception of punishment draws on Anselm’s doctrine of the Atonement, which centered on “the concept of justice itself,” and in particular on the claim that justice required that every sin (crime) be paid for by temporal suffering . . . [to] vindicate (‘avenge’) the particular law that was violated” (Berman 183). Moreover, since satisfying the order of divine justice is a good thing, it follows that the undeserved mercy of Protestant amazing grace is not only unavailable but undesirable. It would not, Allen maintains, be “seemly to God’s justice” if sinners could, merely by repenting, “without pain be carried at ease to heaven” . One normally pays by fulfilling the penance imposed by the priest after absolution, this being the “satisfaction.” The word, which comes from Roman private law, means payback of whatever amount the creditor will accept as sufficient to cancel a debt5—­in this context, as Allen explains, the “debt of pain for sin” , sin being understood as pleasure, which is why it must be paid for in the currency of pain. Correspondingly, penitential works have spiritual value because “present pain procureth perpetual wealth” . This is a spiritual economy in a quite literal sense.6 Sin is thus conceived “in legal terms as specific wrongful acts or thoughts for which appropriate penalties must be paid in suffering,” rather than as alienation from God and one’s neighbor, which is how the Fathers largely understood it (Berman 171). Because the object of punishment is not the person but the wrongful act per se, “the sins even of the just” will be “sharply visited”; hence, “not only the wicked but also the good must much fear . . . [God’s avenging] justice in punishment of sin” . Because the sin rather than the sinner is the object of punishment, or, to put it another way, because the poena of sin is a debt, the penalty can be paid by others. The souls in 4 This latter is Richard Hooker’s view: the aim of penance; see Laws . Bossy notes that it had begun to gain ground among sixteenth-­century Catholic theologians of a humanistic stripe (“Practices” 108–­9). 5 Satisfactio, in Roman law, est tantum facere quantum satis est irato ad vindictam; i.e., not payback in full, but enough to satisfy creditor (quoted in Bossy, “Practices,” 107). 6 This understanding of sin as debt, redemption as (literally) repayment, is central to Anselm’s theology of the Atonement in Cur Deus homo.

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purgatory continue to care about those who mattered to them in this life; and the living, to whom the dead likewise still matter, can by their prayers ease the suffering of the departed and speed them on their way to heaven. The penitential economy thus both articulates and creates, in Duffy’s words, an “ordering of the human community” (Stripping 8). The loveliest passages in Allen describe the mystical ties binding the living and dead into an ideal fellowship, where “every good work of any one member wonderfully redoundeth to all the rest” . The primary ties reach vertically across the distances between earth and purgatory, expressed in prayer, obits, and Masses pro defunctis, but they also serve as warp for the horizontal charity of funeral doles, almsgiving, endowments of colleges, oratories, hospitals, and churches, whose members pray for the soul of benefactors and founders . For Allen “the dread of something after death,” rather than puzzling the will, was responsible for the monuments of Christian civilization. It paid for them. [\ Sources: ODNB; Harold Berman, Law and revolution: the formation of the western legal tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Bossy, “Practices of satisfaction, 1215–­1700,” in Retribution, repentance, and reconciliation, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge, 2004), 106–­18; Bossy, Christianity in the West; Eamon Duffy, “William, Cardinal Allen, 1532–­1594,” Recusant History 22, no. 3 (1995): 265–­9 0; Duffy, “Cardinal William Allen,” in Roman miscellany, ed. N. Schofield (Leominster, 2002), 11–­54; Duffy, Stripping; Jacques Le Goff, The birth of purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1986); C. S. Lewis, English literature in the sixteenth century, excluding drama (Oxford, 1954); Peter Marshall, “Fear, purgatory and polemic in Reformation England,” in Fear in early modern society, ed. William Naphy & Penny Roberts (Manchester, 1997), 150–­66; Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002).

373

WILLIAM ALLEN

A defense and declaration of the Catholic Church’s doctrine touching purgatory and prayers for the souls departed

15651

The Preface: Wherein be noted two sorts of heretics: the one pretending virtue, the other openly professing vice. And that our time is more troubled by this second sort. With a brief note of the author’s principal intent in this treatise. . . . For Satanas his own person shapeth himself into an angel of light. And that his scholars play the like part, our master Christ, of singular love, gave his flock this watchword for a special proviso . . . Take heed of false prophets that come in sheep’s vesture but within be ravening wolves [Matth. 7]. He saw (that seeth all things) that the outward face of feigned holiness might easily carry away the simple. . . . But all this notwithstanding, if we deeply weigh the whole course of things, we shall find that this counterfeiting of virtue and show of piety is not the perpetual intent of the devil’s device, but rather a needful shift in furthering his practice (there only where faith and virtue be not utterly extinguished) than the full end of any one of all his endeavors. For this may we assuredly find to be the scope and prick of all his cursed travail: to set sin and her followers in such freedom that they need not (as often else) for their protection the cloak of virtue nor habit of honesty, but that they may boldly encounter with the good and godly, and in open ostentation of their mischief overrun all truth and religion. . . . This open school of iniquity and doctrine of sin he once busily erected in the gentility {i.e., among the gentiles}, by the infamous philosopher Epicurus and his adherents, teaching (to the singular offense of honesty) pleasure and voluptuousness to be the only end of all our life and endeavors. . . . This broad practice was yet further attempted even in Christ’s Church: first by Eunomius, who doubted not in the face of the world to avouch that none could perish, were his 1 {Where quotations are given both in Latin and English, we have generally omitted the former (the omission noted with ellipses), and also at times expanded Allen’s marginal references to make clear what work is being cited.}

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works never so wicked, that would be of his faith.2 And then by Jovinianus,3 who taught the contempt of Christian fasts, matched marriage with holy maidenhood, and afterward, to the great wonder of all the Church, persuaded certain religious women in Rome to forsake their first faith and marry, to their damnation. . . . But not long after, with much more advantage, the like practice was assayed by Mohamed, the devil’s only dearling, by whom numbers of wives together, often divorces, and perpetual change of novelty was permitted. By which doctrine of lust and liberty, the flower of Christianity (alas for pity) was carried away. At which time, though our faith and Christ’s Church were brought to a small room and very great straits, yet by God’s grace, good order, and necessary discipline, this school of lust hath been reasonably till our days kept under, and the gravity of Christian manners (as the time served) orderly upholden. But now once again in our cursed days the great flow of sin turning God’s mercy from us . . . hath made our adversary much more bold; and long practice of mischief, a great deal more skillful. . . . Look back at the Christian epicures whom I now named, and view the men of like endeavor in all ages; compare their attempts to ours, their doctrine to ours, the whole race {i.e., course} of their proceedings to ours: and if we match them not in all points, and pass them in most (I except the wicked Mohamed . . .), excepting him, therefore, if ours pass not in open practice of mischief and supportation of sin all the residue, miscredit me forever. . . . Feasting hath won the field of fasting, and chambering almost banished chastity.4 . . . . . . The Prophet Ezekiel termeth this pernicious flattery in matters of such importance the bolstering of wickedness, and giveth a heavy blessing from Almighty God to all bolsterers in these words. . . . Woe be to all them that sew cushions under the elbow of every arm and bolster up the heads of all ages, meaning to catch their souls [13:18]. . . . To such as made no store of good works, they cast only faith under their elbows to lean upon. To such as were burdened with promise of chastity, they made marriage a cushion for their ease. . . . . . . When I look back at the flower and spring of Christ’s Church and see sin counted so burdenous, and God’s dreadful punishment for the same so earnestly feared of all men that no salve could be so sore, no penance so painful but they would both have suffered and desired it, to have been fully free from the same; and withal consider the extreme dolor of heart which all men then expressed by often tears, by humble acknowledging of their misliving to God’s ministers in earth, and exceeding painful penance—­by long fasting, dangerous peregrinations, continual prayers, large alms—­so sharply enjoined, so meekly received, and so duly fulfilled; and then returning again to our time and state, where I may and must needs behold the pitiful waste of Christian works . . . and more than an image of mere paganism, as in which we find no face nor shadow of Christianity, 2

381.}

{Late fourth-century Arian; his views were formally condemned at the Council of Constantinople in

3 {D. c. 405; a monk who turned against aceticism, for which he was vigorously denounced by St. Jerome in his Adversus Jovinianum (ca. 393).} 4 {That Protestantism was a theological pretext for libertine sensuality—­ i.e., the opposite of puritanism—­was a standard English Catholic charge from the earliest years of the Reformation.}

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no nor any step almost of our faithful fathers’ paths, then do I well perceive the issue and end of the last ground of this wasting heresy to be nothing else but . . . a security and quiet rest in sin . . . and presumptuous warrant from the judgment of God’s mighty arm which reacheth over the offenses of the whole world. . . . Considering therefore the great spread of contagion that this untrue doctrine hath wrought both to the everlasting misery of heretics themselves and also to the grievous punishment that Almighty God of just judgment may take upon us (that by his great mercy be yet Catholics) because we live in wanton wealth,5 without just care of cogitation of our life past . . . for these things, I say, and for the stirring up of the fear of God in myself . . . I thought good to give warning . . . of that temporal or transitory punishment which God of justice hath ordained in the other world for such as would not judge themselves and prevent his heavy hand whiles they here lived. Our forefathers (more than a thousand year since) called it purgatory. . . . . . . Truth was ever bitter and falsehood flattering. For the one by present pain procureth perpetual wealth; the other through deceitful sweetness worketh everlasting woe.6 . . .

{A defense of purgatory} That often after our sins be forgiven by the sacrament of penance, there remaineth some due of temporal punishment for the satisfying of God’s justice and some recompense of the offenses past. Cap. 1

As it is most true and the very ground of all Christian comfort, that Christ’s death hath paid duly and sufficiently for the sins of all the world . . . so it is of like credit to all faithful men, that no man was ever partaker of this singular benefit but in the knot and unity of his body mystical, which is the Church. To the members whereof, the streams of his holy blood and beams of his grace, for the remission of sin and sanctification, be orderly, through the blessed sacraments, as conduits of God’s mercy, conveyed. . . . Yet like effect or force is not, by the meaning of their first author and institutor . . . given to all the sacraments. That may well appear . . . by baptism, in which sacrament, the merits of our Master’s death be so fully and largely carried down for the remission of sin, that were the life before never so loden with most horrible offenses that in this misery man may commit, yet the offender is not only pardoned of the same but also perfectly acquitted forever of all pain or punishment (other than the common miseries of mankind) which his proper offenses before committed by any means might deserve. . . . But now a man that is so freely discharged of all evil life and sin committed before he came into the family, if he fall into relapse and defile the temple of God, then (as God’s mercy always passeth man’s malice), even in this case also, he hath ordained means to repair man’s fall again. That is, by the sacrament of penance, which therefore S. Hieron

5 6

{I.e., weal, well-­being} [Cyprian, Epist. 3, li. 5]

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termeth the second table,7 or refuge, after shipwrack, as a means that may bring man to the port of salvation, though lightly not without present damage and danger. . . . Now therefore, if after thy free admission to this family of Christ thou do grievously offend, remission may then be had again, but not commonly without sharp discipline, seeing the Father of this our holy household punisheth where he loveth and chastiseth every child whom he receiveth. Whose justice in punishment of sin, not only the wicked, but also the good must much fear. Whereof S. Augustine warneth us thus . . . God spareth neither the just nor unjust, chastising the one as his child, punishing the other as a wicked person.8 A child, then, of this household, continuing in favor, though he cannot everlastingly perish with the impenitent sinners, yet he must (being not by some especial prerogative pardoned) bear the rod of his Father’s discipline, and gladly say with the Prophet, in flagella paratus sum; I am ready for the rods [Ps. 37]. . . . And the consideration of this diversity betwixt remission had by baptism and after relapse by the sacrament of penance moved Damascen to call this second remedy . . . a kind of baptism full of travail, by penance and tears to be wrought.9 In which, God so pardoneth the sins that both the offense itself and the everlasting pain due for the same being wholly by Christ’s death and merits wiped away, there may yet remain the debt of temporal punishment on our part to be discharged, as well for some satisfaction of God’s justice, against the eternal order whereof we unworthily offended, as for to answer {i.e., render} the Church of her right (as S. Austin saith), in which only all sins be forgiven.10 Marry, when occasion of satisfying for our offenses in this life is neglected, or lack of time—­by reason of long continuance and late repentance—­suffereth not due recompense in our life, which is the time of mercy, then certes the hand of God shall be much more heavy and the punishment more grievous. And this is without doubt to be looked for: that the debt due for sin must either here by pain or pardon be discharged, or else, to our greater grief, after our departure required. And this to be the grave doctrine and constant faith of the Fathers, I must first declare, both for that it shall firmly establish our whole matter and clearly open the case of controversy betwixt us and the forsaken company who would so gladly live at ease in their only faith that they list neither satisfy for their sins nor procure God’s mercy by well-­working. In this case, then, let us seek the order of God’s justice by the diligent consideration of some notable personages of whom we may have, by the plain Scripture, evident testimony both of the remission of their sins and their penance and punishment after they were reconciled again. . . . But the heartily beloved of God, King David’s example so beareth down our adversaries that I cannot well omit it. . . . This prophet had an express pardon, with a plain proviso that he should notwithstanding bear the heavy hand of God for the punishment of his former sin.11. . . Of whose case, S. Gregory saith marvelous much in these few words . . . God wipeth away man’s offense, but he leaveth it not unpunished; sin is not spared, because it {A “table” is a wood plank: here a makeshift life raft.} [Lib. 22, Contra Faustum cap. 20] 9 [De orth. fide lib. 4, cap. 9] 10 [Enchir. cap. 65] 11 {See the introduction to Wyatt’s Penitential psalms .} 7 8

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is not without revenge released.12. . . All the foresaid examples then being so evident, they must needs conclude this assuredly: that after our offenses be remitted, there commonly yet remaineth some pain and right debt to be discharged by the offender’s punishment before he receive the ample benefit of eternal salvation. . . . The double and doubtful shifts of our adversaries, pressed by this conclusion, are removed; and it is proved . . . that this transitory pain hath often endured in the next life. Cap. 2

. . .

But now, the other sort, which . . . confess that in this world the just may suffer of reason for his sins already remitted but not in the next life, as their doctrine is very untrue, so it giveth great license and liberty to evil livers and is the very mother of presumption. For if man were sure to be discharged at his departure hence of all pain for his sins, then certs were it madness to travail in this life further for his offences than he must of necessity. Yea more, it maketh the case of grievous sinners till the hour of their death (so that they then at last repent) much better than of small offenders converted long before. . . . This is not, doubtless, seemly to God’s justice and ordinance, whose ways be truth and uprightness. . . . And the holy Scripture thus . . . Look how high she exalted herself and how delicately she lived, and give her so much woe and torment again. It is spoken as of Babylon in the Revelations of S. John [cap. 16]. And because this toucheth our matter and the very point thereof, I will stand with the adversary the longer. Here then I ask him why God taketh punishment in this world for sin already remitted? His answer must needs be, for the revenge and hatred of sin, and satisfying of justice. Now then, doth God practice judgment and justice nowhere but in this world? Or if it be not here answered13 because of lack of space {i.e., time} or late reconciliation of the offender, shall our Lord of necessity be forced to remit the debt and release his sentence of justice for lack of means to punish in another world? No, no, God’s hand is not abridged by the terms of this life. Late repentance can be a benefit to no man. God forbid that it should. Especially seeing punishment and judgment for sin . . . properly appertaineth not to this world but by a special grace and singular benefit, which God of pity granteth to such as he loveth, that they may here prevent his anger, which else in the next life should be found more grievous. . . . And thereof the next life is termed commonly dies Domini {i.e., the day of the Lord}, where there is no place for our working,14 but sufferance alone; where the accompt of man’s life must be straitly required, and the sins even of the just, not otherwise amended, sharply visited. ‡

12 {Note that “revenge” means punishment of wrongdoing qua wrongdoing, i.e., retributive punishment. It does not imply vengefulness, i.e., the desire to inflict pain as payback for an injury to oneself.} 13 {If, i.e., the penitent sinner does not pay the just penalty in this life} 14 {I.e., for making satisfaction by good works}

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Let the enemies of God’s truth come now and deny, if they can for shame, that God’s justice for sins remitted reacheth not sometimes to the places of punishment in the next life; let them with purgatory raze up the Fathers’ resting place,15 so plainly set forth by Scripture. . . . Yea, let them that will have no place for sinners find with blasphemy hell-­ like torments for God’s own Son with the damned spirits. My heart surely will scarce serve me to report it, and yet cursed Calvin was not a-­feared to write it16. . . . That miserable forsaken man saw that the only grant of the old Fathers’ punishment by lack of everlasting joy might of force drive him to acknowledge that God sometimes exerciseth his justice upon those which he loveth in the next life, and so consequently that purgatory pains might be inferred thereupon; therefore he fell headlong to this horrible blasphemy, that Christ went not to loose any from the pains of the next life but to be punished in hell with the deadly damned himself, for to amend the lack of his passion upon the Cross.17 O our cursed time! . . .  That the practice of Christ’s Church, in the course of binding and loosing man’s sins, doth lively set forth the order of God’s justice in the next life, and prove Purgatory Cap. 3

This being then proved, that God himself hath often visited the sins of such as were very dear unto him, let us now diligently behold the grave authority of loosing and binding sins and the court of man’s conscience which Christ would have kept in earth by the apostles and pastors of our souls, where we need not doubt but to find the very resemblance of God’s disposition {i.e., arrangement} and ordinance in punishing or pardoning offenses. For the honor and power of this ecclesiastical government is by especial commission so ample that it containeth not only the preaching of the Gospel and ministry of the sacraments, but that which is more near to the might and majesty of God . . . the very exact judgment of all our secret sins, with loosing and binding of the same. For as God the Father gave all judgment to his only Son, so he at his departure hence, to the honor of his Spouse and necessary guiding of his people, did communicate the same in most ample manner (as S. Chrysostom saith) to the apostles and priests forever, that they practicing in earth terrible judgment upon man’s misdeeds might fully represent unto us the very sentence of God in punishment of wickedness in the world to come. The princes of the earth have power to bind too, but no further than the body; but this other (saith he) reacheth to the soul itself; and practiced here in the world beneath (which is a strange case) hath force and effect in heaven above.18. . . By this grave authority therefore, the pastors and priests, imitating God’s justice, have exercised continually punishment from the spring of Christian religion down till these days upon all sinners, perpetually enjoining, for satisfying of God’s wrath, penance {Let them, i.e., deny not only the existence of purgatory but of the limbus Patrum, where the Old Testament saints dwelt in hope before the Resurrection.} 16 {On the controversies regarding Christ’s descending ad inferos, see Milward, 163–­68. On Christ suffering the pains of hell on the cross, see The form of prayers ; Perkins, A golden chain } 17 {Calvin, Institutes 2.16.10} 18 [Lib. de sacer. 3{:5}] 15

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and works of correction—­either before they would absolve them, as the old usage was, or else after the release of their offenses, which now of late, for grave causes, hath been more used. In which sentence of their judgment we plain see that, as there was ever accompt made amongst all the faithful of pain due unto sin—­though the very offense itself and guiltiness (as you would say) thereof were forgiven before—­so we may gather that it was ever enjoined by the priests’ holy ministry, after the quality and quantity of the fault committed. . . . Whereby thou mayst not only prove that there is pain to be suffered for thy sins, but also have a very image of that misery which in the next life may fall, not only to the damned forever, but also to all other which neglected in this time of grace the fruits of penance and works of satisfaction for the answer of their lives past. . . . . . . . . . And if any man yet doubt why or to what end the Church of Christ thus grievously tormenteth her own children by so many means of heavy correction, whom she might by good authority freely release of their sins, let him assuredly know that she could not so satisfy God’s justice always19, by whom she holdeth her authority to edify and not to destroy, to bind as well as to loose. . . . {In general,} this penance is for no other cause enjoined but to save them from the more grievous torment in the world following. . . . This only careful kindness of our Mother therefore, that never remitted sin that was notorious, in any age, but after sharp punishment, or earnest charge {i.e., admonition} with some proportional penance for the same, doth not only give us a loving warning to beware and prevent that heavy correction of the world to come, which S. Paul calleth the judgment of God because it is a sentence of justice; but also in her own practice here in earth of mercy in pardoning, of justice in punishment, she giveth us a very clear example of both the same to be undoubtedly looked for at the hands of God himself. . . . ‡ A brief joining in reason and argument upon the proved grounds, with the adversaries, for the declaration of Purgatory Cap. 5

. . .

The common infirmities and the daily trespasses which abase and defile the works even of the virtuous of their proper condition do deserve pain for a time, as the mortal offense deserveth perpetual. Therefore, as the mortal sin being not here pardoned must of justice have the reward of everlasting punishment, so it must needs follow that the venial fault not here forgiven should have the reward which of nature it requireth: that is to say, temporal pain. And therefore, not only the wicked but the very just also must travail to have their daily infirmities and frailty of their corrupt natures forgiven, crying without ceasing, 19

{I.e., otherwise}

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forgive us our debts . . . for no man alive shall be able to stand before the face of God in his own justice or righteousness; and if these light sins should never be imputed, then it were needless to cry for mercy or confess debt, as every man doth, be he never so passing holy. To be brief, this debt of pain for sin by any way remaining at the departure hence must of justice be answered, which cannot be without punishment in the next life; then there must be a place of judgment for temporal and transitory pains in the other world. . . . . . . That purgatory pains doth not only serve God’s justice for the punishment of sin, but also cleanse and qualify20 the soul of man defiled, for the more seemly entrance unto the holy places, with conference of certain places of Scripture for that purpose. Cap. 6

If we well consider the wonderful {i.e., very} base condition and state of man’s nature corrupted by our first father’s disobedience, and more and more abased by continual misery that sin hath brought into our mortal life, we shall find the work of God’s wisdom in the excellent repair of this his creature to be full of mercy and full of marvel. But proceeding somewhat further, and weighing not only his restoring but also the passing great advancement to the unspeakable glory of the elect, there shall reason and all our cogitations utterly faint and fail us. The kingdom prepared is honored with the majesty of the glorious Trinity, with the humanity of Christ our Savior, with the blessed Mary, the vessel of his Incarnation, with the beautiful creatures and wholly undefiled of all the orders of angels. There can nothing, doubtless, present itself before the seat of God’s glory nor stand in his sight that hath any blemish of sin, any spot of corruption, any remnant of infirmity. There may no creature match with those perfect pure natures of spiritual substance in the happy service of the holy Trinity that is not holy as they be, pure as they be, and wholly sanctified as they be. . . . It is the Church without spot and wrinkle; it is the Temple of God; it is the seat of the Lamb and the land of the living. Now our kind, notwithstanding our pitiful fall and singular frailty, with exceeding corruption and unaptness both of body and soul, hath yet by Christ Jesus our Redeemer the assurance of this unestimable benefit and fellowship of perpetual fruition with the angels. To whom, as we must be made equal in room {i.e., status} and glory, so we must in perfect cleanness be fully matched with them. For it were not agreeable to God’s ordinary justice, who in this earthly sanctuary expressly forbiddeth the oblations of the unclean [Levit. 21], that he should in the celestial, sovereign holy acknowledge any nature that were not pure and undefiled . . . whereby unjustice might appear in God or confusion in the heavens’ commonwealth, where only all order is observed. And though man’s recovery after his fall be wrought by Christ, and the perfect purgation of sins by the blood of him that only was without sin, yet it was not convenient {i.e., befitting} that the might of that mercy should work in this freedom of our wills without all pain of the party or travail of the offenders. . . . Therefore, if any man think 20

{I.e., to render fit, to bring into its proper condition}

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the only forgiveness of our sins past sufficient either for the recovery of our first degree or the attaining of further dignity in the glory of the saints, he seeth not at all what a deep stroke sin hath set in man’s soul. . . . ‡

Of prayer for the souls departed . . . That the faithful souls in purgatory, being now past the state of deserving and not in case to help themselves, may yet receive benefit by the works of the living to whom they be perfectly knit as fellow members of one body. Cap. 2

But now, what means may be found to ease our brethren departed of their pain? Or what ways can be acceptable in the sight of God to procure mercy and grace, where the sufferers themselves, being out of the state of deserving and place of well-­working, cannot help themselves nor by any motion of mind attain more mercy than their life past did deserve? Where shall we then find ease for them? Surely nowhere else but in the unity and knot of that holy fellowship, in which the benefit of the head pertaineth to all the members, and every good work of any one member wonderfully redoundeth to all the rest. This society is called in our Creed communio sanctorum, the communion of saints: that is to say, a blessed brotherhood under Christ the head, by love and religion so wrought and wrapped together that what any one member of this fast21 body hath, the other lacketh it not. What one wanteth, the other supplieth; when one smarteth, all feeleth in a manner the like sorrow; when one joyeth, the other rejoiceth withal. This happy society is not impaired by any distance of place, by diversity of God’s gifts, by inequality of estates, nor by change of life. So far as the unity of God’s Spirit reacheth, so far this fellowship extendeth. . . . The souls and saints in heaven, the faithful people in earth, the chosen children that suffer chastisement in purgatory are, by the perfect bond of this unity, as one aboundeth, ready to serve the other; as one lacketh, to crave of the other. The souls happily promoted to the joy of Christ’s blessed kingdom, in this unity and knot of love, perpetually pray for the doubtful state of their own fellows beneath. The careful condition of the members below continually crieth for help at their hands in heaven above. Now the members of Christ’s Church here yet travailing in earth, they pray together, they fast together, they desire together, they deserve together. Christ our head, in whose blood this city and society standeth, will have no work nor way of salvation that is not common to the whole body in general and peculiarly profitable to supply the need of every part thereof. . . . He that maketh all our works acceptable, though they be done of one, will have them pertain to all. . . . And that this holy consent of good works and mutual agreement of prayer to the continual supplying of each other’s lacks doth also appertain to the souls departed, no man that hath any sense of this happy community can deny. . . . And so saith S. Augustin in these words . . . for the souls of the faithful deceased be not severed from

21

{Firmly or closely knit together (OED)}

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the Church, which is already the kingdom of Christ, else there should be no memory kept for them at the altar in the communion of the body of Christ.22 By the force of this unity, whatsoever is profitably practiced in this world one for another—­as prayer, alms, fasting, sacrifice—­the same things may and ought, by the example of the Church, to be carefully and without ceasing procured for the help of our friends and Christian brethren departed. . . . As when the vine abroad in the field doth spring and wax green, the wine safely kept in barrels at home doth also work in itself and in a manner boil; even so, as we judge, the souls of sinners, through the benefit of the unbloody Host and sacrifice of thanksgiving done for them, may wax joyful and glad. . . . And though some have wickedly sought utterly to break the band of peace betwixt them and us, as they have cursedly shaken the unity of the living amongst themselves, yet their Mother, Christ’s Spouse, acknowledgeth her own children still. She seeth by the Spirit of God (whereby she seeth all truth) the sorrow of her dearest, so far out of sight but never out of mind; she in a manner feeleth a part of her own body in pain, and cannot otherwise do but by all possible means and approved ways assay God’s mercy for their delivery. And this natural compassion of the Church passeth through every member thereof, and ought to move every man, by the law of nature, to procure as much help as he may. And so much the more do we owe this natural duty unto them, because they now cannot help themselves . . . only abiding God’s mercy in the sore sufferance of pains intolerable. They themselves, as yet your brethren and a portion of your body, require to be partakers of your benefits. They feel ease of every prayer. Your alms quencheth their heat; your fasting releaseth their pain; your sacrifice wipeth their sins and sores: so strong is the communion of saints that whatsoever you do that is acceptable, it issueth abundantly down to them. Only he that is cut off from this happy society hath no compassion of them nor feeleth not how they are knit unto us by love and unity of one Head and one Body. You shall hear his unnatural and worse than heathen words. . . . When the Lord hath taken the dead out of our company, he hath dispatched us of all intermeddling with them or they with us.23 This man was born to break the band of unity. . . . ‡ That the funerals of the patriarchs, both in the law of nature, and Moses, and Christ, had practice in them for the relief of the souls departed. Cap. 4

. . .

And that charitable relief of the poor by open alms and doles was also practiced for the wealth {i.e., well-­being} of the departed in the obits24 of old time, the Scripture itself in the iiii chapter of Tobit maketh mention, by report of that godly commandment that the good old father gave his son herein . . . Eat thy bread with the hungry and needy, and [li. 20, De civit. {Dei} cap. 9] [Calvin, Inst. {3.20.24}] 24 {Obits were masses for the soul of a deceased person (at the request and usually the expense of that person or his or her family) on the anniversary of his or her death.} 22 23

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cover with thy clothes the naked. Set thy bread and wine upon the sepulture of the virtuous and make not the sinful partaker thereof.25 . . . He would never have put him in mind to have relieved the poor at burials but for some commodity that might arise to the party deceased; for otherwise his charity might have profited the needy at other times, as well as upon men’s departure. . . . . . . For the benefit of faithful works and holy prayers will not be limited by the terms {i.e., boundaries} of this world; it will have course down so far as the fellowship of this Christian society reacheth; the devil and all his abettors cannot stop the race thereof. The only show of certain coats, with the request of the poor widows that wore them, made to Peter the apostle, turned Tabitha to life again after her departure. Those garments given by her when she was alive, by the careful travail of her almsfolks, procured relief in the world to come.26 . . . It is good we should all learn here, that have received benefit of any man in this life . . . when our friend is departed to represent unto God before his altar and holy ministers, with sorrowful weeping and hearty prayer, the memory of such things as we have received by ways of alms or love at this hand. It shall be a sovereign remedy for his infirmities and the approvedest way to procure God’s mercy that can be. . . . I pray God we be not over-­careless in offering to Almighty God, in these our doleful days, the unestimable benefits which we have received of our forefathers by the building of all our colleges, our oratories, churches, and chapels. . . . ‡ Man may be relieved after his departure either by the alms which he gave in his lifetime or by that which is provided by his testament to be given after his death or else by that alms which other men do bestow for his soul’s sake of their own goods. Cap. 5

. . .

Regard not here the janglers that will cry out on thee that man’s works must not presume so far as to win heaven or to purge sins lest they intermeddle with Christ’s work of redemption and the office of only faith. Make no accompt of such corrupters of Christian conditions. Live well, and carefully follow these works of mercy so expressly commanded and commended in the Scriptures. . . . Say but then unto them by the words of S. James, Master Protestant, let me have a sight of your only faith without good works; and here, lo, behold mine and spare not, by my good works. What religion soever you be of I know not, but I would be of that religion which the Apostle calleth . . . the pure and unspotted religion: and that is (as he affirmeth) to visit the fatherless and succor widows in their need. And then tell them boldly that the Church of God hath instructed thee that all works whereby man {Tob 4:16-­17. The King James translation, which follows the Septuagint rather than the Vulgate, reads “Give of thy bread to the hungry, and of thy garments to them that are naked; and according to thine abundance give alms: and let not thine eye be envious, when thou givest alms. Pour out thy bread on the burial of the just, but give nothing to the wicked.”} 26 {Acts 9:36-­41. “Almsfolk” are the recipients of alms, in this case, the widows who received Tabitha’s coats.} 25

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may procure help to himself or other be the works of the faithful, which have received that force by the grace and favor of God, and be through Christ’s blood so watered, tempered, and qualified that they may deserve heaven and remission of sin. Doubt not to tell them that they have no sight in this darkness of heresy . . . they see not how grace prepareth man’s works; they cannot reach in their infidelity how wonderfully his death worketh in the sacraments; they cannot attain by any guess how the deeds of a poor wretch may be so framed in the children of God that, whereas of their own nature they are not able to procure any mercy, yet now they shall be counted of Christ himself sitting in judgment worthy of bliss and life everlasting. Bid them come in, come in, and they shall feel with thee, in simplicity and obedience, that which they could not, out of this society, in the pride of contention, ever perceive. And if they will not so do, let them perish alone. Turning then from them thither where we were, let us practice mercy (as I said) in our own time, in our health, when it shall be much meritorious, as proceeding not of necessity but of freedom and good will. And then after our departure, the representation of our charitable deeds, by such as received benefit thereby, shall exceedingly move God to mercy. . . . . . . Now there is another way of relief, by alms of other men, which for love and pity they bestow upon the poor that the soul hence departed may through their charity receive comfort. And this containeth a double work of mercy: principally toward the deceased for whom it was given; and then towards the needy that received present benefit thereby; and it singularly redoundeth to the spiritual gain both of the giver and the person for whose sake it is given. . . . ‡ That we and all nations received this usage of praying and sacrificing for the departed at our first conversion to Christ’s faith. . . . And that the Church is grown to such beauty by the fruits of this faith. Cap. 10

. . . And amongst many evident testimonies of this truth, with the practice thereof, both to be found in Gildas and in holy Bede,27 there is a strange and very rare example, not only for the plain declaration of the usage of our Church in the first foundation of our faith, but for an open show, by miracle in this life, how God releaseth of his mercy, by the holy oblation at the altar, the pains of the departed in the world to come. . . . Bede therefore writeth this notable history28 of a miracle done not many years after our people was converted, in the beginning of his own days: that in a foughten field betwixt Egfrid and Ethelred, two princes of our land, it fortuned that a young gentleman of Edgrid’s army should be so grievously wounded that, falling down, both himself without sense and in all men’s sights stark dead, he was letten lie of the enemies and his 27 {Gildas was a sixth-­century British monastic historian; the Venerable Bede, ca. 673–­735, was an English monk and author of The ecclesiastical history of the English people.} 28 [li. 4, Hist. cap. 21–­22. {We are respelling the names as they appear in modern editions of Bede.}]

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body sought with care to be buried of his friends. A brother of his, a good priest and abbot, with diligent making search for his body, amongst many happed on one that was exceeding like him (as a man may easily be deceived in the alteration that straight falleth upon the soul’s departure to the whole form and fashion of the body) and bestowed of his love the duty of obsequies with solemn memorials for the rest of him whom he took to be his brother deceased, burying him in his own monastery and causing Mass to be done daily for his pardon and soul’s release. But so it fortuned that his brother Imma (for so was he called), being not all out dead, within four and twenty hours came reasonably to himself again, and gathering withal some strength, rose up, washed himself, and made means to come to some friend or acquaintance where he might salve his sores and close his wounds again. But by lack of strength to make shift and by misfortune, he fell into his enemy’s hands; and there by the captain examined of his estate, he denied himself to be of name or degree in his country. Yet by the likelihoods that they gathered of his comely demeanor and gentleman-­like talk, which he could hardly dissemble, they mistrust (as it was indeed) that he was a man of arms and more than a common soldier. Therefore, in hope of good gain by his ransom, they thought good after he was full recovered, for fear of his escape, to lay irons upon him and so to make sure work. But so God wrought that no fetters could hold him. For every day once at a certain hour the bands brake loose without force, and the man made free. The gentleman marveled at the case himself, but his keepers and the captain were much more astonied thereat, and straitly examined him by what cunning or craft he could with such ease set himself at liberty, and bare him in hand that he used characters or letters of some sorcery. . . . But he answered in sadness {i.e., gravely} that he was altogether unskilled in such things. Marry, quod he, I have a brother in my country that is a priest, and I know certainly that he saith often Mass for my soul, supposing me to be departed and slain in battle. And if I were in another life, I perceive my soul by his intercession should be so loosed out of pains as my body is now from bonds. The captain perceiving so much, and belike in some awe of religion, seeing the work of God to be so strange, sold him to a Londoner, with whom the same things happened in his bonds loosing every day. By which occasion, he was licensed to go home to his friends. . . . and to his brother’s house, to whom, when he had uttered all the history of his strange fortune, both of his misery and miraculous relieving, he inquired diligently the whole circumstance, with the hour and time of his daily loosing; and by conferring together, they found that his bonds brake loose especially at the very just time of his celebration for his soul. . . . thus hath that holy writer almost word for word, and at the end he addeth this. . . . Many hearing thus much of the party himself were wonderfully inflamed with faith and zeal to pray, to give alms, and to offer sacrifice of the holy oblation for the delivery of their well-­ beloved friends departed out of this life. . . . . . . Yea, this doctrine hath brought the Church to this beautiful order in all degrees as we have seen. All the noble monuments not only in our commonwealth but through Christ’s Church do bear sufficient testimony of our first faith herein. This doctrine (as the whole world knoweth) founded all bishoprics, builded all churches, raised all oratories, instituted all colleges, endowed all schools, maintained all hospitals, set forward all works of charity and religion of what sort soever they be. Take away prayers and practice for the 386



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dead, either all these monuments must fall or else they must stand against the first founder’s will and meaning. Look in the statutes of all noble foundations and of all charitable works, ever sith the first day of our happy calling to Christ’s faith, whether they do not expressly testify that their work of alms and devotion was for this one especial respect: to be prayed and sung for, as they call it, after their deaths. . . . ‡ An answer to their negative argument, with the conclusion of the book Cap. 17

But yet one common engine they have, as well for the impugnation of the truth in this point, as for the sore shaking of the weak walls of the simples’ faith almost in all their fight that they keep against the Catholics. Which, though it be not strong, yet it is marvelous fit reasoning for so fond a faith. For if thou cast an earnest eye upon their whole doctrine, thou shalt find that it principally and in a manner wholly consisteth in taking away or wasting another faith that it found before, so that the preachers thereof must ever be destroyers, pluckers-­down and rooters-­up of the truth grounded before. Will you see then what a Protestant’s faith and doctrine is? Deny only and make a negation of some article of our belief, and that is a form of his faith, which is lightly negative. There is no free will; there is no works needful to salvation; there is no Church known; there is no chief governor thereof; there be not 7 sacraments; they do not conferre gratiam, give grace; baptism is not necessary to salvation; Christ is not present on the altar; there is no sacrifice; there is no priesthood; there is no altar; there is no profit in prayers to saints or for the dead; there is no purgatory; Christ went not down to hell; there is no limbus; finally, if you list go forward in your negative faith, there is no hell, there is no heaven, there is no God. Do you not see here a trim faith and a substantial. Look in Calvin’s Institutions and you shall find the whole frame of this wasting faith. There is nothing in that blasphemous book nor in their apologies but a gathered body of this no-­faith. For so it must needs be that teacheth no truth, but plucketh up the truth which before was planted. Is it not a pretty doctrine that Calvin makes of the sacraments when he telleth not the force of any of them all, but only standeth like a fierce monstrous swine, rooting up our fathers’ faith therein? . . . This faith therefore of these pluckers-­down must needs use a convenient instrument to destroy and not to build. . . . But what way is that? Marry, by way of negative proof they confirm their negative and no faith. Purgatory, say they, nor prayers for the dead, be not so much as once named in all the Scripture; ergo, there is neither of them to be believed. Which argument served the Arians against the consubstantial unity of God the Father and his Son our Savior.29 It helped the Anabaptists against the baptism of infants; it was profitable to Helvidius against the perpetual virginity of God’s mother; and it helpeth all pluckers-­down, but it never serveth a builder. . . . {On the potential threat to Trinitarian orthodoxy posed by sola Scriptura, see John Rainolds, The sum of the conference (London, 1584), 86; Hooker .} 29

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. . . Ours is that Church that hath borne down heathen princes, that hath destroyed idolatry, that hath converted all nations to Christ’s faith, that hath waded in blood, that hath lived in wealth, that hath been assaulted by hell, by evil life, by heresy, and yet she standeth. Take away all this, compare her constancy in doctrine with their inconstant mutability; compare the noble army of martyrs, the holy company of confessors, the glorious train of so many blessed, wise and learned doctors, of many thousand saints that ever accompany her majesty; compare (I say) all these with the rascal soldiers of the contrary camp. . . . Behold her grace of miracles, her works and her wonders, her authority in discipline, her wisdom in government, her equability in all estates, and I am sure thou shalt confess quod Dominus est in loco isto, & ego nesciebam, Our Lord surely is in this place, and I was not aware thereof [Gen. 28]. For Christ’s sake, love, if thou hast followed or yet have any fantasy to the severed company, grope without flattery of thyself the depth of thine own conscience; feel whether God hath not suffered thee to fall for some sin. Come into this Church, and at the same time thou shalt be healed to thy eternal rejoicing. Touch once the hem of Christ’s garment, adore his footstool, cleave unto the altar, and if thou find not comfort of conscience, ease of heart, and light of truth, never credit me more. Prove once what is in horto concluso & fonte signato, in the garden enclosed and the wellspring so surely sealed up [Cant. 4]. Join with the saints in heaven, with the souls in purgatory, with the fathers of thy faith in earth, with all holy men both alive and dead; and thou shalt think thyself already in heaven to match with that happy and blessed fellowship, out of which there is neither light, life, nor any hope of salvation. [\ T ext: A defense and declaration of the Catholike Churchies [sic] doctrine, touching purgatory, and prayers for the soules departed. by William Allen Master of Arte and student in diuinitye (Antwerp, 1565) (NSTC 371).

388

ROBERT PARSONS (1546–­1610)

A brief discourse containing certain reasons why Catholics refuse to go to church

Robert Parsons (sometimes known as Robert Persons, since Tudor habits of spelling made these two names indistinguishable) was one of the most prominent and controversial voices among the first generation of English Jesuits. He represented a crucial generational shift in the English Catholic community: unlike so many of his predecessors in opposition to the Reformation,1 Parsons was raised and educated as a Protestant, and was even a fellow of Baliol College, Oxford, before gravitating toward Rome. After fleeing into exile, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1575 and thereafter displayed all the zeal of a convert, spearheading the Jesuit mission to England as well as writing important polemical and devotional works. [\

Certain reasons, as this pamphlet was known, was among the principal polemical works of the first Jesuit mission to England. The tract begins with a long dedication to Queen Elizabeth, arguing that Catholics are not traitors at all but the most loyal subjects of the Queen, insisting that Protestants and especially puritans represent the real danger to England. Catholics, he argues, seek only to practice their religion in peace, while puritans seek to subvert and overthrow all magistracy in favor of their own party.2 Thus, Parsons’s nine “reasons” why Catholics refuse to attend the Church of England are presented to the Protestant government as examples of conscience, in order to emphasize the hypocrisy of a regime that claimed not to make “windows into men’s souls.” But 1 His vision of Catholicism, that is to say, was progressive rather than medievalist; for the ongoing debate on the “continuity” of English Catholicism, see the extensive bibliography in Alexandra Walsham, “Translating Trent? English Catholicism and the Counter Reformation,” Historical Research 78 (2005): 288–­310. 2 Opponents could certainly argue that this was disingenuous, given that Parsons was undoubtedly privy to various plots and discussions concerning the overthrow of the Elizabethan regime; supporters could respond that these were only necessary because the Queen herself was in the thrall of evil puritan counselors.

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in context, Parsons had a much more complex agenda, and his primary audience was not the Protestant regime at all but the English Catholic community. Since the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, it had become common for so-­called “church papists” to conform to the bare requirements of the law by attending English services when required to do so, but otherwise live and worship as Catholics. In this way, they had attempted to avoid the penalties of the law while balancing civil and spiritual obligations. Parsons’s Certain reasons, presented and debated at an underground synod of English Catholic clergy at Southwark in July 1580, was intended as a frontal assault on this “church papistry” or “occasional conformity,” arguing that the only legitimate position for Catholics was absolute separation. With this and other books, he and his fellow Jesuits proved enormously successful at either convincing or shaming English Catholics into “recusancy,” the principled refusal ever to attend Church of England services. Thus, this text represents the beginning of the long process whereby English Catholicism was transformed into a dissenting Church. [\ Sources: ODNB; John Bossy, The English Catholic community, 1570–­1850 (Oxford, 1976); Michael Carrafiello, Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580–­1610 (London, 1998); Alexandra Walsham, Church papists: Catholicism, conformity and confessional polemic in early modern England (Woodbridge, 1993).

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ROBERT PARSONS

A brief discourse containing certain reasons why Catholics refuse to go to church

1580

The first reason The first reason why I, being a Catholic in mind, may not go to the churches or service of the contrary religion is because, I persuading myself their doctrine to be false doctrine, and consequently venomous unto the hearer, I may not venture my soul to be infected with the same. For as it is damnable for a man to kill himself, and consequently deadly sin (without just cause) to put his body in probable danger of death; so is it much more offensive to God to put my soul (ten thousand times of more value than my body) in danger to the deadly stroke of false doctrine and heresy, especially seeing I have no warrant of security or escaping, but rather I hear God crying to the contrary, He that loveth danger shall perish in the same. Neither is it for me to think that I am sure enough from being infected for that I am grounded enough, I am learned sufficiently. For what if God take his grace from thee, and let thee fall, because thou hast not followed his counsel, which is, if thou wilt not be bitten with the snake, not to sleep nigh the hedge? If thou wilt not be spotted, then not to touch the pitch. Wherefore St. Paul, to as good a man, as learned, as strong as I am, gave a general rule: to avoid and flee an heretical man [Tit. 3]. The like precept he gave to Timothy, being a bishop. . . . The reason of this, St. Paul uttereth to Timothy: because their speech creepeth like a canker and they have subverted the faith of certain. Again, he sayeth to the Romans of the same men: by sweet words and gay blessings they seduce the hearts of the innocent. And St. Peter sayeth of them, that they do allure unto them inconstant souls. Here now I see the Scripture carefully counseling and commanding me to avoid the company and speech of false teachers; it putteth down also the peril if I do it not, which is as great as the death of my soul. And on the contrary side, I have no warrant of, nor example of, good men to the same. . . . Furthermore I am sure I can never take good by hearing them, but I am in possibility to take evil, as many more learned men than I in old time have done: as Dionysius Alexandrinus confesseth of himself, and of Origen and Tertullian it is known, and many men in England can be witnesses, which both to themselves and also to other men, seemed (the time was) so firm and grounded in 391



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religion as nothing could move them, and yet now they have proved otherwise. Wherefore it cannot be but great sin in me (notwithstanding all this) if I shall put my soul in such danger by adventuring to their company, to their service, to their sermons, to reading their books, or the like, whereby in any wise I may be corrupted. The which adventure, what a sin it was counted in the primitive Church, it may appear by the severe laws made both by the clergy and temporality for the prohibiting and punishing of the same in that time, as is to be seen in the Councils and Fathers and in the decrees of the good Christian emperors, Martian and Justinian, and especially of the noble and zealous first Christian emperor, Constantine, which made it death, after the condemnation of Arius by the General Council of Nicea, for any man more to read his books and thereby to adventure to be poisoned with his heresies. And {with} reason, for if David had not ventured to behold Bathsheba, he had not been entrapped with her love, and so had not committed horrible sins that ensued. And if Dame Eve had not presumed to hear the serpent talk, she had not been beguiled. And if, when Luther first began to teach new doctrine, the Catholics at that time had not vouchsafed to give him the hearing, but had avoided his preachings and privy conventicles, there had not been now in the world either Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, Puritan, Anabaptist, Trinitary, Family of Love, Adamite, or the like. Whereof now there are so many thousands abroad, all springing of that first sect, and troubling at this day the whole world, with the eternal damnation of infinite souls, the which souls at the Day of Judgment shall be excuseless, and receive that heavy sentence of everlasting fire, for that they had not avoided the danger of infection.1 . . .

The third reason The third reason why a Catholic may not come to church is for that going or not going to the church is made a sign now in England distinctive betwixt religion and religion: that is, betwixt a Catholic and a schismatic. So that a Catholic by going thither doth directly deny his religion. For the better understanding whereof, we must note that the professor of any religion may be known by three ways: first, by words, professing himself to be of that religion; secondly, by works or deeds proper to that religion; thirdly, by some sign or mark appointed to signify that religion. As for example, in Italy a Jew may be known first by his words, if he would profess himself to be of that religion; secondly, by works proper to Judaism, as by keeping the Saturday holy day, by circumcising his children, and the like; thirdly, by a notorious sign appointed to distinguish that religion from all others, which is, to wear on his head a yellow cap. Now, as these three are ways to profess this religion, so if a man of another religion, for example a Christian, should yield to use any of these things, he should sin grievously, and in effect deny his faith. . . . But now, that the going to church is, in the realm of England, a plain and an apparent sign of a schismatic, that is to say, of a conformable man (as they call him) to the Protestants’ proceedings, it is manifestly to be proved. First, by the commandment to go to church every holy day to hear service, and by the exaction of the same commandment. For that it is the commander’s meaning, by that act, as by a proper sign, to have {It is this extraordinarily un-­Miltonic view of the threat posed by false and wicked ideas that stands behind the Roman Church’s Index of forbidden books, first promulgated in 1559, and in force into the 1960s.} 1

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men show themselves conformable to that religion, it cannot be denied. For otherwise, to what end are they commanded upon such days and at such a certain time and for such a purpose to go thither? Again, it is proved by the exaction of this law: for when a Catholic doth come before the Commissioners, there is nothing asked of him but when he was at church; and if he will promise to go to church, commonly they account him a sufficient conformable man (that is, to have yielded sufficiently unto them). Furthermore, the multitude of them which have of long time abided imprisonment, and now in greater number do, for this only thing . . . doth make this abstaining from church to be a proper and peculiar sign a true Catholic now, if it were not before; and the yielding in the same (especially if a man be called to public trial about it) to be a flat and evident denying of God and of his faith. For what doth make a thing to be a proper and peculiar sign but the judgment and opinion of men? The bush of the tavern is a sign of wine because men commonly take it so. In like manner the yellow bonnet of a Jew, the yellow turban of a Turk, and the like. Even so, seeing the whole world at this day doth take the abstaining from Protestants’ churches to be the only external sign of a true Catholic, and seeing the Protestants themselves do make it so; also, seeing that the going to church is the contrary sign, it followeth, that if going to church were of itself before lawful, it were now made by this a peculiar sign distinctive betwixt religion and religion, and so utterly unlawful. I will put an example of the primitive Church, wherein the wearing of a garland was lawful for all soldiers, until the Emperors, and the common opinion of men, had abridged it only to infidel soldiers, to distinguish them thereby in honor from Christian soldiers. And then, after that (as Tertullian proveth) it was no longer lawful for Christian soldiers to wear them, for that the wearing thereof was a denial of the Christian faith. Whereupon, we read that a certain Christian soldier offered himself rather to suffer death than to wear one of them, as appeareth in the same book of Tertullian.2 But now, much more is the thing unlawful in our case . . .

The fourth reason The fourth cause why a Catholic may not go to the church is because it is schism and breaking of the unity of the Catholic Church. The which, how perilous and dreadful a thing it is, all Catholics do sufficiently know. For as they firmly believe that to oppugn the visible, known Church of Christ (as all heretics continually do) is a very wicked and damnable sin, even so in like manner they believe that to break the unity of the same Church and to make any rent or disunion in the same (which is the proper fault of schismatics) is also damnable. . . . Even as there is (according to Paul) one baptism, one bread, one faith, one Church, one Christ, one Lord, one body, one heaven, on hope of reward, the breaking of which unity of the Church of God, hath been always accounted a most grievous and damnable offence. For, as Ireneus, a most ancient and godly Father sayeth, they which cut and dissever the unity of the Church shall have the same punishment that Jeroboam had. This punishment we know to have been the utter destruction and extirpation of him and all his name. . . . {I.e., his De corona militis, a work that also figures prominently in puritan arguments against the lawfulness of vestments and ceremonies used by Roman Catholics (see Hooker, Laws 2.5.7–­2.6.1).} 2

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Now, St. Cyprian in his book Of the simplicity of prelates, or unity of the Church, goeth further, for he proveth that if a man did live never so virtuously otherwise; nay, if he should give his life and shed his blood for Christ, yet if he were out of the unity of the Church, he could not be saved. For that, as he sayeth, this spot or sin (the breaking of the unity of the Church) can not be washed away with any blood. The which saying of St. Cyprian, the learned Father St. Chrysostom after Cyprian’s death doth repeat and confirm. . . . . . . But now, that this act of going to the Protestants’ churches and prayers is a schismatical act, and such a one as divideth from the unity of the Church, it is easy to be proved; for that schism is, according to St. Augustine, a separation of them that think the same thing. That is, a different kind of service of God in those men that do not differ in opinion in religion. The which thing, he expresseth more plainly in another place, putting the difference betwixt heretics and schismatics, saying, schismatics are made, not by difference in faith or belief but by the breaking of the society or unity of communion. Now, the communion or unity of the Church consisteth in these three things: to wit, that all Christians have one sacrifice, one and the self-­same sacraments, also one and the self-­same service of God. But they which go to the Protestants’ churches have no sacrifice at all, neither have they any more than two of seven sacraments, and those two also so mangled that of the two scarce one is a sacrament as they use them. And as for their service, it hath no part of the Catholic service, as I will show hereafter. He, therefore, that goeth to this service, and willingly separateth himself from the Catholic service and communion, breaketh the unity of communion of the Church and consequently commiteth schism. But some man perhaps will say, I do it not willingly, but I go to church by constraint of the public laws of my realm. I answer that here is some kind of constraint external, but not so much as may take away the liberty of thy will, which is internal, as the Philosopher wisely discourseth [Arist. lib. 3, Ethico{rum}]. For this constraint is but conditional: that is, either to do that which is commanded (for example, to go to the church) or else to abide this or that punishment that the law appointeth. The which penalty, if thou wilt suffer, thy will is free to do what thou wilt. Neither can any mortal power constrain it further. So that such an action as I have talked of (for example, going to the church for the avoiding of temporal loss) is called both by the philosophers and divines involuntaria secundum quid, simpliciter autem voluntaria; that is, in part or in some respect, involuntary, but absolutely and simply it is to be accounted voluntary. And therefore, they are to be esteemed good or bad, punishable or rewardable, even as other free actions are. For otherwise, no sin should be punishable, seeing every naughty action commonly hath some kind of compulsion in it, but yet it may not be excused thereby. As for example the murderer may say that he did it not willingly, for that he was compelled thereunto by rage of anger. And the lecher may say his flesh compelled him to sin. . . . And yet to give an other example nearer to our matter: St. John sayeth of the noblemen and gentlemen of Jewry in his time, many of the principal men did believe in Christ, but they did not confess him outwardly for fear of the Pharisees lest they should be cast out of the synagogue, for they did love more the glory of men than the glory of God. Here we see the act of these noblemen and gentlemen, also the compulsion to the act, the cause of their compulsion, and lastly St. John’s judgment upon the act. The act 394



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whereof they are accused is only holding their peace, and not confessing Christ openly, according as they did inwardly believe of him. The cause or excuse that they had to lay for themselves was the fear of the Pharisees or magistrates which compelled them against their will so to doe. Now, what punishment they feared at the Pharisees’ hands St. John expresseth, saying that it was lest they should be cast out of their Synagogue. The which punishment was then, and is now at this day, amongst the Jews the greatest punishment, besides death, that can be devised. For he loseth thereby all offices, dignities, and credit whatsoever: no man may buy or sell with him, no man may visit him or talk with him or salute him in the streets. Finally, it is a death upon earth (a great and sufficient excuse, a man would think) to answer for a man’s silence only. For I see many a one in England, not only to conceal their own consciences, but also to speak against the same for a less cause. But what is St. John’s judgment upon the matter? Forsooth he accepteth not the excuse, but condemneth them in a damnable mortal sin against the first commandment for doing the same, saying that by this silence of theirs they did put the glory of God behind the glory of men, and thereby showed that they loved men better than God, no doubt but to their everlasting damnation, except they heartily repented them. The which I would have those unwise and fond noblemen and gentlemen in England to consider, which persuade both themselves and other men that in these troublesome times a man may without offence keep his conscience to himself. But especially those that do not only hold their peace, but also do against their conscience, whatsoever is commanded them, saying that all which is done amiss shall not be laid upon them at the Day of Judgment, but upon the prince and the magistrates which compel them to do the same against their own wills. But what compulsion this is, and how far it shall excuse their doings, I have now declared. Wherefore hereafter let no man say that he goeth to church against his will, thinking thereby to excuse himself from schism. . . .

The seventh reason The seventh reason why a Catholic may not yield to come to the Protestants’ churches is because the service which they use is naught and dishonorable to God, and therefore no man can come to it or hear it or seem to allow of it by his presence without great offence to God. Neither is it sufficient to say (as commonly they used to say to beguile simple people withal) that it is the Scripture, taken out of the Gospels, Epistles, Psalms, and the like. For by that argument, the Jews’ service were good at this day, which is taken out of the Old Testament; and all heretics’ service that ever was seemed to be nothing but Scriptures. For as St. Augustine in diverse places noteth, it was always the fashion of heretics to have Scripture in their mouth, and to cleave only to Scriptures, and to refuse traditions as inventions of men. And we read of the Arian heretics, how they were wont to sing psalms in the streets of Constantinople, thereby to allure the people to them. And yet we may not say that their service was good, like as we cannot say that the devil’s talk was good with Christ, albeit it were decked with allegation of Scripture and other sweet words. Although therefore their service be full of Scripture, it is no good argument that it is therefore infallible good. . . . Wherefore St. Augustine sayeth of the Donatists, schismatics and heretics of his time, that albeit they did sound out Hallelujah with as lusty a voice as the Catholics did, and in many things else did agree in service with them (more than now 395



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the Protestants do with us), yet their service was impious and availed them nothing. . . . To come nearer to our purpose, their own Apostle and second Elias (as they call him), Luther, condemneth all their whole service for the denying only of the Real Presence, saying, the Sacramentaries do in vain believe in God the Father, in God the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and in Christ our Savior; all this doth avail them nothing, seeing they do deny this one article as false, of the Real Presence; whereas Christ doth say, this is my body. Lo, hear this prophet, with the same spirit wherewith he condemneth the popes, he condemneth the Protestants. Why should we believe him more in the one than in the other? But now, to show wherein the Protestants’ service is evil, it were sufficient to say that it is devised of themselves, and altogether different from all the service of Christendom besides, and therefore not to be received by Catholics, with whom they deal too childishly when they say their service differeth in nothing from the old Catholic service but only because it is in English, thereby thinking to make the simple people to have the less scruple to come to it. The which, how false it is, it shall appear by that which I will say hereafter. I might also bring the opinion of all the hotter sort of Protestants, called the puritans, who in writing, sermons, and private speech do utterly condemn the service which now Protestants have, and thereupon do refrain from it as much as Catholics. But I will give more particular reasons, as followeth. First, the Scripture is read there in false and shameless translations, containing manifest and willful corruptions, to draw it to their own purposes, as hath been showed in particular by many learned men in their works, and is like to be (shortly) more plainly, by the grace of God. As for example, throughout the Scripture, where idols are forbidden, they translate it images: as in St. John they read, children, keep your selves from images, whereas the Scripture sayeth idols [1 Joh. 5{:21}].3 And this is to make simple men believe that idols and images are all one, which is absurd. For then, where Moses sayeth that God made man according to his own image, we should consequently say, God made man according to his own idol. Again, where in contrary manner St. Paul sayeth that a covetous man maketh his money his idol, we should say that he maketh it his image. The which how foolish it is, every man seeth, and it can not stand with any sense of the Scripture. The like absurd translations they have, in infinite other things, which I cannot stand to rehearse. Let some man read the latter end of the 12th chapter of the second book of the Maccabees, where he shall see what labor their English translator taketh to shift over the words of the Scripture, which talk of oblations and prayers for the dead: and by that one place, let every man judge of his fidelity in the rest. For I am sure, that if a boy should so corrupt Tully’s {i.e., Cicero’s} epistles, in translating them in a grammar school, he should be breeched for his labor. The Scripture, therefore, being read there in false translations, it must needs seem to be false, which is blasphemous against the Holy Ghost the inditer {i.e., writer} of them. So that by this it appeareth that that part of their service which they pretend to be Scripture, is no Scripture, because it is by the malice of the interpreter false, the which Scripture can not be. Secondly, the service that Christians ought only to go to should be said, as also the sacraments administered, by priests and such as have received the sacrament of holy orders, as all the general councils and Fathers of the Church show unto us. . . . But now 3

{The King James Version accepted the point and translates “idols.”}

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that either all or the most part of ministers of England be mere laymen and no priests, and consequently have no authority in these things, it is evident for many causes, as well for that they have not received the under orders {i.e., minor orders} which they should have done before . . . as also because they are not ordained by such a bishop and priest as the Catholic Church hath put in that authority, which admitteth no man for bishop which is not ordained by imposition of three or two Catholic bishops’ hands at the least. Of all which things none are to be found amongst the Protestants. Thirdly, their service is naught because they have diverse false and blasphemous things therein; and that which is yet worse, they so place those things as they may seem to the simple to be very Scripture. As, for example, in the end of a certain Geneva psalm, they pray to God to keep them from Pope, Turks, and Papistry, which is blasphemous.4 First, for joining the supreme minister and substitute of Christ with the known and professed enemy of Christ, and speaking so contumeliously of him, of whom all antiquity in Christ his Church hath thought and spoken so reverently, calling him the high priest of the Church, the bishop of the universal Church, the pastor of the Church, the judge of matters of faith, the repugner of heresies, the examiner of all bishops’ causes, and finally the great priest, in obeying whom all unity consisteth, and by disobeying of whom, all heresies and schisms arise. . . . [\ T ext: Robert Parsons, A brief discours contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to church. Written by a learned and vertuous man, to a friend of his in England. And dedicated by I.H. to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie (imprinted at Doway [i.e., East Ham]: By Iohn Lyon [i.e., Greenstreet House Press], 1580) (NSTC 19394).

4 {Parsons refers to the infamous “Preserve us, Lord, by thy dear Word. / From Turk and Pope defend us, Lord,” that concludes the exceedingly popular Whole book of psalms collected into English meter by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, & others, first published in 1562, with over 150 further editions by 1603.}

397

HENRY GARNETT (1555–­1606)

A sum of Christian doctrine . . . to which is adjoined the explication of certain questions

Garnett’s father was a Derbyshire schoolmaster and both parents conformists, although two sisters later became nuns in Louvain. In 1568 he entered Winchester College, but rather than proceeding to university, in late 1571 he moved to London, where he worked in Richard Tottell’s printing house, departing England in 1575 to enter the Society of Jesus in Rome. For the next few years Garnett studied at the Jesuits’ Roman College, his professors including the mathematician Christopher Clavius, father of the Gregorian calendar, and the theologian Robert Bellarmine, both of whom were favorably impressed. Ordained about 1582, Garnett remained at the Roman College, where he lectured in Hebrew, metaphysics, and mathematics, while also serving as English confessor at St Peter’s. In the spring of 1586 the Jesuit General Claudio Acquaviva granted Robert Persons’ request that Garnett be sent to England. In his instructions, Acquaviva appointed Garnett successor to William Weston, the current Jesuit superior, if anything should happen to the latter. In the company of his fellow-­Jesuit Robert Southwell, Garnett landed not far from Folkestone in early July. Of the five Jesuits already in England, all were in prison except Weston, who shepherded the new arrivals from London to the relative safety of a rural Catholic estate. However, within the month Weston himself was captured, leaving the newly-­arrived Garnett in charge of the English Jesuit Mission. The following February he and Southwell established the first of their secret presses, one of which published Peter Canisius’ A sum of Christian doctrine—­a translation of the Dutch Jesuit’s 1555 Summa doctrinae christianae—­ together with Garnett’s own appended “explication of certain questions,” the work reprinted below, sometime between 1590 and 1596.1 As Jesuit superior in late Elizabethan England, Garnett spent much of his time recruiting new priests, creating a network of safe houses,2 and struggling to deal with the anti-­Jesuit mutiny roiling the English Catholic community. During this period he also wrote the defense The work was reprinted at St. Omer in 1622 and, retitled, again in 1639. Safety ultimately proved impossible: Southwell was captured in June 1592; the new priest sent to assist Garnett 1593 was caught upon landing. 1 2

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of equivocation that would prove so damaging at his trial in 1605. Victor Houliston’s Catholic resistance in Elizabethan England finds no evidence that Garnett had been playing with treason, although it does note that he was in “constant communication” with Robert Persons, the prefect of the English Jesuit mission, who was behind a whole series of invasion schemes (117–­18). However, in July 1605 a fellow-­Jesuit asked Garnett if he could discuss a case of conscience with him, under seal of confession: the case turned out to be Robert Catesby’s disclosure, in the course of his own confession, of the Gunpowder Plot. Garnett insisted at his trial that he discouraged the attempt; the prosecution gave a rather more damning account. He was convicted of high treason, suffering its grim penalty on 3 May 1606.3 [\

The “certain questions” Garnett explicates deal with “sacramentals” (sacramentalia). These, as the Elizabethan Catholic controversialist, Thomas Stapleton, explains, include the various objects and ceremonies blessed by the Church but not, in contrast to the sacraments, ordained by Christ: for example making the sign of the cross, sprinkling with holy water, consecrating churches, and the like. Again in contrast to the sacraments, these do not bestow grace; rather, they dispose the soul to receive grace; they also, the Rheims New Testament adds, “expel devils, cure diseases . . . remit venial sins . . . {and} stir up and increase devotion and the fervor of piety,” and are able to do so “because the ministers of the Church, by their sovereign authority, have annexed to the use of them power to work such effects.”4 As far as the Middle Ages was concerned, objects were blessed by the Church primarily to ward off natural and supernatural evil—­demons, but also lightning. The Rheims New Testament preserves this emphasis in its long note on sacramentals at 1 Timothy 4:5.5 Garnett, however, largely ignores this apotropaic function; instead the accent falls partly on their power of “stirring & procuring our devotion,” and yet more insistently on the fact of their objective holiness: the liquid holiness that doth “spring and flow” from God “as from a most plentiful fountain of all goodness . . . into his creatures.” As noted in the General Introduction, his intuition that the spiritualization of matter (and therefore the possibility of sacramentals) lay near the center of the Catholic/Protestant divide is not without merit.6 [\ Sources: ODNB; DNB; Duffy, Stripping; Victor Houliston, Catholic resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Person’s Jesuit polemic, 1580–­1610 (Ashgate, 2007). 3 See David Jardine, The Gunpowder Plot, in vol. 13 of The Library of Entertaining Knowledge (London, 1835) and his Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot (London, 1857). 4 Thomas Stapleton, Principiorum fidei doctrinalium relectio scholastica & compendiaria (Antwerp, 1596), 567–­68; see also the annotations to 1 Tim. 4:5 in the 1582 Rheims New Testament.). 5 So Bellarmine holds that “ex opere operato valere signum crucis contra diabolum” (De imaginibus sanctorum 2.30)—­hence the ubiquity of crosses in old-­style vampire movies. 6 All echt Reformed Protestants rejected the sacramentals tout court. The Elizabethan Church, however, being not echt-­Protestant, retained signing with the cross in baptism and, at least as a possibility, the consecrating of churches; consecration of churchyards, baptismal fonts, and eucharistic vessels returned, along with altar candles and sacred images, over the following decades—­but always reconceived as ceremonies, not true sacramentals: as the Jacobean theologian Richard Field explained, objects thus consecrated did not receive “any new quality, force or efficacy” (Of the Church, bk. 4, chap. 31; rprt. in Religion, ed. Shuger, 93)

399

HENRY GARNETT

A sum of Christian doctrine . . . to which is adjoined the explication of certain questions

c. 1592–­15961

Against those which are ignorant of things necessary to salvation

Aug. de grat. & lib. arb., cap. 3 No man must run to the darkness of ignorance that in them he may seek an excuse. For one thing it is not to have known, & another thing to have refused to know. . . . Yea, that very ignorance which is not of those who will not know but of those who simply do not know doth excuse no man so that he shall not burn with the everlasting fire, if therefore he did not believe because he never heard what he might believe, but perhaps that he may burn more tolerably. For not without cause was it said: Pour out thy anger upon the nations which have not known thee. And that which the Apostle sayeth: When he shall come in flame of fire to give revenge upon those which know not God. . . .

The preface to the reader The glorious apostle Saint Peter very fitly compareth the word of God and the doctrine of the Holy Ghost unto a candle shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in our hearts. For although Christ our Savior, the true light of the world, hath by his most bitter passion and precious wounds given light unto our darkness . . . yet so long as we remain in the mist of this mortality and that it appeareth not what we shall be, we are truly light in comparison of heretics and infidels, but in respect of heaven we are in the night, and continually converse in obscurity and darkness. All honor then and glory be (as it is worthy) yielded unto him who, lest we, walking in darkness, know not whither to go, hath provided us a candle of his holy doctrine even in the midst of Egypt, and set it upon a candlestick in the Catholic Church. . . . This light, although by diverse persons who love darkness better than light, it hath by sundry means been assaulted; yet hath these assaults {The text’s scriptural citations have been converted to the more familiar KJV form: e.g., “4 Reg” becomes “2 Kings.”} 1

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done nothing else but, by increasing the adverse darkness, made the light appear more glorious. . . . Hence may we in all places of our country, to our own great comfort and God’s singular glory, out of prisons, out of judgments, out of all manner of public places, out of many private persons and families, behold the beams of this light so vehemently issuing forth, that coming out of the East (for to use our Savior’s words), it appeareth even to the West; and it shineth so generally abroad that it is renowned in the whole world, which, seeing the beauty thereof, glorifieth our Father of light which is in heaven. Only, my dear Catholic brother, who, being unlearned, seekest to tread the steps of thy forefathers, & walking in darkness of this mortal life, procurest to follow those which before thee have carried lights for thy direction: it sometime cometh into my mind to fear lest either thy torchbearers being taken from thee, or, for over-­long watching, the oil of the lamp which they may leave thee . . . beginning to fail, the light itself may by little and little be extinguished; and so thou returning to thy former darkness, together with the children of darkness, mayst fall and perish. We are not ignorant of his cogitations, who like a roaring lion goeth about seeking whom he may devour; and, among other sleights which he useth, transfiguring himself into an angel of light, with a counterfeit light of hypocrisy and heresy seeketh to deprive thee of that which is true and sincere.

Of hallowed and sanctified creatures in God’s Church 1. Is there any creature holier than another?

Although all sanctity and holiness be principally in God himself, yet from him as from a most plentiful fountain of all goodness doth also spring and flow holiness into his creatures: first into his reasonable creatures, who only may, by his grace, be made his lively members and so be endowed with true holiness; and then, both the sacraments, by which he worketh his grace, & whatsoever thing hath any special relation or order unto the holiness which is in God or in his creatures, may justly and truly be called holy. . . . . . . 3. And what must we esteem of holy water & such like?

As we call some days more holy and religious than others, so do we also say the same of many other creatures of God, which, although they be good of themselves as created by him which is essentially good and saw that all things that he made were very good; yet because they for our punishment oftentimes become hurtful unto us (either by their own quality and disposition or by the malice of the devil) & also for to bring to pass and signify some spiritual effect, they be very wholesomely sanctified by the word of God and prayer, as Saint Paul hath written & Christ himself in blessing the loaves which he multiplied hath taught. So doth the Church use to bless water, of which we have most ancient testimonies, as also miraculous examples of the effect thereof. And S. Basil calleth it an apostolical tradition, as may also appear by the apostles’ own scholars, who make mention of the same. But S. Alexander,2 he who 50 years after S. Peter governed the Church, of holy water sayeth thus, showing both the ancient use thereof and, by giving a general commandment, 2

{Bishop of Rome c. 110–­115.}

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confirming that which before he practiced: We bless water sprinkled with salt for the people, that all being sprinkled with it may be sanctified & purified, which thing also we ordain as to be done of all priests. For if the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled with blood did sanctify and cleanse the people [Heb. 9:13], much more water sprinkled with salt & consecrated with divine prayers doth sanctify & cleanse the people. And if by salt sprinkled by Heliseus {i.e., Elisha} the prophet the barrenness of the water was healed [2 Kings 2:21], how much more the same salt, being consecrated with divine prayers, taketh away the barrenness of human things & sanctifieth those which are defiled, and cleanseth and purgeth and multiplieth other good things, and turneth away the deceits of the devil, and defendeth men from the craftiness of the evil ghost. . . . Thus far S. Alexander, in his Epistle.3 The like is to be said of holy oil, holy bread, holy candles, holy ashes, holy palms, & such other, in every one of which is some holy signification either of spiritual medicine or of celestial food or heavenly glory or penance or victory and triumph over the devil. Which sanctification and deputation of God’s creatures to certain uses for God’s own glory and the spiritual and corporal good of Christians, if it were superstitious, then would not God have prescribed in the Old Testament waters of jealousy [Numb. 5:14] & waters of expiation by sprinkling [Numb 19:17] . . . neither should Christ’s apostles have used oil to cure the sick . . . nor David with his harp have kept the evil spirit from Saul. . . . That we may omit4 the purging of venial & quotidian sins which is by these sacramental things bestowed upon us, not only by the increase of our faith, fervor, & devotion which is procured by the using of them, but also by the high authority of the chief ministers of the Church, granting us the same: as Saint Gregory used when he sent any holy tokens,5 & now is used, besides the things above remembered, in hallowed memories of our religion. 4. But wherefore do we account one place more holy than another?

Whosoever denieth that one place in holiness exceedeth another knoweth not the Scriptures, which in respect of the apparitions made by God in diverse places attribute a certain holiness unto them. And oftentimes in confirmation thereof imposeth upon such places names to signify the presence of God’s power therein [Gen. 22:14 & 35:10]. Yea, our Savior sayeth that the Temple sanctifieth the gold, & the altar, the gift, signifying thereby an extraordinary holiness in the Temple; & S. Peter calleth the Mount Tabor, because of the transfiguration of Christ therein, the holy hill [2 Pet. 1:18] . . . For unless God were in a more special manner in the church than in other places, the apostles would not have proved God to dwell in his faithful people after a peculiar manner by his dwelling in them as in a temple. How often in the Scripture do we read of the holiness of the Temple and of Sancta Sanctorum. And God promised to hear easily the prayers of his people offered up to him in his Temple. Not that he doth not hear everywhere, if he be worshipped in spirit and truth . . . but because it pleaseth him, for our profit, to work his wonders and to be worshipped rather in holy places than in profane ones. . . . S. Gregory witnesseth {For these letters ascribed to Alexander I by Pseudo-­Isidore, see the entry for Alexander I in The Catholic encyclopedia, at newadvent.org/cathen/01285c.htm (accessed 12.29.2012).} 4 {I.e., not to mention} 5 {“Saint Gregory did usually send his benediction and remission of sins in and with such tokens as were sanctified by his blessing and touch of the martyrs’ relics, as now his successors do the like hallowed remembrances of religion” (Richard Field, Of the Church, 4.31, in Shuger, ed. Religion, 94).} 3

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that God by miracle showed his presence at the dedication of a church, when (the devil being gone thence in the likeness of a fowl) a cloud came from heaven and, lighting upon the altar and covering it, filled the whole church with so great a reverence and sweet savor that none durst presume to enter in. No otherwise than happened in the dedication of the Tabernacle by Moses and the Temple by Solomon. . . . . . .

Of pilgrimage 1. What do we respect in places of pilgrimage more than in other churches & places of devotion?

. . .

II. Relics: Secondly, we may in pilgrimage respect the sacred relics of saints remaining in several places, which, as we said before, do deserve undoubted honor, for that they have been temples of the Holy Ghost, instruments both of their souls to all good things & also of God’s miracles and wonders; they are holy pledges of our patrons, remnants of our most dear friends, memories of triumphant conquerors designed unto everlasting and unspeakable glory. Neither want we in this matter examples of holy Scripture & testimonies of many holy Fathers. . . . Finally, in the Scripture we learn that it is no superstition reverently to esteem of the very land which God honored with his promises & wonders [2 Kings 5:17], or to touch with devotion Christ’s garment, or to impute any vertue to Peter’s shadows, or to S. Paul’s napkins or handkerchiefs. All which nowadays would be counted idolatry (the more is the pity), if upon like opportunity offered, the like devotion should be used either to Christ or to his holy saints. For whatsoever is done by their relics is done by the saints themselves. . . . . . . [\ T ext: A summe of Christian doctrine: composed in Latin, by the R. Father P. Canisius, of the Society of Iesus. With an appendix of the fall of man & iustification, according to the doctrine of the Councel of Trent. Newly translated into Englishe. To which is adioined the explication of certaine questions not handled at large in the booke as shall appeare in the table (London?s, between 1592 and 1596) (NSTC 4571.5).

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1

(1546–­1610)

The Jesuit’s memorial for the intended reformation of England

The English Jesuit leader wrote his Memorial for the intended reformation of England around 1596 while living in exile in Seville, where he had founded a seminary with the support of the Spanish King Phillip II. It was only published a century later, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. This 1690 edition was in fact printed by Protestants, intent upon showing the willingness of Catholics to subvert the English constitution, and it contained extensive commentary written by Edward Gee, chaplain-­in-­ordinary to William and Mary and a prolific polemicist against Roman Catholics. Parsons’s Memorial is one of the most extraordinary documents produced by a Tudor Englishman: it is nothing less than a blueprint for the remaking of English religion, government, and society from top to bottom. Parsons begins with the simple premise that Queen Mary died and Queen Elizabeth was permitted to succeed her as divine punishment for Mary’s halfhearted and lukewarm Counter-­Reformation. Thus, when God in his mercy eventually decides to bring England back to the Catholic fold—­and Parsons has no doubt that in the fullness of time this will occur—­a thoroughgoing revolution will be necessary to rebuild England along authentically Catholic lines. Parsons, in other words, was not interested in a “restoration” of traditional religion; he wanted a reformation every bit as thorough as the Protestant one. With all the zeal of an armchair theorist, he left virtually no institution unturned, reimagining not only the Church but also Parliament, law, education, and much else besides, so that they might better serve the Catholic cause. A remarkable feature of the book is its specificity: Parsons wallows in the details. At times, as when constructing a payment scheme for the return of ecclesiastical property or explaining why young Catholics ought to study mathematics, his subtlety is what stands out; this was a man who thought hard about the pressing issues of his day. But at other times, as when inventing an English Inquisition or reforming Parliament by fiat, what stands out is his vast ambition: Parsons thought big and was not afraid to offend virtually 1

Biographical details for Parsons can be found in the introduction to his Reasons .

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all of his contemporaries, both Protestant and Catholic, in proposing his scheme. The Memorial can thus profitably be read not only in the context of English religious polemic, but also in the tradition of English utopian writing beginning with Thomas More and looking forward to Gerrard Winstanley. The only difference is that Parsons, in full confidence that God would restore Catholicism in England, believed that his scheme could and would be brought to fruition. [\ Sources: ODNB; John Bossy, The English Catholic community, 1570–­1850 (Oxford, 1976); Michael Carrafiello, Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580–­1610 (London, 1998).

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The Jesuit’s memorial for the intended reformation of England

c.1600 (pub. 1690)

The preface of the author, showing how and why these notes were gathered, and the principal parts to be treated The notes and observations of this memorative following were gathered and laid together in time of persecution, when there was no place to execute or put them in use . . . and having had the experience of the years which have ensued since . . . he was desirous, in case that himself should not live to see the desired day of the reduction of England, yet some of his cogitations and intentions for the public good thereof might work some effect after his death, and that thereby other men might be the sooner moved to enter into more mature considerations of these and such like points . . . for that the gatherer’s meaning was only to open the way and to insinuate certain general and principal heads, that might serve for an awaking and remembrance at that happy day of the conversion of our country, unto such persons as shall be then able and desirous to further the common good and to advance almighty God’s glory with a holy zeal of perfect reformation. . . . . . .

PART I. CHAP. I Some special reasons why England, above all other realms, ought to procure a perfect reformation, when time shall serve If ever nation under heaven were bound to show themselves grateful to almighty God, and to turn heartily and zealously unto him, and to seek his highest glory by a perfect reformation of their country, when his divine majesty shall open the way, it is the English nation, for the reasons following: First, for that no other nation in the world on whom God hath laid the scourge of heresy hath received so many helps and graces to resist the same as England hath done, which is evident by the multitudes and valor of English martyrs . . . by the store of seminaries abroad, and by the spirit of priests brought up in them; and many other favors and privileges used towards the English nation in these our days: all which do require an 406



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extraordinary demonstration of forwardness of English Catholics, when the time shall serve, to be answerable in some sort to these extraordinary benefits. Secondly, we do both see and feel the inestimable damages that ensued to our commonwealth, and to all Christendom besides, for that this perfect reformation was not made in Queen Mary’s time. All wise and godly men attribute the loss of religion again in our country to this error and ingratitude towards almighty God, which, that it may not happen any more, et ne postrema fiant pejora prioribus,1 most careful diligence is to be used by all, whensoever the mercy of God shall offer occasion the second time, that the former error be well amended. . . . Fourthly, the facility and commodity that there is and will be in England to make this perfect reformation, whensoever God shall reduce that country, doth greatly conjure {i.e., entreat} and oblige us to the same. For we shall not find that difficulty and resistance, by the grace of God, in England, which good men do find in other Catholic countries for bringing in of any reformation that is attempted . . . to wit, the repugnancy of corrupt livers and stubborn people that will contradict and resist their own benefit. . . . All is now zeal and integrity in our new clergy (almighty God be thanked for it), and no less in our laity and Catholic gentlemen of England that have born the brunt of persecution for so many years. . . . which ought to convince such as feel the zeal of God’s glory within their breast to join hands together, as St. Luke saith all apostolical men did in the primitive Church, and each to seek above other to have a part in the happy procuration of so holy and important a work. And lastly, for our more encouragement hereunto, it seemeth that the sweet and high providence of almighty God hath not been small, in conserving and holding together a good portion of the material part of the old English Catholic Church, above all other nations that have been overrun with heresy . . . as namely we have our cathedral churches and bishoprics yet standing; our deaneries, canonries, archdeaconries, and other benefices not destroyed; our colleges and universities whole; so that there wanteth nothing but a new form to give them life and spirit by putting good and virtuous men into them, which is a great advantage before other kingdoms where all is ruined and desolate. . . .

CHAP. II What manner of reformation is needful in England Having spoken of a perfect reformation, if any man would ask what manner of reformation this is, I could answer him no better to the purpose, considering the present state of England under persecution, than to say that it ought to be as the reformation or purification of gold is when it cometh out of the fiery furnace: to wit, pure, simple, perfect, without corruption, dregs or rust. For so God himself compareth his true Church and all his elect after their probation by the fire of tribulation. And again, I may compare it to the state of a garden which, being overgrown with weeds and thistles, the owner thereof putteth fire to the whole, and when all is consumed, then beginneth he to plant chosen and sweet herbs at his pleasure. And the like is God’s desire to do with this English 1

{“And lest what comes after be worse than what came before,” an echo of 2 Pet. 2:20}

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garden, if we will cooperate with his holy designment. Hereof then it followeth that the reformation of England, after this long and sharp persecution, ought to be very perfect, full, and complete, not respecting so much what some cold Catholics used to do in other countries, where spirit is decayed and corruption crept in, as what may be done or ought to be done in England. . . . And to come to some particulars: the whole world knoweth how that the late holy Council of Trent, when it came to matters of reformation of manners, it was constrained to accommodate itself in many things to the capacity of that decayed state of Christendom which then they found. . . . And this yet notwithstanding, we see with what difficulties, delays, unwillingness, cautels, protestations, restraints, and exceptions this part of the Council touching reformation has been received in divers countries that otherwise are Catholic, by reason of the general corruption grown into men’s lives and customs, for purging whereof even unto the quick, it is supposed that God hath sent this fire of heresy into Christendom, and is feared by many that it will never cease until all be cleansed. . . . But now in England, no doubt but that the state of things will be far otherwise, whensoever the change of religion shall happen. For then it will be lawful for a good Catholic prince that God shall send, and for a well affected parliament, which himself and the time will easily procure, to begin of new and to build from the very foundation the external face of our Catholic Church, and to follow the model which themselves will choose; and if that will be a good and perfect model, it will endure at least for a time, and be a pattern of true Christianity to the rest of the world.. . . . for that it is and will be the greatest crown that ever England hath had since her first conversion to the Christian faith, and according to this account must our purpose be of reformation whensoever God shall restore us to liberty and peace. . . . ‡

CHAP. IV How all sorts of people, to wit, Catholics, schismatics, and heretics, may be dealt withal at the next change of religion After union and good disposition of mind in all and a hearty reconciliation of almighty God, will be necessary a sweet, pious, and prudent manner of dealing and proceeding, as well with Catholics as schismatics, Protestants, and persecutors. And as for known Catholics which have been constant and borne the brunt in time of persecution, though for their own parts they ought to follow the most holy and secure counsel of our Savior, Cum omnia feceritis dicite quia servi inutiles sumus, quod debuimus, fecimus,2 nothing presuming of themselves or vaunting over others, but expecting their reward with humility at God’s hands; yet it is evident that in all reason and justice and law of gratitude, they are to be used and employed by the commonwealth in all principal charges, rooms, and offices, with special confidence, every man according to his known zeal, ability, and talent for the same, and according to the measure of his suffering for God’s cause; by which means both {Luke 17:10: “When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”} 2

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they and others shall be animated and comforted, and the state of religion much more assured than if for particular favors, kindred, bribes, {or} interest any be preferred, or such as are not known to have any zeal in God’s affairs, as in the late Queen Mary’s time in many places was seen, to the grief and discouragement of many, and to the infinite danger of the realm, as after well appeared. As for schismatics, or close {i.e., hidden} or weak Catholics that have fallen, denied, or dissembled their religion, if they have done it of frailty and have not been persecutors, the more compassion is to be had of their estate and the more sweetness to be used in restoring them to the unity of God’s Church again; but yet how far they are to be used in matters of the commonwealth, especially at the beginning, and in rooms {i.e., offices} where their weakness and inconstancy may be in danger, the law of godly wisdom must determine. . . . And this for them that will return. But as for enemies or obstinate heretics, whether they be of malice or of ignorance, another course seemeth to be taken for their reduction and satisfaction {i.e., making amends}, which is to endeavor by all ways to convince them (if it be possible) of their errors, and this by reason and sweet means, as far as may be, whereof I shall touch some particulars in this place. And first of all, perchance it would be good, considering the present state of the realm and how generally and deeply it is and has been plunged in all kind of heresies, not to press any man’s conscience at the beginning for matters of religion, for some few years; to the end that every man may more boldly and confidently utter his wounds, and so be cured thereof, which otherwise he would cover, deny, or dissemble to his greater hurt and more dangerous corruption of the whole body. But yet it may be provided jointly that this toleration be only with such as live quietly and are desirous to be informed of the truth, and do not teach and preach or seek to infect others; and by experience it hath been seen that this kind of suffering {i.e., sufferance} and bearing for a time hath done great good, and eased many difficulties in diverse towns rendered up in the Low Countries, which, being mitigated at the beginning with this entrance of clemency, never greatly cared for heresies afterwards. Yet do I give notice that my meaning is not any way to persuade hereby that liberty of religion to live how a man will should be permitted to any person in any Christian commonwealth for any cause or respect whatsoever; from which I am so far off in my judgment and affection, as I think no one thing to be so dangerous, dishonorable, or more offensive to almighty God. . . . But that which I talk of is a certain connivance or toleration of magistrates only for a certain time to be limited, and with particular conditions and exceptions: that no meetings, assemblies, preaching, or perverting of others be used, but that such as be quiet and modest people, and have never heard perhaps the grounds of Catholic religion, may use the freedom of their consciences to ask, learn, and to be instructed for the space prescribed—­without danger of the law or of any inquiry to be made upon them—­to inform themselves of the truth. . . . And finally, by this means the prince would come to know, at the end of the time prescribed, what disposition of people he had within his realm, which otherwise would be hard to do. And these are my reasons for my desires in this behalf, which I do remit, as all the rest that here or elsewhere I shall say, to the more mature judgment of them which at the wished day shall be able to judge better, ex re praesenti,3 and determine the cause. 3

{According to the business at hand}

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There remaineth to say a word or two of the best ways how to convert heretics to the Catholic faith, whose souls we ought to thirst and seek for above all other things of the world. And first of all, there is no doubt but that the chiefest and most principal means will be to give the battery to the judgments and understandings; though to gain first their good wills and affections, by the clemency before mentioned, and other points that after shall be touched, will be a great disposition and entrance to the same. But for convincing of their understandings in matters of controversy, I would wish that a plain contrary course were taken of us towards them for that which they have used towards us, seeing that our cause doth bear it, which is of contrary state and condition to theirs. For whereas, their cause being false, they would never consent to come to any indifferent trial or disputation with the Catholics, I would wish that, seeing our cause is true and substantial—­a nd the more it is tried, the more it will appear—­t hat once at least, at the beginning, full satisfaction were given by English Catholics to those and all other heretics of the world by as full, free, equal, and liberal disputation as possibly could be devised, within our realm, and this in London, Oxford, Cambridge, or some other fit place, where all the heads of heresies might most conveniently have recourse. . . . I am of opinion it would break wholly the credit of all heresies in England, and that afterwards few books would be needful on our part: as in truth it were to be wished that few or none were written in the vulgar tongue against heretics, but rather that books of devotion and vertuous life should enter in their place, and the memory die of the other wranglings. And the like course also may be taken by preachers in their sermons, which by little and little were to be freed from all mention of heresies, to the end the people of God might come again to their old peace of mind, and attention only of good works, and Christian vertues. . . . And thus much for gaining of those that have been deceived by error, and are of a good nature, and think they do well, and do hold a desire to know the truth and follow the same, and finally do hope to be saved as good Christians, and do make account of an honest conscience, though they be in heresy. But for others that be either willful apostates or malicious persecutors or obstinate perverters of others, how they may be dealt withal, it belongeth not to a man of my vocation to suggest, but rather to commend their state to almighty God, and their treaty {i.e., treatment} to the wisdom of such as shall be in authority in the commonwealth at that day; admonishing them only that as God doth not govern the whole monarchy but by rewards and chastisements; and that as he hath had a sweet hand to cherish the well-­a ffected, so hath he a strong arm to bind the boisterous, stubborn, and rebellious; even so the very like and same must be the proceeding of a perfect Catholic prince and commonwealth. And the nearer it goes to the imitation of God’s government in this and all other points, the better and more exact and more durable it is and will be ever. And this answer may be given in general; for, in particular, what order is to be holden with such as before I named—­persecutors, arch-­heretics, false bishops, preachers, ministers, apostates, traitors to the cause, strangers and foreign heretics that do oppress the realm, and others of the like crew and condition—­I leave to be determined according to the circumstance of time, occasion, and place, when opportunity shall be offered. 410



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CHAP. V The forwardness that ought to be in all for the restitution of ecclesiastical lands and livings, and with what facility and ease it may be done. Among other good dispositions of minds, and effects of a true and sincere reconciliation with almighty God, one principal ought to be, at the time that his divine Majesty shall show mercy unto England, that every one should have a special care and fervent desire to clear his conscience well and sufficiently about abbey lands and ecclesiastical livings which himself or his ancestors, by any pretense of title whatsoever, shall have invaded or detained.4. . . For that I take this to be the most principal old leaven, that distained and distempered the other actions of our Catholic realm at the last change, and offended the eyes of our just God most highly: that they took no sound order at all for any reasonable satisfaction in this great affair of restitution to be made to God and his Church. For which is to be noted that, albeit (the times and state of England, and condition of men and things there considered) it seemeth not possible, or at leastwise not expedient, that any rigorous or exact satisfaction should be required in these affairs; yet that some kind of moderate temperature and composition,5 according to some form of justice or correspondence of equity, should be taken in the matter, I would think it so absolutely necessary as no good Christian conscience can be secure without the same. And the reason hereof is for that these goods belong, first, to a third party, which were the owners and givers, and by them taken from their children and kindred and inheritors for a special ecclesiastical use to be applied to God’s service and the help of their own souls by perpetual prayer ordained to be made for them, cannot in any reason or law of justice be taken wholly from those uses and applied or permitted to be profane, but only by force; seeing it is directly against the intentions of the first founders and givers, and whereof it is to be presumed they would never allow, if they were alive again, but rather would say, of the two, that their heirs and next kin should re-­enter and possess the same, rather than by violence they should be detained by other temporal men that are mere strangers unto them. Neither is it sufficient for the security of any careful man’s conscience to say that the See Apostolic has tolerated with these things in Queen Mary’s time; for that it is well known how times and matters went then. . . . And seeing almighty God has declared his heavy displeasure, since the patching of matters at that time, by the lamentable and most miserable fall both of religion itself and of these persons also that were most backward in this restitution; and that these corrupt affections of some worldly people may be presumed to be well purged before this day by the fire of persecutions in these latter years; I hope verily that it may easily be brought to 4 {One of the preeminent issues for Tudor Catholics was the disposition of church property, especially land which had been confiscated and redistributed in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. By the Elizabethan period, much of that property had been resold multiple times and found its way into Catholic hands. It was of course a sin to receive stolen property, and the ordinary Catholic position was that possessors of church property should return it as a condition of England’s reintegration into the Catholic Church. Yet Catholic polemicists also worried that one of the major stumbling blocks to the growth of a more militant Catholic party in England was fear that, if the Reformation were overturned, then Catholics would lose their lands.} 5 {I.e., accommodation or a middle way}

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pass at the next reformation, that some such good and substantial order may be taken in this weighty affair, as God’s justice in part may be satisfied, men’s consciences quieted, their estates at home for the time to come assured, the world abroad edified, and the Church of God in some proportion of equity satisfied. And thereby this great petra scandali6 that hitherto has endured, and the strong brazen wall that has divided between God and us, may be removed. . . . And therefore I shall lay down in this place the means that I have conceived for the easy performance of this point. All Englishmen do know the peculiar ancient custom of letting lands in England, after the rate of old rent of assize,7 which, by experience of many countries, I can affirm to be the most commodious, honorable, and profitable custom, both for lord and tenant. . . . And no sort of people were wont to be more observant of this custom than were religious and ecclesiastical landlords . . . so that in very deed, if these old rents of assize were restored again to the Church, it might be said in effect that the whole were restored, and thereby a certain proportion of equity in restitution observed; and on the other side, if the possessions and the fee farm8 of these lands (which commonly do amount to double or triple the value of the old rent, or may be made so good) be left and made secure forever unto the present possessors of the same, as by the prince, parliament, and pope’s authority they may be, I do not see but that the composition and temperature would fall out well for all parties, and for all effects that can be desired. For, first, God’s justice and the Church’s right in a certain sort should be substantially satisfied, and the possessor’s conscience assured, which is the principal; and then his ecclesiastical state also would not be over-­weakened or abated thereby, as is evident. And if it should happen out otherwise in some particular men of special merit—­to wit, that by this general restitution he should be over-­much impoverished—­it would be an easy thing to help and recompense the matter otherwise, as by giving him some office or some lease of fee farm of other lands that shall return wholly to the Church, or the like. For it is to be understood that, albeit the Church do and may use this benign compassion with such as be her children and of particular deserts towards her for their piety and religion, yet no reason is there but that such as be enemies, persecutors, or of notorious impiety against her should leave the livings, which they possess of her wholly; and wish more rigor of justice than the other before-­named; so that the Church may dispose {i.e., have control} not only of the old rents, but of revenues also, houses, buildings, and other emoluments. For better understanding whereof, it is also to be noted that as well these lands entirely restored as the other old rents before mentioned—­to the end they may be employed to the best and greatest glory of God, and public profit of the realm—­were not to be turned presently at the first to any particular owner that would challenge or lay claim to the same; but rather . . . were to be assigned to some common purses and treasury; and this to be committed to some certain council of principal bishops and prelates, and others most fit for the purpose, for certain years to be limited, to gather up and dispose of all these rents, revenues, and ecclesiastical livings, during the time to them assigned, for the greatest {From 1 Pet. 2:8: a stumbling block.} {The custom of holding rents fixed at a traditional assessed value rather than allowing them to fluctuate with the market; this custom went into abeyance in the sixteenth century, as inflation cut into the value of customary rents and population growth created a seller’s market for rental property.} 8 {Fee farm, in this context, means simply the rental of land.} 6 7

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benefit of the English Church and realm . . . and this council might be called the Council of Reformation, as after shall be more particularly declared. And the reason why it were not convenient to return these lands and livings again to the same orders of religion that had them before is evident to all men: to wit, for that the times and state of England are far other and different from that they were when these lands were given, and consequently do require different provision and disposition of things, conformed to the present necessity and utility of the realm. As for example, the world knoweth that the most part of all abbey lands appertained in the old time to the religion of St. Bennet {i.e., St. Benedict}, of which Order at this time there are very few of the English nation to occupy or possess the same; and to bestow them upon strangers of that religion,9 England having so many other necessities, were very inconvenient. And besides this, it may be so that many houses and families of that Order of St. Bennet, or of St. Bernard, or of the monastical profession (though in itself most holy) will neither be possible nor necessary in England presently upon the first reformation; but rather, in place of many of them, good colleges, universities, seminaries, schools, for increasing of our clergy, as also of divers houses of other Orders that do deal more in preaching and helping of souls, and for that respect will be more necessary to the clergy of England in this great work at the beginning, and for many years after;10 though of the other also are not to be omitted to be planted and well provided for, according as it shall seem most expedient for God’s glory, the universal good of the realm, to this Council of Reformation, by whose hands their lands, rents, and revenues may far more profitably be divided and employed, and with much more peace and quietness, than if they should be returned to every particular religion again. ‡

CHAP. VII Of a Council of Reformation to be ordained, and wherein they are principally to be occupied For the execution of all these notes and advertisements that here are set down about the reformation of England, nothing will be of so much moment as to have certain prudent and zealous men put in authority by the prince and parliament and pope’s holiness, to attend principally, and, as it were, only to this affair, and to be bound to give a continual account what they do in the same. And for that the name of Inquisition may be somewhat odious and offensive at the beginning, perhaps it would not be amiss to name these men a Council of Reformation, and that their authority might be limited for some certain number of years, as four, five, or six, as it should be thought most convenient and sufficient for the setting up and establishing of the English Church. . . . And for that the matters and affairs which are to be laid upon these men are many and weighty and of singular great importance, it is necessary, first, that the place of their ordinary residence should be in London near the Court, whereby they may have easy recourse and conference with the prince and council. And secondly, that their persons be of great sufficiency and {“Religion” here refers to members of the Benedictine order.} {The Jesuits, always in competition with the other religious orders, were particularly known—­a nd continue to be known today—­for their role in educational provision.} 9

10

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respect, and fit for the purpose: as, for example, perhaps may the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop{s} of Winchester, London, and Rochester, whose dioceses lie near about the city. . . . The first and most principal thing that in temporal matters should be committed to this Council is the gathering of the said old rents of assize of abbey lands, and other ecclesiastical revenues, which, by virtue of the restitution above mentioned, are to return to the Church; and by these men, as hath been specified, are now to be put in one common treasury, and thence to be spent and employed, within this time limited of their commission, as they shall judge most needful and to the most advantage of God’s holy service and common benefit of the realm. The like charge also will be necessary to lie upon them for the collection and custody of all other ecclesiastical rents and revenues throughout England: as of benefices, parsonages, curates, and other such livings as cannot conveniently be provided of particular owners, seeing that the English clergy which for the present we have, and are like to have for a great time after the next reduction of England, will scarce be able to furnish the principal dignities and places alone of jurisdiction and government . . . and if, besides these, there be two or three men left for preachers, to be given to every new bishop to carry with him into his diocese (a small store, God knows, for so great a charge), it will be all; and how then, think you, will it be possible to furnish the least part of the residue of benefices throughout England for some number of years? Wherefore, to remedy this inconvenience, it seems that the only way would be for this Council of Reformation to appoint collectors of these rents, and to be accountable for them, as for the rest; and allowing so much to be spent in every parish as shall be thought needful, they may reduce the remnant to the aforesaid common purse, for common necessities, until there be store of priests to furnish all places with particular curates and pastors—­which may be, by God’s grace, and good diligence of this Council in erecting and furnishing seminaries—­within the space of some five or six years; that is, before this Council shall resign over their authority. And in the mean space, the best means of supplying the common spiritual needs of England would be, perhaps, that no priests—­ besides bishops, deans, archdeacons, and the like (that are needful for the government of the rest)—­should have any particular assignation or interest in any benefice; but only a sufficient pension allowed him by the Council of Reformation, or bishop of the diocese, for his convenient maintenance and his commission to preach, teach, hear confessions, and all other exercises of priestly function. And when the Council of Reformation were to leave their charge, then might they take a view of all the priests in their times or before; and, according to each man’s talent and good account given of himself in this time of trial, to place them in benefices; but yet with this express proviso and condition, that they may be removed again from the same benefices to a worse or to none at all, if they give not satisfaction in their function—­which only bridle may chance to do more good than all the laws and exhortations in the world. And it would be good sometimes to put it in execution, to promote some in higher benefices and thrust down others to lower, by way of visitation, when cause is offered. . . . And when this door is once stopped, it will be easy for this Council to write to all the heads of religious orders that are in other countries, to send them such a number of 414



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exemplar and reformed men or women to begin to plant the said religious in England as shall be thought expedient and be demanded. . . . . . . It were also to be considered whether some new military order of knights were to be erected in our realm, for exercise and help of our young gentlemen and nobility, as in other countries we see it. And as for England, in times past it had only the Order of St. John of Malta, wherein now perhaps there may be some difficulties at first, for that we have no knights left of our nation in that order to train the rest; and to begin it only with strangers may seem hard. And secondly, for that, albeit their institute be good and holy to fight against the Turk and other infidels, yet is Malta far off, and these ages have brought forth many more infidels and enemies near home, to wit, heretics. . . . Wherefore some are of opinion that it were good that other, in place of this of Malta (or besides this, some other new order), were erected also in our country, of religious knights; and that their rule might be to fight against heretics in whatsoever country they should be employed. ‡

CHAP. VIII Of diverse other points that will belong to the Council of Reformation to deal in . . .

For the second point, which is to keep well these holy days that are commanded, it will import much that certain good exercises be appointed to occupy and entertain the people upon these set days; and these may be partly spiritual, as service said, or singing the Church-­matins, Mass, Evensong, preaching, reading of homilies, catechizings, or teaching the Christian doctrine to the people, wherein great care and special labor should be employed at the beginning, and some other exercises may be of honest entertainment and relaxation of mind, which may keep the common sort from more disorderly games; and amongst other things, the going of one parish to another in procession upon their festival days is not the worst, if some little abuses be taken away which were crept in, and might be remedied by teaching them to go with devotion, saying their beads, the litanies, and the like, and some men appointed to repeat the principal points of the saints’ lives which they celebrate. . . . . . . . . . And to this Confraternity of Christian Doctrine might be joined, in the beginning, the Society also of the Blessed Sacrament in the little parishes where more societies could not be put in ure, whose principal charge ‘tis (I mean the Confraternity of the Sacrament of the Altar) to accompany the Body of our Savior with lights and other actions of honor when it is carried abroad to the sick, and in other occasions. . . . Some such officer as the Romans called their censor, to look that no man lived idly nor brought up his children without some exercise and means to live, would be of 415



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importance for this reformation. And this man might call to account also such men as lived suspiciously or scandalously, as by carding and dicing, or spent riotously any way his own goods or his wife’s. And the like commissioners were to be sent to the universities to reform them to the best utility of the commonwealth and of those that study in them, and for drawing of strangers to frequent them, as in other countries.

CHAP. IX There ensue more matters that appertain to the Council of Reformation Though I have touched divers points; yet follow there more belonging to this Council: among which, one very special is, as hath been signified before, the particular care that ought to be had of erecting of seminaries at the very beginning for the increase of the clergy, and this in every bishopric, according to the order of the Council of Trent. . . . And all these seminaries may be divided into two or three parts, according to the number of the universities or archbishoprics; and every university have one great seminary, wherein only the course of divinity and philosophy may be read; and in the other abroad that are subordinate to these may be read grammar, humanity and rhetoric alone; and, as the scholars shall grow fit, they may be transferred to the great seminaries of the universities. The like care must be had for well ordering of grammar schools—­what books are to be read and what manner of masters are to be allowed—­as also for other schools for children: writing, reading, and casting of accounts by arithmetic, which greatly doth awaken and sharpen the wits of young children and make them the more able men for their commonwealth, if it be taught with care and good order, as in other countries it is, where children are wont to be examined in public, and made to compose, divide and multiply numbers upon the sudden and without book, and rewards proposed to them that do best. And in all schools must there be particular order also for teaching of the Christian doctrine, and divers proofs appointed for the same. Public and private libraries must be searched and examined for books, as also all book-­binders, stationers, and booksellers’ shops; and not only heretical books and pamphlets, but also profane, vain, lascivious, and other such hurtful and dangerous poisons are utterly to be removed, burnt, suppressed, and severe order and punishment appointed for such as shall conceal these kind of writings; and like order set down for printing of good things for the time to come. It would be of great importance that, in every city or great shire town, there should be set up a certain poor man’s bank or treasury that might be answerable to that which is called Monte della Pieta in great cities of Italy: to wit, where poor men might either freely or with very little interest have money upon sureties, and not to be forced to take it up at intolerable usury, as oftentimes it happeneth, to the utter undoing and general hurt of the commonwealth. And for maintenance of these banks, some rents or stocks of money were to be assigned by the Council of Reformation, out of the common purse at the beginning; and afterwards, divers good people, at their deaths, would leave more; and preachers were to be put in mind to remember the matter in pulpits; and curates and confessors in all good occasions, either of testaments when they are made, or of cases of restitution when they should fall out, and other such occasions. The like good use were to be brought in, that ghostly fathers {i.e., confessors} in hearing confessions and otherwise should admonish their spiritual children, among other works of piety, to visit hospitals and sick people, as 416



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also public prisons, and enjoin it sometimes for penance and part of satisfaction, especially to principal people, whose example would do much good to others—­and, by the fact, to themselves. And to the end there should not be so much repugnance therein as commonly is wont to be in delicate persons, the hospitals were to be kept fine, cleanly, and handsome; and public prisons were to be enlarged with courts and open halls for people to visit them by day, and relieve them with their alms; though by night they were kept more strait. And above all other things, convenient place is to be made in all prisons to say and hear mass, and for spiritual men to make exhortations to the prisoners, seeing that, besides the chastisements of their bodies, the salvation of their souls is also to be sought; and oftentimes they are in better disposition to hear good counsel, and profit themselves thereby, standing in the prison, than when they were abroad. And for this effect only—­that is to say, for looking to prisoners, and procuring the comfort, relief and instruction of such as be in necessity therein—­divers societies and confraternities are seen to be instituted in other countries, where charity doth flourish, and ought to be also in ours. . . . A general story of all the most notable things that have happened in this time of persecution were to be gathered, and the matter to be commended to men of ability, zeal, and judgment for doing the same. And when time shall serve, to procure of the See Apostolic that due honor may be done to our martyrs; and churches, chapels, and other memories built in the place where they suffered: and namely at Tyburn, where perhaps some religious house of the third Order of St. Francis, called Capuchins, or some other such of edification and example for the people would be erected, as a near pilgrimage or place of devotion for the City of London, and others, to repair unto. Before this Council make an end of their office, or resign the same, which (as before has been signified) may be after some competent number of years, when they shall have settled, and also secured the state of Catholic religion, and employed the lands and rents committed to their charge (and this were to be done with the greatest expedition that might be), it would be very much necessary that they should leave some good and sound manner of Inquisition established for the conservation of that which they have planted. For that . . . without this care, all will slide down and fall again. . . . And finally this Council of Reformation is to leave the Church of England and temporal state (so far forth as appertaineth to religion) as a garden newly planted with all kind and variety of sweet herbs, flowers, trees, and seeds; and fortified as a strong castle, with all necessary defense for continuance and preservation of the same; so as England may be a spectacle for the rest of the Christian world round about it; and almighty God glorified according to the infinite multitude of dishonors done unto him in these late years. . . .

CHAP. X Of the Parliament of England, and what were to be considered or reformed about the same, or by the same For that the English Parliament, by old received custom of the realm, is the fountain, as it were, of all public laws and settled orders within the land, one principal care is to be had that this high court and tribunal be well reformed and established at the beginning; 417



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for a performance whereof, certain men may be authorized by the prince and body of the kingdom to consider of the points that appertain to this effect, and among other, of these following. First, of the number and quality of these that must enter and have voice in the two Houses. And for the Higher House, seeing that voices in old time put also diverse abbots,11 as the world knoweth, it may be considered whether now, when we are not like to have abbots quickly of such greatness and authority in the commonwealth as the old were, it were not reason to make some recompense by admitting some other principal men of these Orders that had interest in times past: as for example, some provincials or visitors12 of St. Benet’s Order . . . Secondly, about the Lower House, it may be thought on whether the number of burgesses were not to be restrained to greater towns and cities only. And for that in this House, as well as in the Upper, matters are handled that belong to the realm in general, whether some mixture of ecclesiastical and religious were not to be admitted . . . to be intermixed amongst the burgesses and knights of the shires, as bishops and abbots were amongst the temporal nobility of the Higher House—­seeing that these men . . . may be presumed to be able to give as good advice in all points belonging to the good laws and ordinations for manners and government as burgesses and knights of the shire . . . and in particular, they would have a special eye to the assurance and preservation of Catholic religion, which is a principal consideration. For choosing of knights of the shires, as also burgesses, a more perfect and exact order were to be set down, and less subject to partiality and corruption; and information were to be taken of their names and religion. And for knights of the shire, perhaps it would not be amiss to give some hand in the matter, at leastwise for a time, to the bishop of the diocese: to judge of their virtue and forwardness in religion, and to confirm their election—­or to have a negative voice, when cause should be offered; and that they made public profession of their faith before their election could be admitted or they take their way towards the Parliament. . . . After the first decree—­whether it be a lawful parliament or no—­the second should be that every man be sworn to defend the Catholic Roman faith; and moreover, that it be made treason forever for any man to propose anything for change thereof, or for the introduction of heresy. . . . . . . But now, for making of new laws and decrees in our Catholic parliament, these notes following may be remembered among other. To abrogate and revoke all laws whatsoever have been made, at any time or by any prince or parliament, directly or indirectly in prejudice of the Catholic Roman religion; and to restore, and put in full authority again, all old laws that ever were in use in England in favor of the same, and against heresies and heretics. The law of mortmain,13 whereby men are forbidden to employ their goods upon pious works that be perpetual, without particular license of the prince, is not in any other kingdom, where yet no such inconvenience is seen to ensue of overmuch to be given as is pretended by the motive of that law. And therefore, seeing all pious works must begin again {Prior to the Reformation, the Lords included a dozen or so abbots and priors.} {Both positions of authority in religious orders.} 13 {On mortmain, see Fish, Supplication .} 11

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in England, it were necessary perhaps that this restraint should be removed, for a time at leastwise, and men rather animated than prohibited to give that way. It may be examined by the Parliament whether Lady Elizabeth entered by good right or no to the crown, or at leastwise whether she were true and lawful queen since the declarations and depositions published by Pius Quintus.14 And if not, then (albeit for quietness’ sake and security of the commonwealth, it may be decreed that all matters past, by order of common justice, shall be ratified, except only such open acts of manifest injustice as are notorious to all the world to have been done against religion . . . yet) that all other acts of grace, and matters of gifts and donations of livings, titles, honors, offices, and the like . . . be ipso facto void and of no effect—­where, notwithstanding, may be a proviso that whatsoever such benefit or grace she bestowed upon any known Catholic, or man of public merit, shall be holden for good . . . Again, it may be considered whether the first parliament holden in this Queen’s days were a good and lawful parliament or no, by reason of the want of bishops, and of the open violence used unto them by the laity. And if it were not lawful, that then all other parliaments since that time, depending thereon and wanting true bishops, may be declared in themselves to have been of no force, nor yet the laws therein made; and consequently to be frustrate, and to be put out of the book of statutes, except such as this parliament shall think necessary to confirm and ratify or make anew. [\ T ext: Robert Parsons, The Jesuit’s memorial for the intended reformation of England under their first popish prince, published from the copy that was presented to the late King James II: with an introduction and some animadversions by Edward Gee (Londonl, 1690) (Wing P569).

{A reference to the papal bull Regnans in excelsis, promulgated by Pius V in 1570, declaring Queen Elizabeth a heretic and depriving her of her throne.} 14

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VII.

PRIMERS, PRAYERS, AND PSALMS

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PRIMERS

1507, 1535, 1536

The collection of lay devotions known in England as the primer was, Eamon Duffy notes, “the most popular book of the late Middle Ages” (Hours 4), although “book” is something of a misnomer, given the considerable variation among the dozens of primers produced for the English market: 114 print editions alone before 1530 and at least as many between 1530 and 1560. However, from the early fourteenth century on, all primers share a core set of (originally) monastic liturgical devotions centering on the Little Office of Our Lady (a daily cycle of Marian devotions), supplemented by a liturgical calendar, the Litany of Saints, the Office of the Dead, the seven penitential and the fifteen gradual psalms. Although early primers were often luxury items, over the fifteenth century mass-­produced versions proliferated; used by the laity either at home or in church, the late medieval primer “became an integral part of the religious experience of the urban and rural ‘middling sort’” (Duffy, Hours, 25). Along with their readership, the primers expanded, surrounding their core texts with a rich array of extra-­liturgical materials reflecting the needs and desires of lay purchasers. These popular devotions betray no hint of incipient tension between individual and official piety. What they indicate is that the laity principally valued two types of prayer: devotions whose effusive ardor helped “cultivate that intense relationship of affectionate, penitential intimacy with Christ and his Mother which was the devotional lingua franca of the late Middle Ages,” but also prayers that addressed “their day-­to-­day hopes and fears” (Duffy, Stripping, 234). As John Bossy observed, the primers are “very distinctly ‘me’-­ prayer-­books,” their readers evidently much concerned about their personal tribulations, “and their view of tribulations is not that they are good for you and should be endured with patience, as by Job, but that they are bad for you and should, with the assistance of God and the saints, be got rid of” (141). The individual devotions are often prefaced by indulgences and formulae promising those who say the prayer a specified number of times specific desirable results. Sometimes the desired result pertains to one’s eternal welfare: for example, the preface to the O bone Jesu in a 1523 Antwerp primer promises that whoever 423



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“devoutly with a contrite heart daily say this orison, if he be that day in the state of eternal damnation, then this eternal pain shall be changed him in temporal pain of purgatory.”1 Other prayers, however, promised more immediate benefits; a beautifully illustrated 1527 Paris primer thus avers if one “devoutly” says the appended prayer, he “shall not die of sudden death, et no venom shall poison him that day; & what he asketh of God he shall obtain, if it be to the salvation of his soul” (Hore fol. 77).2 These prefaces tend to be in English. The prayers themselves, however, are in Latin. From ca. 1400 until 1530, all primers for the English market remain wholly or principally in Latin. When the primers switch to English (with or without a Latin trot) around 1530, the indulgences and “superstitious” prefaces disappear from even the most traditional. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, a few other elements in the primers tend to shift into the vernacular so as to allow the laity to use, if not exactly read, the volume. The primers of the 1520s thus include English-­language headings explaining the occasion for a particular prayer: as “to get grace for sins” or “when thou enterest into the church, say thus.”3 In Regnault’s 1527 Paris primer the woodcuts for the Little Office have English verse captions, and the volume ends with a vernacular “form of confession” and various English prayers, including the xv Oes of St. Bridget. A primer of 1507 already has the Our Father, Ave Maria, Creed, and Ten Commandments in English. The earliest vernacular material in the primer, however, appears to be a set of devotions, sometimes under the title “Four devout prayers in English,” that first show up buried in the middle of a 1494 primer; this cluster, found in primers through the Marian era, displays the effusive sweetness and pleading intimacy typical of so many primer devotions, as well as a more distinctive focus on making a good death.4 The discussion thus far has centered on the pre-­Reformation primers. Between 1530 and 1545, when Henry VIII’s authorized primer outlawed the competition, things get complicated. The small flood of primers that come out during these years, virtually all either English or bilingual, range across the Reformed-­traditionalist spectrum—­most, however, clustering at one or the other opposite pole, with those in the middle being rather a mix of Reformed and traditional materials than a distinctive tertium quid.5 The first vernacular primers come from the Protestant side: the earliest in 1529, of which no copies survive, and then George Joye’s 1530 Ortolus animae: the garden of the soul, printed in Antwerp. In 1534 William Marshall, one of Cromwell’s men and translator of both Valla’s Donation of Constantine and Marsilius’ Defensor pacis, oversaw the London printing of an English primer based on Joye’s Ortolus and Lutheran devotions; the following year, Marshall brought out a revised version titled A goodly primer in Hore 1523, Lvii (Latin); corrected against Hore 1527, fol. 87 (see also in Hore 1527, fols. 79–­83). Duffy notes that such promises were specific to English primers, which were mostly printed abroad, sans the episcopal controls that elsewhere kept out such theologically dubious material (Hours 142–­43). 3 Hore 1528, Biv; Hore 1527, fol. 9. 4 These are the vernacular prayers from the 1507 primer reprinted below. 5 For an extraordinary example of splitting the difference, see Bishop Hilsey’s 1539 The manual of prayers, or the primer in English, whose tract on sacraments fuses real corporal presence and memorialism (Burton 388–­406). On other theologically hodgepodge primers, see Butterworth 118–­22, 181–­204, 207–­11, 215–­18. 1 2

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English, which went through four further editions and two pirated ones. The Joye and Marshall primers retain the basic structure of the Little Office (which is why they still count as primers), and A goodly primer restores some of the traditional elements omitted in its two predecessors,6 but even this most conservative of the reformed primers made, in Duffy’s words, “as comprehensive an onslaught on the time-­honored forms of Catholic piety as had yet appeared in England” (Stripping, 382). A goodly primer appeared 1535, the same year Robert Redman published the first English primer based on the medieval Sarum version (the Latin was retained in the margins). The revised edition that came out a year later in Rouen quickly became “the accepted standard for the ‘use of Sarum’” (Butterworth, 139) and the principal model for English primers through Mary’s reign. Apart from its preface warning against popish superstition and its omission of indulgences, Rouen 1536 was basically a bilingual version of the pre-­Reformation English primer. The authorized primer of 1545, the first “official” primer, marked the beginning of the end. With its liturgical elements—­the core of the traditional primer—­massively cut and a third of its pages given over to miscellaneous prayers for emergent occasions, the volume is no longer a book of hours but instead, as its preface states, “a new and contemporary ‘booke of ordinary praiers’ for the use of young or old” (Butterworth, 271). Although Edward and Elizabeth both issued official primers (largely reprints of 1545),7 except for a brief revival under Mary, the primer slipped to the cultural margins, replaced by the Book of Common Prayer for public worship and by a raft of private devotions and prayer miscellanies for extra-­liturgical use. Between 1580 and 1660 the only primers printed in England are ABCs, not books of hours.8 [\

What follows are selections from three primers. Since we are dealing with four or five different elements from each of three texts, it seems helpful to give a brief overview before commenting in somewhat more depth on a few salient features. The first selection, the “Four devout prayers in English” discussed above, comes from a 1507 London primer. The second, from a 1536 Rouen primer, includes examples of the Marian piety suffusing the Little Office (and the annexed Compassion of our Lady), plus two of the most popular extra-­liturgical devotions: the O bone Jesu based on Anselm’s Meditations and the fourteenth-­century English prayers known as the Oes of St. Bridget. Both display the ardent tenderness and focus on the suffering humanity of Christ that typifies late medieval piety. The final set of readings come from Marshall’s Goodly primer of 1535: a dour preface to the Hail Mary; devotions celebrating the word and preaching, including preaching by women; and a strikingly unmedieval passion meditation that illuminates the theological changes driving the revolution in devotional practice. The vernacular “devout prayers” of the 1507 primer were almost certainly written by a cleric, but a cleric attempting to model the piety of a good Christian layman—­a piety that E.g., the Litany, the Dirige (the Office of the Dead), and the O bone Jesu. For specifics, see the preface to Clay, Private prayers. 8 Birchenough 194. However, John Cosin’s A collection of private devotions (London, 1627) might with considerable justice be considered a Laudian primer. 6 7

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bears a strong resemblance to that which, a century later, the puritan Arthur Dent ascribes to his imagined layman, Asunetus, in A plain man’s pathway . The normative vision of lay Christianity implicit in the 1507 prayers is, however, what Dent spends four hundred pages attacking: the imagined speaker of the 1507 lacks any strong conviction of personal sinfulness, believes that he can (or even does) love God with his whole heart and keep his commandments, seems to regard living in “charity with all mine even Christen” as fulfilling the demands of the Law. The four prayers probably had different authors and occasions, but the primers present them as a unit, linked by their concern with holy dying, and by a fear that in one’s final moments pain, delirium, or the devil might betray one into unbelief.9 The Mariolatry of the 1536 Rouen primer—­the single most salient feature of all pre-­ Reformation primers—­scarcely needs pointing out. The theological basis of the O bone Jesu and the xv Oes has a more complex history. As Eamon Duffy notes in his discussion of these prayers, their affective piety rests on Anselm’s account of the Atonement: by becoming man, God becomes one of us, our brother, a God “whose understanding of the human condition is guaranteed by the fact that he took flesh and suffered for us, and whose suffering forms an enduring bond of endearment and tenderness between him and suffering humanity.” The affective piety of the late Middle Ages foregrounded this close kinship with the human and suffering Christ, yet without losing sight of the other half of the Anselmian account: the Jesus of the Oes and O bone Jesu is thus our brother, but also “emphatically God incarnate,” whose love and mercy revealed on the Cross “are of overwhelming significance because they are the expression of the mind of the Trinity” (Duffy, Stripping, 235–­36, 250). The Oes drive home the reality that the figure on the Cross is Deus verus by not differentiating Father and Son, by representing stern Judge and merciful Savior as the same one God. One notes the same insistence upon the oneness of the Triune God—­and upon Jesus as God incarnate—­in the popular late medieval rendering of the Trinity in which Father and Son (sometimes Spirit as well) are visualized as nearly identical figures, usually bearded young men; as also in the more unusual rendering of the Trinity as a single figure with three identical faces.10 The contrast between these late medieval representations and the relation of Father and Son in the Protestant A goodly primer is both striking and explicit. The latter replaces the Anselmian model of the Atonement with what will become the standard Calvinist doctrine of penal substitution, which understands Christ’s death as required by the fact that God will not suffer sin to go unpunished; in order to satisfy divine justice, the Son bears the infinite weight of God’s anger, himself suffering all the punishment that would have been inflicted upon us.11 Hence for A goodly primer the Cross no longer 9 Note the similar anxieties in the late medieval Doctrinal of death . They remain momentarily audible in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer burial rite, whose opening sentences conclude, “O holy and most merciful Savior . . . suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee.” 10 This image, known as the “Vultus Trifrons,” was prohibited by the Council of Trent and again by a 1628 papal bull. 11 The quotations come from A goodly primer’s “A devout, fruitful, and godly remembrance of the Passion of our Savior Jesu Christ” . On the difference between the Anselmian and Calvinist Atonement, see David Neelands, “Crime, guilt, and the punishment of Christ,” Anglican Theological Review 88.2 (2006): 197–­213.

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reveals Christ’s solidarity with suffering humanity, but rather, “the vehement wrath and righteous punishment of God the Father against sinners,” and thus serves as a mirror in which we behold our “own sins and enormities” with “fear and trembling.” We remember Christ’s suffering in order to grasp the enormity of our own sinfulness—­not, as in traditional Passion devotions, to “piteously sorrow and mourn for Christ,” nor, as in the traditional primer’s omnipresent me-­prayers, “to preserve us from adversities.” Furthermore, A goodly primer’s model of the Atonement sharply distinguishes the roles of Father and Son, and does so in a way that makes it hard to avoid the impression that the Father is the real God, the one who makes the rules and pronounces the verdict, whereas the Son seems rather to be the mediator between man and God. One’s sense that A goodly primer’s Christ is not quite Deus verus comes partly from its theology of the Atonement, but also from its tendency to allot Christ what, in earlier primers, had been Mary’s role. Its Salve Rex is thus a Protestant rewrite of the Salve Regina, replacing the old ending, which asks Mary to “show unto us . . . Jesus,” with a plea that Jesus “show us the presence of the Father” . [\ Sources: Edwyn Birchenough, “The prymer in English,” The Library, 4th series, 18 (1938): 177–­9 4; John Bossy, “Prayers,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 1 (1991): 137–­48; Charles Butterworth, The English primers (1529–­1545), (Philadelphia, 1953); William Clay, Private prayers put forth by authority during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1851); Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English people and their prayers, 1240–­1570 (New Haven, 2006); Duffy, Stripping; Helen White, Tudor books of private devotion (Madison, 1951) [\ Primers: Edward Burton, ed., Three primers put forth in the reign of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1834); Hore beate marie virginis secundum vsum Sarum cum varijs orationibus, libet deuoto[rum] modis (Antwerp: C. Ruremond for P Kaetz in London, 1523); Hore beatissime virginis Marie ad legitimum Sarisburiensis ecclesie ritum (Paris: Francisco Regnault, 1527); Hore beate Marie virginis ad vsum insignis ac preclare ecclesie Sarum (Paris, 1528); Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis: or, Sarum and York primers, with kindred books, ed. Edgar Hoskins (London, 1901); Horae Eboracenses, Publications of the Surtees Society 132 (1919).

427

HORE BEATE MARIEVIRGINIS SECUNDUM USUM INSIGNIS ECCLESIAE SARUM 1507

{i} O glorious Jesu, O meekest Jesu, O most sweetest Jesu. I pray thee that I may have true confession, contrition, & satisfaction ere I die; and that I may see and receive thy holy body, God and man, Savior of all mankind, Christ Jesu, without sin; and that thou wilt, my Lord God, forgive me all my sins for thy glorious wounds and Passion; and that I may end my life in the true faith of holy Church, and in perfect love and charity with all mine even Christian as thy creature; and I commend my soul into thy holy hands, through the glorious help of thy holy blessed Mother and of all the holy company of heaven. The glorious blood of Christ Jesu bring my soul and body in the everlasting bliss. I cry God mercy. I cry God mercy. I cry God mercy. Welcome, my Maker. Welcome, my Redeemer. Welcome, my Savior. I cry thee mercy with heart contrite for my great unkindness that I have had to thee. {ii} O the most sweet spouse of my soul, Christ Jesu, desiring heartily evermore to be with thee in mind and will, and to let none earthly thing to be so near my heart as thou, Jesu. And that I dread not for to die for to go to thee, Jesu; and that I may evermore say to thee with a glad cheer: my Savior, Christ Jesu. I beseech thee heartily, take me, sinner, to thy great mercy and grace, for I love thee with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my might; and nothing so much in earth nor above earth as I do thee, my sweet Lord, Jesu Christ. And for that I have not loved thee and worshipped thee above all thing as my Lord and Savior, Christ Jesu, I beseech thee, with meekness and heart contrite, of mercy and forgiveness of my great unkindness, for the great love that thou showed for me and all mankind, what time thou offered up thy glorious body, God and man, unto the Cross, there to be crucified and wounded, and out of thy heart running plenteously blood and water for the redemption of me and all mankind; and thus taking remembrance steadfastly in my heart of thee, my Savior Christ Jesu, I doubt not but thou wilt be full near me and comfort me, both bodily and ghostly, with thy glorious presence, and at the last bring me unto thine everlasting bliss, the which shall never have end. Amen. 428



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{iii} Oratio ad sanctissimum Trinitatem O blessed Trinity, the Father, the Son, & the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, I believe with mine heart and confess with my mouth all that holy Church believeth and holdeth of thee, as much as a good Catholic and a Christian man ought to do and believe of thee; and I protest here before thy Majesty that I will live & die in this faith, and continue all my life in the knowledge of thee, my God. . . . Thy poor creature, subject, and servant do make to thee faith and homage of my body and of my soul, which I hold of thee nobly, as of my sovereign Lord and God, with all the goods—­natural, spiritual, and temporal—­that I have and that ever I had and that I intend to have of thee in this world here; and that with all my heart I reverence and thank thee; and in sign of the cognizance & knowledge,1 I pay to thee this little tribute on morning and on evening: that is, that I adore and worship thee with heart and mouth in faith, in hope, and in charity with this little orison and prayer, which all only appertaineth to thy blessed majesty, signory, and divinity. And humbly I require thee of three things. The first is mercy & forgiveness of as many evils and villain2 sins as I have done & committed in time passed against thy will. The second is that it please thee to give me grace, that I may serve thee and accomplish thy commandments without to turn and fall into deadly sin. The third is that, at my death and at my great need, thou succor me & give me grace, that I have remembrance of thy blessed Passion and contrition of my sins, & that I may die in this holy faith and finally may come to the glory eternal with all the saints of heaven. Amen. {iv} O Lord God almighty, all-­seeing, all things knowing, wisdom and sapience of all, I, poor sinner, make this day, in despite of all the fiends of hell, protestation that if by adventure {perchance} any temptation, deception, or variation coming by sorrow, pain of sickness, or by any feebleness of body, or by any other occasion whatsoever it be, I fall or decline in peril of my soul or prejudice of my health or in error of the holy faith catholic in which I was regenerate in the holy font of baptism. Lord God, in good mind in which I hold me now by thy grace, wherefore with all my heart I thank thee of that, & that against that error with my power I resist and here renounce and of the same me confess, in protesting that I will live and die in the faith of holy Church, our mother and thine espouse; and in witness to this confession and protestation, and in despite of the fiend of hell, I offer to thee Credo, in which all verity, all truth is contained; and to thee I commend my soul, my faith, my life, and my death. Amen. Credo in Deum.3 [\ T ext: Hore beate Marie virginis secundum usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum (London, 1558 [actually 1507]) (NSTC 16084).

{Both terms mean “acknowledgment.”} {“Villain” here means vile, but with a strong suggestion of “villein,” i.e., slavish, servile, base; in contrast to the “noble” homage of a tenant-­in-­chief holding immediately from his lord.} 3 {The syntax of this final prayer leaves much to be desired. It is followed by a brief prayer in Latin, asking for blessing, protection, guidance, and illumination. The concluding Latin tag is the opening of the Apostles’ Creed, which the devout reader would then recite.} 1 2

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{(Matins), following the Pater Noster and Ave Maria} The blessing Lord, we beseech thee of thy blessing. The response Holy virgin of virgins, pray for us unto the Lord The first lesson Holy Mary, most pure of virgins all, Mother and daughter of the King celestial, So comfort us in our desolation That by thy prayer and special mediation We enjoy the reward of the heavenly reign And there with God’s elect alway to remain Thou, Lord, have mercy on us. The response Holy and undefiled virginity, I wote not with what praising I may exalt thee. For him that heavens might not take,1 thou barest in thy womb.

1

{The phrase translates “quem celi capere non poterant,” so that “take” has the sense of “hold” or “grasp.”}

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The versicle Blessed be thou among all women, and blessed be the fruit of thy womb. For him that heavens might not take, thou barest in thy womb. The blessing Lord, we beseech thee of thy blessing. The answer Pray for us devoutly, O virgin Mary. The second lesson Holy Mary, of all godly the godliest, Pray for us, of all holy the holiest, That he our prayers accept may in good wise, Which of thee was born, and reigneth above the skies, By whose charity and merciful remission, Our grievous sins may be in oblivion. Thou, Lord, have mercy on us. Thank we God. The response Blessed art thou, virgin Mary, that barest our Lord. Thou hast born him that made thee, and yet remainest a virgin evermore. The versicle Hail Mary, full of grace, our Lord is with thee. Thou hast born him that made thee, and yet remainest a virgin evermore. The blessing Lord, we beseech of thy blessing. The answer God’s holy Mother be helping to us. The third lesson Holy Mother of God, which him hast conceived That of all the world could not worthily be received, Thy Son beseech, with humble intercession, To purge us clean of our transgression, That so being redeemed, we may the place ascend Where thou dwellest with him, world without end. Thou, Lord, have mercy on us.2 2

{The above selection is fairly typical of the primer’s Little Hours of the Virgin.}

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The first hour of the compassion of our Lady3 Then our Lady in the morning beheld Her only Son scourged and foul arrayed Bobbed, knocked, and his face with spit defiled, God wote, in heart she was full sore dismayed. But yet, alas, it maketh mine heart afraid To think how she fell in grievous weeping And how dolefully her hands she gan wring. ‡

The prayer in the praise of our Lady4 Hail queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope, all hail. Unto thee do we cry, which are the banished children of Eva. Unto thee do we sigh, weeping & wailing in this vale of lamentation. Come off5 therefore our patroness. Cast upon us those pitiful eyes of thine, and after this our banishment, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesu. O merciful, O holy, O sweet virgin Mary, Virgin mother of the congregation, Gate of glory that never is done, Be for us a reconciliation Unto the Father and the Son. ‡

The xv O’s6 The vi prayer

O blessed Jesu, king most worthy to be loved & friend most to be desired, have mind of that sorrow that thou haddest when thou beheldest in the mirror of thy right clear majesty in predestination of thy chosen souls that should be saved by the merit of thy Passion.7 For {On the “Hours of Compassion of the Blessed Mary,” see White, Tudor books, 61, 83.} {The Salve regina (the prayer that becomes the Salve rex in the 1535 Goodly primer )} 5 {Archaic imperative: come! or hasten!} 6 {Although ascribed to St. Bridget of Sweden (1303–­1373), the O’s (or Oes) are English works, probably late fourteenth century (Duffy, Stripping, 249). Many primers of the 1520s promise spectacular get-­out-­of-­ jail-­free results for saying them a prescribed number of times (idem., 254–­55).} 7 {The English makes no sense; why would Christ sorrow at beholding the souls saved by the merit of his Passion? The parallel Latin text has an additional five words at the end that clarify matters: “quando in speculo serenissimae maiestatis tuae aspexisti predestinationem electorum tuourum per merita tuae passionis saluandorum et reprobationem malorum & multitudinem damnandorum.” Duffy notes that after the condemnation of Lollardy, the language of predestination becomes suspect; all fifteenth-­century versions of the O’s muffle or omit the predestinarian material (Stripping, 253).} 3 4

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mind of the deepness of thy great mercy which thou haddest upon us lost desperate sinners, & namely for the great mercy which thou showed to the thief that hung on the right side, saying to him thus: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise, I pray thee, benigne Jesu, to show thy mercy to me in the hour of my death. The xi prayer

O blessed Jesu, deepness of endless mercy, I beseech thee for the deepness of thy wounds that went through thy tender flesh and thy bowels and the marrow of thy bones that thou vouchsafe to draw me out of sin & hide me ever after in the holes of thy wounds from the face of thy wrath, unto the time, Lord, that thy dreadful fury be passed. So be it. . . . The xv prayer

O blessed Jesu, very and true plenteous vine, have mind of thy Passion & abundant shedding of blood, that thou sheddest most plenteously, as if it had been crushed out of a ripe cluster of grapes, when they pressed thy blessed body as a ripe cluster upon the presser {i.e., wine-­press} of the Cross, and gavest us drink, both blood & water, out of thy body pierced with a knight’s spear, so that in thy blessed body was not left a drop of blood ne {i.e., nor} of water. Then at last like a bundle of myrrh, thou hungest on the Cross on high, where thy tender flesh changed his color because the liquor of thy bowels & the marrow of thy bones was dried up. For mind of this bitter Passion (sweet Jesu), wound my heart, & that my soul may be fed sweetly with water of penance and tears of love both night & day. And, good Jesu, turn me whole to thee, that my heart may be ever to thee a dwelling place and that my living may be ever pleasant and acceptable. And that the end of my life may be so commendable that I may perpetually deserve to praise thee with all saints in bliss. So be it. ‡

Hereafter followeth a devout prayer of Saint Bernard {O bone Jesu}8 O bountiful Jesu, O sweet Jesu, O Jesu the Son of the pure virgin Mary, full of mercy and truth. O sweet Jesu, after thy great mercy, have pity upon me. O benign {i.e., kind} Jesu, I pray thee by the same precious blood which for us miserable sinners thou were content to shed in the altar of the Cross, that thou vouchsafe clean to avoid {i.e., expel} all my wickedness, & not to despise me, humbly this requiring & upon thy most holy name, Jesus, calling. This name Jesus is the name of health. What is Jesus but a savior? O good Jesus that hast me created and with thy precious blood redeemed, suffer me not to be damned, whom of naught thou hast made. O good Jesu, let not my wickedness destroy me that thy almighty goodness made and formed. O good Jesu, reknowlege this thine image, and wipe clean away that eloineth {i.e., distances} me from thee. O good Jesu, when time of mercy is, have mercy upon me. Nor confound me not in time of thy terrible judgment. O good Jesus, if I, wretched sinner, for my most grievous offenses have, by thy very justice, deserved eternal pain, yet I appeal from thy very righteousness and steadfastly trust 8

{Note the variant of this ancient prayer in Bentley .}

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in thine ineffable mercy. So as a mild father & merciful lord ought, take pity on me. O good Jesu, what profit is in my blood, since that I must descend into eternal corruption. Certainly they that been dust shall not magnify thee, nor likewise all they that go to hell. O most merciful Jesu, have mercy upon me. O most sweet Jesu, deliver me. O most meek Jesu, be unto me comfortable. O Jesu, accept me a wretched sinner into the number of them that shall be saved. O Jesu, the health of them that believe in thee, have mercy upon me. O Jesu, the sweet forgiveness of all my sins. O Jesu, the Son of the pure virgin Mary, endue me with thy grace, wisdom, charity, chastity, and humility; yea, and in all mine adversities, steadfast patience, so that I may perfectly love thee and in thee to be glorified & have my only delight in thee, world without end. So be it. ‡

For a competency of living: The prayer of Solomon. Proverbs the xxx chapter Two things, Lord, I demanded that thou woldest not deny me until I die. Vanity & words of lesing {lying} make far from me. Poverty or riches give me not. Only give that is necessary for my living, lest perchance, being in full abundance, I might be provoked to deny thee, and say, who is lord? Or compelled by necessity, I might steal and forswear the name of my God. So be it.9 [\ T ext: This prymer in Englyshe and in Laten is newly translatyd after the Laten texte (Rouen, 1536) (STC 15993).

9

{This is the volume’s final prayer.}

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WILLIAM MARSHALL A goodly primer

1535

. . .

The salutation of our most blessed Lady, Saint Mary the Virgin Hail, Mary, full of grace.1 Here first of all take heed that no man put his sure trust and hope in the Mother of God or her merits. For this sure trust is due to God only, as the chief and only worship, with the which we are commanded to honor only God. The grace and favor which was given her of God giveth us an occasion to praise God and give him thanks. We ought none otherwise to praise and love her than one which hath received such goodness, without her own deserving, of the pure liberality and favor of God, even as she herself doth knowledge in the song Magnificat. For as I am moved by the sight of heaven, the sun, or other creatures to commend and praise the Maker, and put them into my praise and prayer, saying, O good Lord, which hast made such a bright and goodly creature, give, I pray thee, unto me also that I may be bright and shining in virtue, void of all darkness of sin, error, and ignorance, which at the last might bring me to destruction, &c. So in this place in our prayer we set the mother of God, and say, O glorious God, what a noble virgin hast thou made, blessed and praised be she. And thou, Lord, which hast so glorified and exalted her, grant, I most humbly beseech thee, also to me thy grace, that I may avoid and eschew the danger of thy displeasure, and that I may also love and keep thy holy commandments, &c. So that our heart consist {i.e., come to a stand} not in her, but may go forth by her to Christ, and to God himself. . . .

{I.e., the Ave Maria. For these very common prayers, only the first line is given, cuing the reader to recite it from memory.} 1

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{From the Evensong devotions} The anthem Some time the Scripture with the gospel2 was so free that they were preached of the mouths of holy women: as of Our Lady, of Anna (Phanuelis’ daughter), and of the four daughters of Philip.3 But now, behold, saith the Lord by his prophet Amos, I shall send an hunger into the earth, not the hunger for bodily food nor thirst for water, but hunger and thirst to hear the word of the Lord; and men shall go from one sea to the other, compassing about from the north to the east, seeking the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it {8:11-­12}. The versicle O Lord, send us the preachers of thy word. The answer And give us grace to believe it. So be it. The prayer O merciful Father, which by thy word madest all things, and by it shalt unmake again at the time appointed; and with thy fearful word didst cast down Adam, with thy comfortable word liftedst him up again; also through thy word thou hast declared thy will and given us the knowledge of thee by the fathers and prophets, and at the last by thine own Son, Christ, sending him to preach it, as a thing so necessary that without it there is no knowledge of thee, no faith, no salvation, no health: wherefore we beseech thee, for thy word’s sake, and for thy glory therein, to set up thy word again and make it to be known, which of so long time hath been darkened with men’s dreams and thrust down with men’s words and men’s laws; so that through thy word, now at the last, we might know thy will from men’s pleasures; and finally, to believe only thy word and to do thy will, by thy Son, our Lord Jesu. So be it. Salve Rex4 Hail, Jesu Christ, King of mercy; our life, our sweetness, and our hope, we salute thee; unto thee we cry, which are the banished children of Eve; unto thee we sigh, sobbing and weeping in this vale of wretchedness. Haste thee, therefore, our Mediator; turn unto us those thy merciful eyes. O Jesu all praise-­worthy, show us the presence of thy Father after this outlawry {exile}. O gentle, O merciful, O sweet Jesu Christ. ‡

{I.e., the proclamation of the good news} {Luke 2:36; Acts 21:9} 4 {A Protestant recasting of the Salve regina, taken from Joye’s 1530 Ortolus. For the traditional Marian version, see the 1536 Rouen primer .. 2 3

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A devout, fruitful, and godly remembrance of the Passion of our Savior Jesu Christ There are certain which, when they exercise themselves in the meditation or remembrance of the Passion which Christ suffered for mankind, do nothing else but wax wood and furious against the blind Jews and Judas their guide, through whom he was betrayed as an innocent lamb into their bloody and cruel hands—­even as it is the common manner of them which are wont to lament and bewail the misery of their friends to accuse and cry out on those persons which do the deed—­but they nothing consider them which are the chief causes of his bitter death and Passion. So that surely this may better be called a remembrance of the Jews’ wickedness than of Christ’s Passion. There are other that have gathered together divers commodities which spring through the diligent beholding of this Passion. . . . Howbeit, with all their politic means and studious imaginations, they could never attain the very use and profit of the Passion of Christ. Neither sought they anything therein but their own private wealth {i.e., well-­being}. For some carried about them images, painted papers, carved crosses, and such other. Yea, and some fell to such mad ignorance that they thought themselves through such things to be safe from fire, water, and all other perilous jeopardies: as though the Cross of Christ should deliver them from such outward troubles, and not rather the contrary. These do piteously sorrow and mourn for Christ, and complain that he was innocent and guiltless put to death, even like as the women of Jerusalem whom Christ himself did reprehend, advertising them that they should lament themselves and their children. . . . In this sort may we also number them which have instruct other what excellent commodities are in the Mass, insomuch that the rude and ignorant people persuaded themselves that it was sufficient salve for all sores if they had heard a Mass, and that they should have good luck in whatsoever they went about, good or evil. They consider not that the Mass was institute of Christ to make us more holy, through the devout remembrance of his Passion, with a pure faith; and not to preserve us from adversities, which God sendeth us for the correction of our evil lives. It is therefore to be feared lest, if thou be ignorant in the true use of the Mass, that the more thou hearest, the more thou offendest God, abusing his institution and ordinance. But these are the very right beholders of Christ’s Passion which consider and mark in his Passion their own sins and enormities, which were the cause and ground of his Passion and death. For they are feared and their consciences tremble as soon as they remember the Passion, which fear and trembling riseth of this, that they may see in the Passion the vehement wrath and righteous punishment of God the Father against sinners, which would not, for all the abundant favor that he had unto his Son, suffer their sin unpunished but that his most dear Son must redeem them with his own death: which thing Isaiah doth also confirm, saying in the person of God the Father, For the sins of my people have I wounded him. What then shall become of us, since his most dear and only Son is so cruelly entreated? It must needs be a marvelous and inenarrable wrath towards us which could not be pacified but through death—­yea, and that through the death of Christ, his best-­ beloved Son. And verily, if a man do mark diligently that the very Son of God, the image and wisdom of the Father, did suffer for our transgressions to reconcile us unto his Father, there is no doubt but he shall tremble and abhor his grievous iniquities. 437



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Furthermore, imprint this thing surely and grave it in thy heart: that thou thyself art one of them which on this manner dost torment and crucify Christ; for thy sins have cast him into those torments. . . . Therefore, when thou seest the nails fastened in the hands of Christ, think that those sharp nails are thy evil deeds. When thou beholdest his brain pierced with the crown of thorns, think that those thorns are thy wicked thoughts and subtle imaginations. And where thou seest Christ pricked with one thorn, remember that thou hast deserved to be pricked a thousandfold more oft and grievously. Where thou seest his hands and feet thrust through with nails, remember that thou hast deserved, without comparison, more cruel pain. And surely they that despise the Passion of Christ shall without end suffer most grievous torments, for the vehement wrath and righteous punishment of God (which he well declared in that he would his only Son to die for our transgressions) is no feigned trifle, but the wicked and unfaithful shall prove it in deed. . . . . . . So that this is the pure and natural work of Christ’s Passion, to mortify the old man of sin that reigneth in our members; to cast out all hope and comfort that we have in creatures, and so deep to bring a man into the knowledge of his sin that he shall come even to the brink of desperation, and think that he is forsaken of God. Yet it leaveth him not there, but it bringeth him again with all consolation and comfort, and showeth him that all his outrageous enormities are crucified with Christ . . . and that the Father’s wrath is pacified by his Son’s death. And we all, as many as believe that Christ’s death hath paid the ransom of our sin, are set at one with God and are become his children, so that he is no more our Judge which should punish us for our iniquities, but will be called our merciful Father which forgiveth his children’s transgressions. . . . [\ T ext: William Marshall, A goodly primer in English in Three primers put forth in the reign of Henry VIII, ed. Edward Burton (Oxford, 1934), 1–­300. Corrected against A goodly prymer in englyshe, newly corrected and printed with certeyne godly meditations and prayers added to the same . . . (London, 1535) (NSTC 15988).

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A BOOK OF CHRISTIAN PRAYERS 15781

Printed by John Day (1522–­1584), with a preface by Richard Day (1552–­1607?) Appendix

Thomas Becon (1512–­1567), The pomander of prayer 1561 Printed by John Day

One has to see A book of Christian prayers. Before reading further, turn to the plates on pages . It is an extraordinary volume to have been printed in mid-­sixteenth-­ century London: this and its precursor—­the 1569 Christian prayers and meditations, also published by John Day—­constitute the sole “prayer-­books de luxe” of the Elizabethan era; the nineteenth-­century bibliographer Thomas Dibdin thought them “the most splendid example of ornamental printing which this country ever produced.”2 Although the two volumes, henceforth referred to as 1569 and 1578, contain different prayers, they use the same title page, with Madonna and Child centered above a royal Tree of Jesse, and, on the reverse side, a full-­page portrait of Elizabeth at prayer. Although 1578 has a richer and more complex iconographic program, both volumes have the same woodcut series on the Life of Christ and on the Dance of Death, both based on a 1520 Sarum primer printed in Paris (Clay xxi). (The visual similarity has led to their conflation, both indiscriminately referred to as “Queen Elizabeth’s prayer book.”) Both volumes bear the imprint of John Day, although his son Richard wrote the preface to 1578 and translated some or all of the Latin prayers. The volume, with its seven series of woodcuts, each with their own ornaments, would have been a hugely complex project—­a lbeit not as complex as the project for which John Day is best known: Foxe’s Acts and monuments, whose visuals are equally splendid, but very different. The difference raises questions. Why would the publisher of Foxe bring out a work so obviously modeled on Catholic primers? Recent scholarship on John Day passes over both volumes in silence, and indeed if one scans the list of Day’s imprints, these two prayer books seem incomprehensible anomalies. From the time he started publishing in the 1540s, Day specialized in Protestant divinity. In 1553 –­1554 he operated a clandestine Protestant press on land owned by There were further editions in 1581, 1590, and 1608. Chew, 293–­94. For the Dibdin quotation, see www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/day-richard/ booke-of-christian-prayer/82939.aspx (accessed August 8, 2012). 1 2

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William Cecil. After Elizabeth’s accession, he won exclusive rights to the printing of The whole book of Psalms and all English catechisms. Richard Day was too young to have had any involvement with 1569, but 1578 is often treated as his work. This seems dubious. He wrote (or perhaps translated) the preface, but the title page names John Day as the printer both in 1578 and in the second edition of 1581. Richard had returned to work at his father’s print shop in 1576 after graduating BA from King’s College, Cambridge, but he did not start printing on his own until 1579, a venture that lasted only three years. His inexperience is made painfully apparent in the note he had to prefix to one of his few independent publications: an apology for the book’s error-­ridden printing and design flaws.3 1578 is the work of a master printer; and while it is plausible, given his education, that Richard translated the prayers, the book is not his workmanship, nor could it have been his idea. John Day was an experienced businessman;4 he would not have undertaken a work like 1578 except for someone the value of whose favor exceeded the cost of commissioning scores of intricately carved woodcuts. None of Day’s other books (nor any other Elizabethan prayer book) has woodcuts resembling those of 1569 and 1578. If one turns to the content of the two volumes, the case is altered. The English prayers in 1569 are mostly Tudor Protestant standards, although the volume’s most striking element is a concluding set of multi-­lingual prayers to which we will return. The 1578 prayers have little in common with those of 1569; they do, however, incorporate a number of prayers from Day’s 1558, 1561, and 1567 editions of Becon’s Pomander. These editions supplement Becon’s Protestant devotions with a “number of old prayers or adaptations of old prayers . . . so large that they impart to the book as a whole a remarkable impression of continuity” (White, 179; Cla,y xxiii). The appendix prints one such old prayer from Day’s 1561 Pomander . Like virtually all Day’s additions to the Pomander in these three editions, this prayer comes from the pseudoepigrapha of St. Augustine: works known in the sixteenth century as Augustine’s Meditations, Soliloquies, and Manual.5 These contain some genuine Augustine material, but most of pseudo-­Augustine is actually St. Anselm’s Meditations. That is to say, on three occasions between 1558 and 1567, Day prints long passages of medieval devotion, mostly taken from St. Anselm, as part of Becon’s Protestant prayer book. After 1567, he does not abandon his pseudo-­Augustine texts—­which he, like everyone else, regarded as Augustine’s—­but prints them as free-­standing works. In each case, Day’s is the first English printing of this largely Anselmian material, the same material that Duffy’s Stripping of the altars regards as the theological core of pre-­Reformation piety. Day’s volumes must have found a market, for in 1581 Thomas Rogers, a Protestant divine, re-­translated the three titles; the most popular, A pretious booke of heavenlie 3 Peter Baro, De fide, ejusque ortu, & natura, plana ac dilucida explicatio (London, 1580), Aiiv. With respect to 1578, it may be significant that in 1579 John Day printed another of Baro’s works, the commentary on Jonah. In the years following Baro’s 1573 arrival in Cambridge, he lectured on divinity at King’s, where Richard Day was a student from 1571 to at least 1575. The works printed by the Days are Baro’s seminal anti-­Calvinist tracts. 4 Father and son had a huge falling-­out in 1580; if the charges that survive in the legal records can be credited, the elder Day was tight-­fisted and vindictive; the younger, not above cheating his own father. 5 Day’s 1558 edition, like 1578, has the xv Oes; his 1561 Pomander includes the Conditor coeli.

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meditations, went through twelve editions between 1581 and 1640. Roman Catholic translations followed: one printed at Douai in 1621, another at Paris in 1631. Moreover, further digging finds traces of pseudo-­Augustine in Protestant books of private devotions across the decades of Elizabeth’s reign. We have already noted his presence in Day’s 1558, 1561, and 1567 Pomander, but pseudo-­Augustine passages also turn up in the 1564 Preces privatae . . . regia authoritate approbatae (six further editions over the next decade); and he resurfaces in A godly garden (ten editions between 1574 and 1640), a volume that also reprints the O bone Jesu and a Communion hymn by Aquinas. Helen White describes this very traditional prayer book as part of “a very real revival of interest in ancient devotion in this third quarter of the sixteenth century” (187). “Revival,” however, may be a misnomer; since the first and much of the second quarter of that century are pre-­Reformation and the third includes Mary’s reign, it seems more accurate to speak of continuities. From the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign a steady rivulet of Anselmian piety centered on the suffering humanity of Christ—­the dominant language of late medieval religion—­flowed into the Protestant devotional mainstream. While it spoke in accents different from those favored by Reformation divines, the old prayers passed unchallenged—­ perhaps because so many came stamped with the authority of St. Augustine’s name. [\

1578 represents the culmination of this Elizabethan reworking of traditional devotion. Five of its prayers come from pseudo-­Augustine; others, from the same devotional ambit. It also reprints ten of the xv Oes,6 which, in their late medieval rendering of the Passion “as a continuing spiritual reality into which the worshiper aspires to enter as directly and as immediately as possible” are, White remarks, “just the type of prayer that one would expect to see disappear” after 1559.7 Some of 1578’s sixteenth-­century Catholic-­ humanist prayers likewise belong to the Anselmian tradition. Duffy cites Juan Luis Vives’ “Coram imagine Christi servatoriae nostri”—­the prayer that in 1578 begins “O Brother of ours”—­as epitomizing the vision of Christ at the heart of “the devotional literature of pre-­Reformation England.”8 Other of Vives’ prayers in 1578 belong to the same tradition. Upon inspection, even the unfamiliar Communion prayer beginning “My Lord, Jesu Christ” turns out to derive from the canon of late medieval piety. The prayer is a mosaic of fragments from the closing pages of the late medieval De morte Hieronymi ascribed (wrongly) to St. Eusebius of Cremona. The compiler of 1578, however, did not go back to De morte Hieronymi for his text, but found a Latin prayer composed of the identical fragments in Andreas Musculus’ 1559 Precationes ex veteribus orthodoxis doctoribus (18 eds. between 1559 and 1624),9 the seminal volume in the late flowering of medieval devotion in the Lutheran territories of the Empire c. 1550–­1650.10 Its prayers include the O bone Jesu,

On the xv Oes of the pseudo-­St. Bridget, see . White, 194, 217. 8 Duffy, Stripping, 236; Vives 188–­89; 1578 fol. 87. 9 In the 1561 edition of Musculus’ work, the prayer, titled “Hiero, in agone,” begins on fol. 85. 10 Frandsen, 118–­19; see also David Price, Albrecht Durer’s Renaissance: humanism, Reformation, and the art of faith (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 2003), 195. 6 7

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St. Bernard’s De interiori clamo, a series of patristic and medieval hymns (e.g., Lauda Sion, Vexilla regis, Pange lingua, etc.), and page after page of pseudo-­Augustine. 1578 likewise includes an array of medieval prayers, mostly of an affective-­A nselmian cast. Yet almost half its material comes from Erasmus’ Precationes aliquot and Vives’ Excitations animi in Deum, both published in 1535. No sharp boundary divides these Catholic-­ humanist devotions from the earlier material. Yet they also show a new emphasis on the horizontal relations of humanity: on compassion for the poor, forgiveness of enemies, and solidarity with all persons. It seems worth noting that in 1578 the prayers on these subjects replace the Pomander’s household-­centered devotions,11 and that these prayers, most translated from Vives, define the moral center of Christianity in opposition to the family values of homo naturalis: we are to respond to strangers’ “necessities and griefs” as we do to those of self and kin .12 The Catholic-­humanist prayers in 1578 are also principal contributors to its leitmotif of corporate Christian unity: the conviction that not just a handful of elect but all persons, our enemies included, have been “ordained to be citizens of the one everlasting City” . Erasmus’ prayer for the peace of the Church speaks of the variously and bitterly divided parties of the post-­Reformation as all belonging to “the whole company of thy Church” . The volume’s final prayer imagines the people of England, from Queen to commons, as “every of us thy poor sheep” . From the vantage point of the 1630s, the Gothic-­survival and Catholic-­humanist components of 1578—­perhaps eighty percent of the volume’s prayers—­look like nascent Anglo-­Catholicism. Yet this can only be a half-­truth, since the volume also contains unmistakably Protestant devotions: Foxe’s anguished response to the dereliction of Christendom, a prayer by Knox, two by Calvin. Nor does these form a separate “Reformed” group; rather each appears in one or another set of theologically diverse prayers grouped under a common heading. The four Ante-­Communion devotions begin with a selection from Knox’s Anglo-­Genevan liturgy, followed by two from Erasmus’ Precationes, and conclude with the strange fragments of De morte Hieronymi. Such rainbow-­coalition devotions are scarcely typical of the late sixteenth century. Like Erasmus’ prayer for the peace of the Church, 1578 draws the circle of orthodoxy with an open compass. The woodcuts surrounding these interwoven texts register the same theological vision: primer-­style illustrations of the life of Christ give way to Elizabethan parishioners kneeling at a Holy Table to receive not wafer and chalice but what is clearly leavened bread and an ordinary drinking goblet; further on, men and women in contemporary dress perform the traditional corporeal works of mercy ; on one page, graceful neoclassical females personifying taste and touch enclose fifteenth-­century black-­letter devotions; on another, grinning skeletons from a medieval Dance of Death border a prayer by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives . The volume’s bricolage of old and new, its preponderance of humanist and pre-­ Reformation spirituality within a basically Protestant frame—­i.e., one that cuts out all Becon 1561, fols. 15–­23; see also Clay, ed., Preces privatae, 272–­75; White, 167–­69. On the early Christian struggle to break through the walls of the oikos so that the loyalties and resources of the ancient family might flow out to the poor, see Peter Brown, The body and society (New York: 1988), 289–­92. 11

12

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prayers to the Virgin, saints, and angels, along with all mention of purgatory, penance, and indulgences—­make it a textual miniature of the Elizabethan Settlement: the Elizabethan Settlement as understood by Archbishop Parker, for whom Day printed splendid volumes using Anglo-­Saxon fonts created for the occasion—­and by Queen Elizabeth, whose prayer book it was often said to be. [\ Sources: Thomas Becon, The pomaunder of prayer (London, 1561); Henry Bull, Christian prayers and holy meditations (Cambridge, 1842); Samuel Chew, “The iconography of A book of Christian prayers (1578) illustrated,” Huntington Library Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1945): 293–­305; William Clay, ed., Private prayers put forth by authority during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1851); DNB; Erasmus, Precationes aliquot (Lyon, 1542); Elizabeth Evenden, Patents, pictures, and patronage: John Day and the Tudor book trade (Ashgate, 2008); Mary Frandsen, Crossing confessional boundaries: the patronage of Italian sacred music in seventeenth-­century Dresden (Oxford, 2006); Susan Frye, Elizabeth I:the competition for representation (Oxford, 1996); Steven May, ed., Queen Elizabeth I: selected works (New York, 2004); Janel Mueller and Leah Marcus, eds. Elizabeth I: autography compositions and foreign language originals (Chicago, 2003); Andreas Musculus, Precationes ex veteribus orthodoxis Doctoribus (Frankfurt, 1561); C. L. Oastler, John Day, the Elizabethan printer (Oxford, 1975); ODNB; Juan Luis Vives, Excitationes animi in Deum (Lyon, 1581); Helen White, Tudor books of private devotion (Madison, 1951).

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Plate 2

Plate 3

Plate 4

A BOOK OF CHRISTIAN PRAYERS 1578

To the Christian reader, zeal and knowledge in true and hearty prayer through Christ Jesus1 David, a prophet and a prince, to whom the Lord had done many great and singular benefits, bethought himself not so much to increase them by use2 as to requite them by thanks. He therefore, willing as a prophet and able as a prince, but not able in deed, though willing so to do, opened his good heart and said: Quid retribuam Domino? What reward shall I give unto the Lord? Being resolved, he answered: I will receive, I will call, and I will pay (Ps. 116). Do thou the like (Christian reader), which art as far indebted as ever he. And seeing that Jesus Christ himself calleth, saying: Come unto me all you that labor and are laden, and I will refresh you (Mat. 11), answer thou, I come, Lord Jesu, I come. I come, and will pay my vows promised to thee in the presence of all thy people, even in the courts of thy house, when I was received into the household of faith.3 I come, and will pray and praise thee for all thy benefits. I come, and will harken to thy blessed word and keep the same. I come, and will receive the cup of salvation at thy holy table in remembrance of thy death, with thanksgiving. In this sort, and so many ways—­ by baptism, by prayer, by hearing his blessed word, by frequenting his table—­must we come unto him, and that with a lively faith. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Come unto him therefore, especially by prayer. Pray that he would strengthen both flesh and spirit. . . . But who shall come? All you (saith he) that labor and are laden. How laden? Not with bags of gold and brags of righteousness. For he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Luke 5). . . . And albeit God heareth not sinners (Joh. 9), yet that is 1 {The preface gives the biblical chapter and verse within the body of the text; we have deleted some of these references and put the rest in parentheses. For the various primers mentioned in the notes, see .} 2 {The interest accruing to the principal} 3 {I.e., one’s baptismal vows}

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meant of desperate sinners, and malicious despisers of Christ and his Gospel; not of the repentant. . . . Such, though they labor and be heavy laden, yet let them come. But how? With a true faith, nothing wavering or doubting (1 Tim. 2; Jam. 1); without fainting (Eccl. 7). For the Lord is nigh unto all those that call upon him faithfully (Ps. 145). According to your faith, be it unto you, saith Christ unto the two blind men (Mat. 10). What faith was that? Do ye believe, saith Christ, that I am able to do this? We believe, Lord, say they. According to this faith they prayed for their eyesight, and had it. Pray thou in the same faith for thy soul’s health, and thou shalt receive it. Persuade thyself that God cannot but perform (for Christ’s sake) all his promises of grace and mercy. Believe that Jesus Christ shed his heart blood not only for our sins (speaking generally) but for thy sins, and that he can, and will, help thee. To such a one Christ himself saith: What so ever you desire when you pray, believe that you shall have it, and it shall be done unto you. But when you pray (saith he), forgive, if you have ought against any man, that your Father in heaven may forgive you (Mark 11). So that with this faith must be joined peace and love with our neighbor. Also, a life answerable to this faith (1 Joh. 3). . . . But who hath this perfection? Or whose prayers then shall be accepted? Come therefore in the name of Christ. For Christ is perfect, though we unperfect. His holiness maketh our prayers holy when he offereth them unto the Lord. His righteousness is our righteousness. . . . For to him that worketh not, but believeth in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness (Rom. 4). Let not thy sin therefore withdraw thee from this exercise: for none asketh but he that wanteth; none seeketh to find but he that hath lost. . . . But yet here remaineth a farther question: how it may stand with God’s immutable will and decree, that our prayers should be of such strength and force to alter the threatenings which are decreed and therefore of force must come to pass? I answer, God never promised anything in Scripture—­for the most part (except it were the absolute promises concerning Messiah and such like)—­but it hath a condition annexed unto it, either expressly or to be understood. Likewise, he never threateneth (for the most part) but a condition is added thereunto. As for example. Adam was created of God that he should have lived continually in blessed estate, if he would so remain: this was the condition, and the decree. Destruction was preached to the Ninevites, if they repented not: this was the condition, and the decree. Nineveh repented, and was not destroyed but saved; was therefore God’s decree altered? No. For he decreed their destruction but upon this condition, if they repented not. Pray therefore (if thou be godly) that he would give thee the grace to continue; and if thou be sinful, pray that he give thee the grace to repent. And thus very well our prayers have strength to stay God’s wrath, his decree remaining immutable, because it is threatened but upon a condition: if we repent not.4 But whence hath prayer this strength? Of itself? No. For we being justified through faith have peace toward God (that is, the favor of God) through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5). So that Christ is our mouth whereby we speak to the Father, our eyes by which 4 {On this non-­Calvinist distinction between God’s absolute and conditional will, see Harsnett and the introduction to the Lambeth articles . Calvin likewise views God’s threat to destroy the Ninevites as conditional, but makes the fulfillment of the condition depend on God’s “secret and eternal counsel,” whereby “none but God’s elect . . . ever do turn from their wickedness” (A treatise of the eternal predestination of God, trans. Henry Cole [London, 1856], 83–­84).}

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we see the Father, our right hand by which we offer to the Father. . . . Pray therefore continually, with faith, love, and understanding, in the name of Jesus Christ: pray for all men, at all times, in all places, and for all things according to God’s will. Though thou be a sinner, though God foreknoweth the heart, though his decree be immutable, yet pray unto him in Jesus Christ, and he will refresh thee. Of this I thought good to admonish thee (Christian reader) because it is an easy thing to pray, but to pray aright is a thing very difficult. Here are prepared for thee zealous and godly prayers, some translated out of Latin and French, some made by the best learned of our time. Use them as I have taught thee, that they may be to good use. . . . Fare well in Christ Jesu. R{ichard} D{ay} . . .

A prayer to be said at our first waking5 O God, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom no man knoweth but by thy special gift: grant that unto the rest of thine exceeding great benefits towards me, this, which is the greatest that can be bestowed upon mankind, may be added also: namely, that as thou hast raised up my body from fast and sound sleep, so also thou wilt deliver my mind from the sleep of sin and from the darkness of this world; and after death restore the same body to life as well as thou hast called it again from sleep. For that which is death to us is but sleep unto thee. I pray and beseech thee, that through thy goodness, this body of mine may be a fellow and furtherer of all godliness to my soul in this life, so as it may also be partner with it of the endless felicity in the life to come, through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. For whose sake and by whom, thou givest us all good and wholesome things to our welfare. Amen. ‡

A preparation or preface to public prayer6 Almighty God and heavenly Father, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy Temple. I have loved the habitation of thine house, and willingly am I present in the congregation of thy saints, praising and confessing thy holy name. Come, let us fall and bow down before the Lord who hath made us, because he is the Lord our God, and we the sheep of his pasture. Exalt the Lord our God and fall down before his footstool, for he is holy. Lord, I make my prayer unto thee in an acceptable time, even in the multitude of thy mercies; ô God, hear me in the truth of thy salvation. I will offer to thee a sacrifice of praise and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, even now in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the Lord’s house, even in the midst of thee, ô Jerusalem. 5 {From Juan Luis Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum (1535; repr. Lyon, 1581). Tudor Protestant books of private devotion regularly reprint Vives’ opening set of prayers keyed to a layman’s daily round of waking, getting dressed, leaving for work, etc.} 6 {The first two paragraphs correspond to those in the 1527 Paris primer’s “When thou enterest into the Church,” fol. ix. The prayer itself is a pastiche of biblical texts.}

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I will run in the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge mine heart. Teach me, ô Lord, the way of thy statutes. Open mine eyes that I may see the wonders of thy Law. Then will I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. I will sing with the spirit and in understanding, and say Amen. ‡

Another prayer for the Church, and all the states thereof, by John Foxe7 Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who wast crucified for our sins and didst rise again for our justification, and ascending up to heaven reignst now at the right hand of the Father, with full power and authority, ruling and disposing all things according to thine own gracious and glorious purpose: we sinful creatures, and yet servants and members of thy Church, do prostrate ourselves and our prayers before thy imperial Majesty, having no other patron nor advocate to speed our suits or to resort unto but thee alone, beseeching thee to be good to thy poor Church Militant here in this wretched earth: sometime a rich Church, a large Church, an universal Church, spread far and wide through the whole compass of the earth; now driven into a narrow corner of the world, and hath much need of thy gracious help. First the Turk with his sword, what lands, what nations and countries, what empires, kingdoms, and provinces, with cities innumerable, hath he won, not from us, but from thee! Where thy name was wont to be invocated, thy word preached, thy sacraments administered, there now remaineth barbarous Mahumet with his filthy Alcoran. The flourishing churches in Asia, the learned churches of Grecia, the manifold churches in Africa, which were wont to serve thee, now are gone from thee. The seven churches of Asia with their candlesticks (whom thou didst so well forewarn) are now removed. All the churches where thy diligent Apostle S. Paul, thy Apostle Peter and John, and other Apostles so laboriously travailed, preaching and writing, to plant thy Gospel are now gone from thy Gospel. In all the kingdom of Syria, Palestina, Arabia, Persia; in all Armenia and the Empire of Cappadocia; through the whole compass of Asia, with Egypt and with Africa also (unless among the far Ethiopians some old steps of Christianity peradventure do yet remain) . . . thy Church hath not one foot of free land, but is all turned either to infidelity or to captivity, what soever pertaineth to thee. And if Asia and Africa only were decayed, the decay were great, but yet the defection were not so universal. Now of Europa a great part also is shrunk from thy Church. All Thracia, with the empire of Constantinople, all Grecia . . . and now of late all the kingdom almost of Hungaria, with much of Austria, with lamentable slaughter of Christian blood, is wasted and all become Turks.8 Only a little angle of the west parts yet remaineth in some profession of thy name. 7 {The conclusion of John Foxe’s A sermon of Christ crucified, preached at Paules Crosse the Friday before Easter, commonly called Goodfryday (London, 1570). Foxe may have heard rumors of the papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth promulgated on February 25th of that year; the Northern Rebellion of 1569, an uprising led by powerful Catholic noblemen intended to depose Elizabeth, is clearly part of the sermon’s context.} 8 {Buda fell to the Turks in 1541.}

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But here (alack) cometh another mischief as great or greater than the other. For the Turk with his sword is not so cruel, but the bishop of Rome on the other side is more fierce and bitter against us . . . setting kings against their subjects, and subjects disloyally to rebel against their princes, and all for thy name. Such dissention and hostility Satan hath sent among us, that Turks be not more enemies to Christians than Christians to Christians, Papists to Protestants; yea Protestants with Protestants do not agree, but fall out for trifles. So that the poor little flock of thy Church, distressed on every side, hath neither rest without nor peace within, nor place almost in the world where to abide, but may cry now from the earth even as thine own reverence cried once from the cross: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Amongst us Englishmen here in England, after so great storms of persecution and cruel murder of so many martyrs, it hath pleased thy grace to give us these halcyon days, which yet we enjoy, and beseech thy merciful goodness still they may continue. But here also (alack) what should we say? So many enemies we have that envy us this rest and tranquility, and do what they can to disturb it. They which be friends and lovers of the bishop of Rome, although they eat the fat of the land and have the best preferments and offices . . . yet are they not therewith content. They grudge, they mutter and murmur, they conspire and take on against us. . . . And albeit thy singular goodness hath given them a queen so calm, so patient, so merciful—­more like a natural mother than a princess—­to govern over them . . . yet all this will not calm them; their unquiet spirit is not yet content; they repine and rebel . . . and care not if all the world were set afire so that they with their Italian lord might reign alone. . . . For that is their hope, that is all their gaping and looking, that is their golden day, their day of Jubilee, which they thirst for so much. Not to have the Lord to come in the clouds, but to have our blood and to spill our lives. That, that is it which they would have, and long since would have had their wills upon us, had not thy gracious pity and mercy raised up to us this our merciful Queen, thy servant Elizabeth, somewhat to stay their fury. . . . 9 . . . Finally, instead of the pope’s blessing, give us thy blessing, Lord, we beseech thee, and conserve the peace of thy Church and course of thy blessed Gospel. Help them that be needy and afflicted. Comfort them that labor and be heavy laden. And above all things, continue and increase our faith. And forasmuch as thy poor little flock can scarce have any place or rest in this world, come (Lord) we beseech thee with thy Factum est10 and make an end, that this world may have no more time nor place here, and that thy Church may have rest forever. For these, and all other necessities requisite to be begged and prayed for, asking in thy Christ’s name and as he hath taught us, we say: Our Father which art in heaven, &c. ‡

9 {There follows a series of prayers for the Queen, the Council, the nobility, all magistrates, the clergy, and “all the people.”} 10 {An allusion to Revelations 8:1, “Et cum aperuisset sigillum septimum, factum est silentium in caelo” (And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven).}

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Another11 O Lord Jesu Christ, which through thine almighty power didst make all creatures both visible and invisible,12 which by thy heavenly wisdom governest and disposest all things in most beautiful order, which by thine unspeakable goodness preservest, maintainest, and quicknest all things, and which through thine infinite mercy amendest the things that are crazed, buildest up the things that were fallen down, and quicknest the things that were dead: vouchsafe (we beseech thee) to turn thy countenance at length to thy singularly beloved spouse, the Church, even that mild and gracious countenance of thine wherewith thou cheerest all things in heaven, in earth, above the heavens, and under the earth; vouchsafe to turn those meek and merciful eyes of thine wherewith, when thou beheldest Peter, he repented him by and by; and wherewith thou beheldest the scattered people and wast moved with pity because they wandered like stray and scattered sheep for want of a shepherd. Thou seest, ô good Shepherd, how sundry sorts of wolves are broken into thy sheepfold, of whom every one crieth this is Christ, insomuch that even the perfectest might be drawn into error, if it were possible. Thou seest with what winds, with what waves, and with what storms thy little ship is tossed, out of the which it is not thy will that there shall be any safety. What must follow but that all of us must needs perish, if she should be drowned in the waters? We acknowledge and confess that our own sins have procured us this tempest. We acknowledge thy righteousness, and bewail our own unrighteousness; but yet therewithal we appeal to thy mercy, which (according to the psalm of the Prophet) exceedeth all thy works. We have endured much punishment already, being overworn with so many wars, overspent with so many exactions, vexed with so many kinds of sicknesses and plagues, overflowed with so many floods, and scared with so many strange wonders threatening us from the skies; and yet for all these mischiefs, following one in another’s neck, there appeareth not any haven anywhere to rest in, but sorer things seem to hang still over our heads. We complain not of any rigor on thy behalf, ô most meek Savior, but we acknowledge thy mercy in that behalf also, for truly we have deserved far sorer things. Howbeit, ô most merciful Jesu, stand not thou upon the due of our deserts, but consider what becometh thine own mercifulness, without the which not even the angels were able to stand before thee, and much less we that are but earthen vessels. Have mercy upon us, ô pitiful Redeemer, not for any worthiness of ours, but give that glory to thy holy name. Suffer not the Jews, Turks, and others which either know thee not or else envy thy glory to brag continually against us and to say: Where is their God? . . . Where is their Bridegroom whom they boast of? These reproaches light upon thee while thy goodness is measured by our adversities. Because they perceive not that this chastising is to our welfare, they deem us to be forsaken.

11 {Translated from Erasmus’ Precationes aliquot, 1535. The same prayer, in a different translation, had already appeared in the Primer of 1545 (Edward Burton, ed., Three primers put forth in the reign of Henry VIII [Oxford, 1834], 511–­16).} 12 {As in medieval theology and iconography, but not Norden’s Pensive man’s practice or, for that matter, the Sistine ceiling, the Son, the divine Word, creates and sustains the universe.}

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In time past when thou didst sleep in the ship, and the tempest that arose threatened destruction to all that were in it, thou didst awake at the crying out of a few of thy disciples, and anon at thy almighty voice the surges sank down, the winds were whist and still, and the troublesome storm was suddenly turned into a great calm. The dumb elements knew the commandment of their Maker. Now in this far grievouser tempest, whereby not a few bodies but innumerable souls are in danger, we beseech thee to awake at the cry of thy whole Church being in peril. Behold how many thousand men cry out, Lord save us, or else we perish. The tempest hath overcome all cunning of man; nay rather, we see that the endeavor of such as go about to help it doth turn to the contrary. There needeth thy voice, ô Lord Jesu, say no more but tempest, be still, and by and by the wished calmness will show itself. The Lord would have spared the innumerable thousands of wicked people that were in Sodom and Gomorra, if he could have found but ten righteous among them all. Now there are many thousands which love the glory of thy name and which long to behold the beauty of thy house, and wilt thou not at their intreatance release thine anger and remember thy old mercies? . . . for thy mercy is wont to be then readiest at hand when things are so far past recovery as no strength or policy of man can help them. Thou, being the only author and maintainer of peace, art only he that maketh things at one, though they be never so much at odds. Thou didst dispose the old chaos wherein the seeds of all things lay confused and turmoiling among themselves without any order or comeliness; and by wonderful order knit the things together in everlasting league which strive together by nature. But how much more shameful a chaos is it where there is no love, no faith, no keeping of covenants, no reverence of laws, no awe of such as are in authority, no consent of opinions; but every man sings his own song as in a black sanctus?13 Among the compasses of the skies there is no disagreement; the elements do keep everyone his place, and every of them executeth his own office. And wilt thou suffer thy Spouse, for whose sake all things are created, to go to wrack by continual discord? . . . Set this confusion in order, ô Lord, and let thy Spirit spread forth itself upon these waters of wavering opinions. . . . According to St. Paul’s saying, be thou all in all men, that the whole company of thy Church may with one mind and one voice in consent yield thanks for her obtained mercy to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, who, being the perfect pattern of concord, are distinct in propriety of persons and yet in nature but one: to whom be praise and glory forever. Amen. ‡

Another {prayer for charity, or love towards our neighbors}14 Soften our hearts, ô Lord, that we may be moved no less at the necessities and griefs of our neighbors than if they concerned ourselves or the cases that touched us nearest, and let us think them to befall even to our dearest friends. Let us pity them as ourselves; and in their common adversity let us also communicate with them by compassion, that as 13 14

{A cacophonous burlesque hymn. The 1545 translation has “singeth a contrary note.”} {Translated from Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum}

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we would have pitied ourselves for the like cause, so we may be moved with pity towards those whom we see oppressed with the same adversities. O most mild and merciful Christ, we beseech thee, breathe upon us the spirit of thy meekness and goodness, that like as thy pitying of us made thee to endure most bitter death and torments for us, so our pitying of our neighbors may lead us to succor them to our power. Amen. ‡

A prayer for our brethren that are in adversity15 Most gracious, and merciful Savior, we find by experience, almost every minute of an hour, that this life of ours is fraughted with adversities which grow unto every of us either out of the sinfulness of the flesh or of each man’s own folly or of other men’s spitefulness. Besides this, other men’s misfortunes are both an increase and an example of our own. For we see by them that the like may befall us; and brotherly charity compelleth us to be sorry for them. In respect whereof thou also hast commanded us to weep with them that weep and to mourn with them that mourn, and to be like-­minded, one towards another, as members all of one body. Thou therefore, ô merciful Redeemer, which hast borne our infirmities, harken to the prayers which we pour out before thee for the relief of our brethren’s adversities, and increase not our sorrows by the sorrows of our friends. Rid them out of their miseries that they may the more quietly set their minds upon thee, and we (through thy gracious goodness) be discharged of no small piece of our heaviness. Or, if it be not expedient either for them or us (for thou only knowest what is expedient for every man), at leastwise give them power of mind and strength of body to bear their sore crosses the easilier, so as neither their bodies may be unable to abide and endure the pains nor their hearts quail under the grief, whereby they might be driven to do, say, or think anything which thou mightest mislike of or which might turn to their own hurt through impatience or despair.16 Amen. ‡

Another {prayer to be said for our evil-­willers}17 Most merciful and loving Father, which hatest not any of the things which thou hast made, but sufferest and bearest with men’s misdoings, winking at them, to provoke them to repentance: we beseech thee most humbly, even with all our hearts, to pour out upon our enemies with bountiful hand whatsoever things thou knowest may do them good, and chiefly a sound and uncorrupt mind, wherethrough they may know thee and seek thee in true charity with their whole heart, and love us thy children for thy sake. Let not their hating of us turn to their harm, neither let us in any wise hurt them—­ seeing that we cannot do them good for want of ability. Destroy them not, ô Father, for their hatred towards us, but save them at our intreatance for them. Lord, we desire their amendment and not their punishment. Separate them not from us by punishing them, but join and knit them to us by thy favorable dealing with them. And seeing we be all {From Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum} {The same fear suffusing the set of four vernacular prayers from the 1507 primer .} 17 {From Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum} 15

16

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ordained to be citizens of the one everlasting City, let us begin to enter into that way here already by mutual love, which may bring us right forth thither, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ‡

A prayer upon the minding of Christ’s passion18 What man is this whom I behold all bloody, with skin all to-­torn, with knubs and wales of stripes,19 hanging down his head for weakness towards his shoulder, crowned with a garland of thorns pricking through his skull to the hard brain, and nailed to a cross? What so heinous fault could he do to deserve it? What judge could be so cruel as to put him to it? What hangmen could have so butcherly minds as to deal so outrageously with him? Now I bethink myself; I know him: it is Christ. Art thou he that excellest all the children of men in beauty? in whose lips grace was shed most plentifully, yea, even with God’s own hand? Where then is that beauty of thine? Where is that grace of thy lips? I find it not. I see it not. Fleshly eyes conceive not so great a mystery. Open thou the eyes of my mind. Bring thy divine light nearer unto me, and give me power to look more wistly {i.e., attentively} upon thee. I see it is Jesus, the Son of God, the unspotted lamb, without sin, without fault, without offence, which took my wickedness upon him, to the intent that I (being set free from sin) might be brought again into God’s favor, rise again from my fall, return home again from banishment, and attain to the end for which I was created. That which I deserved, he suffered; and that which I could never have attained unto, he giveth. O my Redeemer, Deliverer, and Savior, draw me to thee, that (being always mindful of thy death, trusting always in thy goodness, and being always thankful for thine unspeakable benefits) I may be made partaker of so great reward, and not be separated from thy body through mine own unthankfulness, so as thou shouldst have been born in vain as in respect of me, and in vain have suffered so many torments, yea and even most bitter death of thine own accord for my sake. Amen. ‡

Another20 I see a wonderful kind of love. Thy highness boweth down the head to that intent we should hope to be heard, and be heard in deed. Thou offerest the kiss of peace and atonement; yea, and that of thine own accord, being the party grieved and wronged, unto us that have done the wrong. Thou reachest out thine arms to embrace us; thou stretchest out thy bored hands to give us all things abundantly without holding anything back. Thy side is open unto thy heart, to receive us in thither, if we will enter in at the open door. Thy feet are fast nailed, to the intent that we may know that thou wilt never depart from us, if we depart not from thee. {The “Coram imagine Christi crucifixi” from Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum} {Bruises and welts from the whip’s lash} 20 {From Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum} 18 19

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O Father and Lord of ours, thou seest the hardness of our heart, and much rather the dullness of it. It is not enough for us to be allured and called so gently, so sweetly, and so lovingly; but thou must be fain even to draw us, pull us, hale us, and drag us. Create a new and obedient heart in us, for this old one that we have already is stony; it feeleth no gentleness; it is not moved with any hope of the great good things that are promised. Amen. ‡

Another21 O Jesu, the framer and creator of the world, whom no measure can comprehend within bounds and which holdest the earth in thy hand, call to mind thy most bitter pain, which thou didst endure when they nailed thy most holy hands to the cross and likewise strake through thy most tender feet, making thy wounds still more and more painful, because thou wast not agreeable to their fancy; and so drawing and retching22 out thy body to the length and breadth of the cross that they loosened all the sinews of thy members. I beseech thee, grant that my continual minding of this thy most holy and bitter pains upon the cross may cause me to stand in awe of thee and also to love thee. Amen.

Another O Jesu, the heavenly physician, remember the anguish, pain, and grief which thou didst suffer by the rending and tearing of all thy members when thou wast hoised {i.e., lifted} up and nailed to the cross, insomuch as there was not any one of them that remained whole and sound, so that there was never any pain found like unto thine, for there was not any place of thee left whole, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head; and yet even then (unmindful of all thy pains) thou prayedst meekly to thy Father for thine enemies, saying: Father forgive them, for they wote not what they do. I beseech thee by thy loving kindness and mercy, which caused thee to suffer these pains for my sake, let thy Passion be the full pardon of all my sins, Amen. . . .

Another O Jesu, the bottomless sea of all mercy, I beseech thee by thy deep wounds which pierced through thy flesh into the marrow of thy bones and into the very bowels of thee, pull me out of the gulf of my sins and hide me in the holes of thy wounds from the sight of thy Father’s just wrath, until his displeasure be overpassed. Amen.23 O Jesu the mirror of truth, the standard of unity,24 and the bond of charity, remember thine innumerable wounds wherewith thou wast torn from top to toe by the wicked Jews so that thou wast all on a gore blood; which torment thou didst suffer in that chaste body {This is the second of the xv Oes of St. Bridget, from which the two following prayers also come. For the translation of the 1536 Rouen primer, see .} 22 {Wrenching? The Latin is “distraverunt.”} 23 {The original prayer attributes the wrath and displeasure to the Son, not the Father. See the 1536 Rouen primer’s more literal translation of the 11th O and the introduction to the primers .} 24 {“Standard” in the sense of regimental flag. The Latin is “unitatis signum.”} 21

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of thine for our sakes, O most meek Jesus, leaving nothing undone on thy behalf that might be for our benefit. I beseech thee, write all thy wounds in my heart with thy most precious blood, that in them I may read thy great love towards me. Let the remembrance of them be laid up continually in the closet25 of my heart, that the sight of the pains and grief which thou sufferedst for my sake in thy Passion may make me to love thee more and more, and never to give over until I be come unto the treasure of all goodness and joys, which I beseech thee to grant me for thine own sake, ô most sweet Jesu. Amen. ‡

Another {prayer to be said before receiving of the Communion}26 What tongue or what heart can worthily give thee thanks, ô Lord Jesu, for thine unspeakable love towards us? Who, to the intent to redeem mankind forlorn, didst vouchsafe to become man and to take all the miseries of our state upon thee, in so much that in the end, thou being a pure and unspotted lamb, wast contented to be made a sacrifice for us upon the altar of the cross and to abide the punishment due for our sins, that thou mightest reconcile us to thy Father; yea, and both in life and death, thou didst spend, give, and bestow thyself wholly upon us, and for us. And thy gracious goodness was not so contented, but also (lest we might at any time perchance forget so great lovingness, or at least our trust in thee might at any time quail), even now, reigning in heaven, thou refreshest our souls from time to time with the food of thy body and cheerest them up with the holy cup of thy blood. Wherefore I beseech thee, let thy Spirit cleanse my heart that I may not come unworthily to that heavenly feast and to the table whereat even the very angels do tremble; but that by thy shedding of thyself into my bowels, I may grow manly in thee and become the lustier by spiritual increasements,27 so as I may continue to the end in the blessed fellowship of thy mystical body, whom it is thy will to have all one with thee in such wise as thou art all one with the Father, by the knitting of the Holy Ghost. To whom be praise and thanks for evermore. Amen. ‡

Another28 My Lord Jesu Christ, who am I that thou shouldst vouchsafe to come under my roof? Can a sinful man deserve such grace? Certes, Lord, I am not worthy. Am I better than all my fathers were? Thou wouldst not show thyself to Moses one twinkling of an eye, and how hapneth that thou humblest thyself so much as to come down to a man that is a publican and sinner? And thou vouchsafst not only to eat with him, but also to give thyself to be {I.e., a small private room used for study and prayer} {From Erasmus’ Precationes aliquot} 27 {Not the happiest translation. The Latin reads “sed te diffuso in mentis meae viscera, grandescam in te, ac vegetior fiam spiritualibus incrementis” (Erasmus, Precationes 38).} 28 {From the De morte S. Hieronymi, a medieval forgery ascribed to St. Eusebius of Cremona. The work is reprinted, with caveats, in vol. 22 of the Patrologia Latina, col. 270–­74.} 25

26

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eaten of him. Hail, ô bread of life which camest down from heaven and which givest life to as many as receive thee worthily. Surely whoso receiveth thee worthily, although his soul be severed from his body by temporal death, yet shall he not die forever. . . . Thou art the bread of the angels, the very sight of thee refresheth and glorifieth the angels. Thou art food for the soul, and not for the body. Thou nourishest the mind, and not the maw. He that eateth thee is turned into thee, that by partaking of thee, he may become God;29 and yet art thou not changed into his substance as other bodily meats be. But woe be to them that receive thee unworthily, ô most holy food, by the eating whereof aright, a man becometh God, is set free from all evil, is filled with all goodness, and is undoubtedly made immortal. O sacred pittance30 of our pilgrimage, whereby we pass out of this naughty world to the company of heaven. Go to therefore, thou believing soul, be merry and make good cheer, for thou shalt not die. Feed upon these dainties and stick not. Take thy fill of this feast, wherein the body of thy Savior is set before thee to feed on. Man fell from God by eating the food of the forbidden tree; but by this food he is relieved again to endless glory. ‡

The conclusion O Lord Jesus Christ, thou King of kings, the great counsel and wisdom of the Father. O thou, the great Shepherd of thy pasture, ô thou righteous Judge of all judges, preserve our Queen Elizabeth long to live with thy poor Church of England in health and wealth to thy good pleasure and will. . . . Raise up faithful distributers of right and justice to the poor commons of this realm: diligent and careful magistrates to execute the laws aright, as they will answer before thy tribunal seat at the day of judgment. Finally, to every of us thy poor sheep, let thy mighty hand and outstretched arm, ô Lord God, Father of heaven, be still our defense; thy mercy and loving kindness in Jesus Christ, thy dear Son, our salvation; thy true and holy word, our instruction; thy grace and Holy Spirit, our comfort and consolation unto the end and in the end. Amen. [\ T ext: A booke of Christian prayers, collected out of the auncie[n]t writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians, in these daungerous and troublesome dayes, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercyfull vnto vs (London, 1578) (NSTC 6429).

29 30

{The Latin reads “ut tui participatione efficiatur Deus.”} {A monk’s food allowance; in the Latin viaticum (Clay, Private prayers, 520).}

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THOMAS BECON The pomander of prayer

15611

. . .

For faith Forasmuch as nothing pleaseth thee that is done without faith, appear it before the blind world never so beautiful and commendable, but is counted in thy sight sinful and damnable—­yea, the self2 sin and damnation—­this is most humbly to desire thee (ô Father), for Christ’s sake, to breathe into my heart by thy Spirit this most precious and singular gift of faith, which worketh by charity, whereby also we are justified and received into thy favor, that I, truly believing in thee and fully persuaded of the truth of thy holy word, may be made thy son and inheritor of everlasting glory, through Jesu Christ our Lord. Amen. ‡

Of the exceeding love of the everlasting Father toward mankind O unmeasurable pity and fatherly love, ô inestimable charity, that thou shouldest deliver thy Son to suffer death to the intent thou mightest redeem and ransom a servant. God was made man to the intent that man, being lost, might be plucked out of the power of devils. How gentle and kind a lover of man was thy Son our God, who thought it not enough to humble himself to be made man of the very Virgin Mary, but also took upon him the pains of the Cross in shedding his blood for us and for our salvation. He came a pitiful God, he came for his pity and goodness’ sake, he came to search and to save that which was lost. He sought the strayed sheep; he sought and found, and he, being a good lord and truly a very good and pitiful shepherd, brought him home upon his shoulders unto the 1 {The first prayer is echt Protestant and Becon’s own; the second is a translation of the pseudo-­ Augustine’s Meditations bk. 1, chap. 15.} 2 {“Self ” here is merely emphatic; i.e., “sin and damnation itself ”}

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folds of the flock. Oh charity, oh pity, who hath heard any such things? who is not astonied {i.e., astounded} to consider the bowels of so great mercy? Who would not marvel? Who would not honor and worship thee for thy great charity wherewith thou lovedst us? Thou didst send thy Son into the similitude of flesh, subject to sin, that he might condemn sin for sin, that we might be made thy righteousness in him. For he was the very Lamb without spot, which took away the sins of the world, which destroyed our death by dying himself. But what may we render unto thee (our God) for so great benefits of thy mercy? What praises or what thanks? Verily, if we should have that same knowledge and power that blessed angels have, yet should we not be able to requite thy so great pity and goodness with any thing of valure {i.e., value}. No, if all our members were turned into tongues to repay unto thee due praises, yet were not our slenderness sufficient. There is one thing that exceedeth all knowledge, even thine inestimable charity, which thou didst show unto us unworthy persons for thy goodness and pity’s sake. Thy Son (ô our God) did take upon him to be the seed of Abraham not of angels; yea, and he was made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted. He therefore, taking man’s nature, not angels’, and glorifying it with the stole of holy resurrection and immortality, carried it above the heavens and above all the melodious companies of angels, above cherubim and seraphim, placing it upon thy right hand. This human nature do angels praise, all the powers of heaven do tremble, to see a man to be God over them. This truly is all my hope, all my trust. And this same human nature is in Jesu Christ our Lord, who is the portion of every one of us, the flesh and blood. Therefore where as my portion reigneth, there do I believe to reign. Where as my flesh is glorified, there do I believe to be glorified. Where my blood ruleth, there do I perceive me to bear rule. Although I be a sinner, yet I do not mistrust nor despair of the communion and partaking of favor. Although my sins do hinder me and in a manner forbid me, nevertheless my substance requireth3 it. And albeit that mine offences do exclude me, yet the communion of our nature doth not expel me. For God is not so ungentle as to forget man, and not to remember that thing which himself beareth, and that which for my sake he took upon him, and that which for my sake he requireth. But truly the Lord our God is lowly and meek and wonderful gentle, and loveth his flesh, his members and his bowels. In the very same God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is most gentle, loving and merciful, in whom we are risen from death (that is to say, from the state of perdition and eternal damnation), and even now by him we ascend into the heavens, and now sit in the heavens: in him, I say, our flesh loveth us. For we have in him and by him a prerogative and, as it were, a preferment of our blood. For we are his members and his flesh. And he is our head, of the which dependeth the whole body, as it is written: a bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and they shall be two in one flesh; and no man at any time hateth his own flesh but rather cherisheth and loveth it. This is a great mystery; I speak in Christ, and in the Church, saith the Apostle {Ephes. 5:28-­32}. [\ T ext: The pomaunder of prayer, newly made by Thomas Becon (London, 1561) (NSTC 1746).

3

{“Require” can have the sense of request or need, as well as demand.}

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THOMAS BENTLEY (c. 1543–­1585)

The monument of matrons

Until recently, little was known about Thomas Bentley beyond his having been a student at Gray’s Inn and his subsequent role as compiler, editor, and part-­author of the 1582 Monument of matrons, “the first comprehensive prayer book for women, a major devotional publication of Elizabethan England” (Atkinson, 323). Recent scholarship has discovered that Bentley was a reasonably prominent Londoner—­prominent enough to have married the daughter and co-­heir of a London sheriff. He also turned out to be the same Thomas Bentley who in 1583, during his tenure as churchwarden1 for St. Andrew’s Holborn, one of the City’s principal parishes, created what has long been known as the “Bentley book”: a compilation, drawn from the parish archives going back to the reign of Henry VI, of what he called its “monuments of antiquities worthy memory.” The discovery of Bentley’s antiquarian interests sheds considerable light on The monument of matrons, whose 1500-­ plus folio pages make it somewhat bulky for a private prayer book. The volume seems rather from the outset to have been intended as a devotional-­archival hybrid; as Bentley explains in the preface, the impetus behind publishing the collection of women’s devotions was to preserve rare, out-­of-­print works, from which he himself had “taken no small comfort,” that they might be “precedents of true piety . . . to all posterity” . Subsequent research revealed that Bentley’s election as churchwarden was part of a successful drive by the parish traditionalists to retake control from the puritan junta that had run St. Andrew’s since the early 1570s. The Bentley book, which notes with outrage the switch from baptismal font to basin and the selling of the parish organs, is warmly anti-­puritan; and as churchwarden, Bentley oversaw the purchase of kneelers for Communion as well as a new, ornate Communion table. The monument, which takes little notice of sermons but includes fifty pages of eucharistic devotions, bears like “witness to the existence of an Elizabethan protestant lay piety in quiet revolt against the contemporary teaching of Calvinist divines.”2 1 The churchwarden’s was a powerful and prestigious office, the parish being the basic unit of Elizabethan government (Atkinson, 345). 2 This paragraph draws on Fincham and Tyacke’s Altars restored, 50–­51, 55–­56, 69–­70.

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The work is divided into seven “lamps” or sections, which were sold separately, and surviving copies indicate that most purchasers bought one or two, reducing both size and cost to more manageable proportions. The meditation by Princess Elizabeth from the second lamp has its own introduction, so that what follows concerns only the following selections from the fourth lamp, whose prayers include both those pertaining to the services and seasons of the liturgical year and also those sanctifying the occasions of ordinary life,3 a type of prayer that seems to have originated with the Catholic humanist Juan Luis Vives’ Excitationes animi in Deum (1535), but in England swiftly became a godly Protestant genre.4 Of the hundreds of prayers in the fourth lamp, seven are reprinted below: three prayers to be said before Communion, a mother-­daughter prayer asking God to perfect the reformation of the English Church by establishing the Genevan discipline, a prayer for the Feast of the Annunciation, a modified version of the primer’s O bone Jesu, and a prayer to be said at bedtime. As even this thumbnail sketch suggests, if The monument bears witness to a quiet revolt of Elizabethan lay Protestants against a Calvinist hegemony, its target is not the Calvinism but the hegemony. Many of the volume’s prayers belong, heart and soul, to the Reformed tradition. Some, however, do not. What Bentley valued, what he sought to preserve, would appear to be the richness, diversity, and complexity of English devotion—­a stance dovetailing with his antiquarian commitments, but at bottom antithetical to post-­Reformation creedal orthodoxy of any stripe.5 The theological range of the Ante-­Communion prayers is quite remarkable. The first comes largely from the Second Book of Homilies’ “On the worthy receiving of the sacrament,” although tilted towards the Zwinglian-­memorialist end of the Reformed spectrum compared to the homily’s more even balancing of Zwinglian and Calvinist elements.6 Like Zwingli, the Bentley prayer (especially the middle paragraphs) views the Eucharist as commemorating the past event of Christ’s sacrifice. The sacramental signs are merely “tokens” of our faith, and we are warned not to “much regard or consider these earthly elements,” but to worship God “in spirit and truth.” The prayer (like the homily) interweaves this dualist memorialism with Calvin’s view that the consecrated elements “exhibit” (i.e., offer) what they signify, and that through the Eucharist the Holy Spirit unites the faithful to the glorified Christ in “a marvelous incorporation” , not (contra the medieval Church’s teaching) by bringing Christ down from heaven into either element or communicant, but rather by “lift[ing] up the eyes of our mind to heaven” where he reigns with his saints in glory . The second Ante-­Communion prayer, by contrast, draws principally on St. Ambrose’s Ad mensam dulcissimi convivii tui and chapter 16 from Book IV of Thomas à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi (c. 1420), the book omitted in all early modern Protestant translations for its high Catholic sacramentalism. The prayer speaks of Christ coming to us, healing us in and through the sacrament, with decidedly less emphasis on our lifting the eyes of the mind to him. If this second Ante-­Communion prayer is probably Catholic, the third This lamp includes a prayer to be said when visiting the loo (234–­35). See, e.g., Norden’s Pensive man’s practice . 5 A similar syncretism characterizes A book of Christian prayers . 6 On the difference between these, see the Coverdale/Calvin treatise on the Lord’s supper . 3 4

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is baffling—­and striking. The theology appears to be Calvinist—­the opening sense of radical guilt and defilement; the upward energy of the sacrament, raising the faithful to a foretaste of the heavenly banquet; the uncoupling of the Eucharist from Christ’s completed sacrifice on the Cross—­and yet the sensory intensity and rapturous affect evoke St. Bridget and Crashaw. The concluding four prayers span an equally wide devotional and theological spectrum. In the early 1580s, a prayer that England might adopt a stricter, more perfectly reformed discipline implied puritan sympathies of an oppositional stripe. By contrast, the opening of the prayer for the Feast of the Annunciation (the portion reprinted below) ends with the feast’s Prayer Book collect, itself taken from the Sarum Missal. The opening paragraph preserves a pre-­Reformation sense of sacred time encompassing the orders of both nature and history so that the Creation, the murder of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac, the Annunciation, and the Passion all occur on March 25th, the spring equinox. The prayer that follows, “O bone Jesu,” was a favorite of the primers, including the 1536 primer reprinted above . Comparison, however, reveals that Bentley’s version has undergone a Protestant rewrite, adding the depiction of Jesus as a sacrifice to appease the Father’s wrath, changing “the number of them that shall be saved” to “the number of them whom thou hast in Christ elected and chosen to salvation,” omitting the salutation of Jesus as “Son of the pure virgin Mary,” and so forth. It is still recognizable as a variant of the medieval prayer, but a good many changes were needed to adapt it to Reformed sensibilities.7 The final prayer—­the concluding prayer of the fourth lamp—­belongs to the new sixteenth-­century genre of non-­liturgical prayers sanctifying the daily cycle of lay activities: in this case, a married couple going to bed. Yet the passages expressing fear of being murdered by Satan in the darkness or having one’s dream invaded by “unclean and troublesome spirits”—­as also the hope that God will use dreams to warn their souls “of miseries to come”—­may be far earlier. [\ Sources: Colin Atkinson and Jo Atkinson, “The identity and life of Thomas Bentley, compiler of The monument of Matrones (1582),” Sixteenth Century Journal 31, no. 2 (2000), 323–­48; Ronald Byars, Lift your hearts on high: eucharistic prayer in the Reformed tradition (Louisville, Ky., 2005); Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars restored: the changing face of English worship, 1547–­c.1700 (Oxford, 2007); Brian Spinks, Sacraments, ceremonies, and the Stuart divines (Ashgate, 2002).

7

The version in Day’s Book of Christian prayers is far closer to the medieval version.

464

THOMAS BENTLEY The monument of matrons

1582

To the Christian reader, grace and truth in Christ: Having myself taken no small comfort (good Christian reader) by the reading and perusing of divers very godly, learned, and divine treatises of meditations and prayer made by sundry right famous queens, noble ladies, virtuous virgins, and godly gentlewomen of all ages, who to show themselves worthy patterns of all piety, godliness, and religion to their sex, and for the common benefit of their country, have not ceased . . . in great fervency of the spirit and zeal of the truth, even from their tender and maidenly years, to spend their time . . . in the studies of noble and approved sciences and in compiling and translating of sundry most Christian and godly books . . . and thereupon considering with myself what great profit and singular pleasure might thereby come also to other of like mind to myself, if the same their excellent and rare works (dispersed into several pamphlets, and in part something obscured and worn clean out of print, and so out of practice) were by some painful hand collected . . . me thought I could not better spend my time nor employ my talent—­either for the renown of such heroical authors and worthy women, or for the universal commodity of all good Christians—­than in and by some apt treatise or collection to reduce these their manifold works into one entire volume, and by that means for to register their so rare and excellent monuments of good record as perfect precedents of true piety and godliness in womankind to all posterity.1. . . . . . Finally, that all godly women . . . may show themselves daughters worthy such mothers . . . by following their virtues wisely in the perfect fear of God, by bearing the same in the hand of their hearts carefully in the due obedience of their prince, and by fighting therewith in Golgotha (the field of this spiritual warfare) the good fight of faith courageously in the pure love of their country and Christian charity towards their neighbors; and at the last, in the world to come, to the glory of God and their everlasting 1

{“Register,” “record,” and “precedent” are legal terms.}

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comfort, together with the wise virgins and all the elect people of God, joyfully triumph over all weakness, infirmity, and corruption; yea, over sin, death, hell, and damnation, and say, O death, where is thy sting? O hell, where is thy victory? ‡

THE FOURTH LAMP OF VIRGINITY Containing the most pure sacrifice of evangelical devotion, or an exercise of holy prayers and Christian meditations digested, as it were, in a dial of degrees {i.e., compass} to direct all godly men and women . . . to the holy mount of heavenly contemplation and true sanctification of the Lord’s Day, our Sabbath, and so consequently of all other principal feasts, days, hours, times, and seasons of the year; privately both at home and also in the Church, at convenient times permitted. Compiled out of several works of the best approved authors in our age, to the glory of God and the profit of his Church. By Tm. Bentley, Gent. ‡ Christian prayers to be said before, at, and after ye receive the holy Communion {I} And first, an effectual meditation of the right Christian belief in the holy sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and of the worthy and fruitful receiving the same to our comfort and salvation, to be diligently read before you receive2

O my soul, let us now carefully consider, first, whither we be come: namely, to the celestial table, heavenly banquet . . . of the most puissant, glorious, mighty, and magnificent King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. . . . Secondly, ô my soul, let us rightly know and diligently mark what things are here presently set before us on this holy table . . . : namely, that the dainty dishes . . . are no vain ceremonies, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent, no earthly body, no carnal meat nor any fleshly substance, but . . . the bread and cup of the Lord: a heavenly refection, the sweet dainties of our Savior, the nourishment of our souls, an invisible meat, a spiritual food, a ghostly substance; which all are here now most mercifully offered and exhibited3 unto us and all other faithful souls, as the sovereign preservative against death, the conservatory to everlasting life, the comfortable medicine of the soul . . . the defense of faith, the hope of the resurrection, the memory of Christ, the annunciation of his death; finally, the communion of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, in a marvelous incorporation which, by the Holy Ghost (the very bond of {Much of this prayer comes verbatim from the homily “Of the worthy receiving and reverend esteeming of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.” Like the homily, the prayer goes on for several pages, and has been radically trimmed to its theological core—­concerning which, see the introduction to Bentley .} 3 {This is Calvin’s distinctive term for the instrumentality of the sacraments, and means offer rather than merely show.} 2

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our perfection {sic}4 with Christ), is through faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby not only their souls do live to eternal life, but also they surely trust to win to their bodies a resurrection to immortality. In the which also, we may not only hear, see, taste, and know the mercy of God our creator sealed, the sanctification by Christ our redeemer towards us confirmed, the remission of our sins through the Holy Ghost our comforter and regenerator fully satisfied and established; but also most sensibly and effectually to our further comfort indeed feel wrought in us the tranquility of conscience, the increase of faith, the strengthening of hope, and the long spreading abroad of brotherly love and kindness, with many other sundry marvelous graces and benefits of God, most profitable unto us. Which things well considered and weighed, my soul, ô with what fervent affection and earnest zeal ought they now to inflame our heart . . . to long and hunger after this healthsome bread, and continually thirst for this divine, heavenly, and blessed food! Thirdly and lastly, ô my soul, let us advisedly call to mind and well understand the cause wherefore we are now come unto this holy table of the Lord. . . . that is to say, even openly and publicly to celebrate, in the Lord’s most happy commemoration and remembrance, at this his holy table, the heavenly memory of that most marvelous work and dear-­bought benefit of our redemption and salvation. . . . And wite thou well,5 ô my soul, that like as Moses, Aaron, and Phineas long since did sometimes eat manna in the wilderness, then spiritually understanding those visible things; even so now we, in like manner spiritually understanding these holy mysteries (for it is the spirit that quickeneth and giveth life; the flesh profiteth us nothing, as saith our Savior), must here also . . . spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and spiritually drink his blood indeed, in these holy mysteries, by faith only and assured constant belief that the blessed body of Christ was crucified and his precious blood shed upon the Cross for our salvation—­and so receive this the Lord’s Supper even for a token, badge, or cognizance of this faith and salvation in Christ’s merits, declaring thereby evermore his death and passion, with thanksgiving, until he come. . . . Finally, ô my soul, we must not now like chattering jays so much regard or consider these earthly elements and terrene creatures which we see with our corporal eye, and still remain so, but especially and indeed have respect to the heavenly graces and benefits which our faith beholdeth in and by them. . . . And again, remembering that God willeth such as will be true worshippers of him to worship him in spirit and truth, we must now so behold the bread and wine with our natural eyes that we may nevertheless especially lift up the eyes of our mind to heaven, and look up by faith upon the holy body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God and man, as he is there sitting at the right hand of God his Father, in equal glory, power, and majesty. . . . So shall we, ô my soul—­now repenting heartily our former foul life, being in perfect love and charity with all men, marveling with reverence and fear at these sacred things; now touching these holy and fearful mysteries with our mind, receiving them with the hand of our heart, and taking them fully with our inward man by faith only—­be sure at this holy table even now 4 5

{The homily has “conjunction.”} {I.e., be cognizent}

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presently to receive not only the outward sacrament, but the spiritual thing also; not the figure, but the truth; not the shadow, but the body . . . which God, even our own God, for his mercy’s sake grant us now effectually to do, through the only merits of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: to whom be all honor, glory, dominion, power, and praise, for ever and ever. Amen. . . . {II} Another very devout prayer before the receiving of the holy Communion

O most sweet and loving Lord Jesu Christ, whom now I devoutly and heartily desire to receive this day, thou knowest mine infirmities and necessities which I suffer; in how many evils and vices I lie, wherewith I am often grieved, tempted, troubled, and unquieted and defiled. Unto thee do I come for remedy; unto thee do I earnestly pray for comfort and help. I speak unto thee, who knowest all things; unto whom even all my very secret thoughts are manifest, and who only canst perfectly comfort and help me. . . . Behold, I stand before thee, requiring grace and mercy. Feed and cherish thy hungry beggar, kindle my coldness with the fire of thy love, lighten my blindness with the bright clearness of thy presence; turn all earthly things into bitterness unto me; all heavy, grievous, hard, painful, and contrary things into patience to me. Lift up my heart unto thee in heaven and suffer me not to wander or go astray from thee upon the earth. Thou only from this time forth for evermore dost wax sweet unto me, because thou only art my meat and my drink, my love, my joy, my sweetness. O would to God thou wouldst vouchsafe altogether to enflame, burn, and even consume me with thy presence; and to change me into thyself. . . . Suffer me not to depart an-­hungered nor thirsty from them, but work mercifully with me, as thou hast often heretofore marvelously wrought with thy saints. What marvel is it if I should be altogether set on fire and inflamed with thee, and should fail in myself and be changed, sith thou art a fire ever-­ burning and never-­failing, a love purifying the heart and lightening the understanding. Behold therefore, I, wretched sinner—­not presuming of mine own merits but trusting only of thy mercy and goodness—­am bold to come in trembling and fear unto this thy table of most sweet dainties, O most holy Lord Jesu Christ. For I have an heart and body defiled, marred, and polluted with many faults and offences. . . . Therefore, O holy deity, ô dreadful majesty, I, wretched caitiff, in great perplexity of mind, taken unawares between many troublesome straits, do now run again to thee, the fountain of all mercy. Unto thee do I hasten me to be healed and cured . . . and whom I cannot endure as a judge, I earnestly desire to have a savior. . . . O God of unspeakable pity, whose power is infinite, without whom I cannot possibly resist sin, comfort and help me so greatly that I never hereafter anymore commit any mortal or deadly sin, and from henceforth may overcome all the temptations of the devil: that I may direct my whole life, thoughts, words and works altogether unto thee, and that thou mayst in the end of my life so preserve and keep me that Satan urge me not with his terrors and fears and so bring me into desperation. . . . and so my soul being poured out of the sack of my body, do thou in mercy bring it unto the everlasting palace of thy heavenly Father, to see and behold the clear renowned glass {i.e., mirror} of the holy Trinity. . . . 468



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Come this day, ô Lord, and minister unto my sick and languishing soul some heavenly cordial of comfort, not because I am just, but a sinner; because not the whole but the sick have need of a physician. . . . Come thou physician of the weak and diseased. Come thou food of the hungry. Come Lord, visit this house dedicated and consecrated in thy name. And behold I come to thee, whom with all my heart I covet and desire . . . whom with all mine entrails I heartily love and embrace; whose blessed body and blood in these holy mysteries I earnestly desire to receive, that thou mayst always abide in me, and never forsake me or depart from me, ô most sweet Father. So be it. . . . {III} Another prayer to be said a little before you receive the bread

O God which art rich in mercy and in all good things, the most plentiful giver and bountiful bestower of the dainties of celestial satiety and heavenly repast, give meat to my soul that is weary and faint; not such as it lusteth after, but such as is convenient {i.e., befitting} for it. For lo, I, a poor wretch, come now unto thee which art rich, a sinner unto thee which art merciful. O let me not return home contemned and despised with nothing. . . . I come unto thee as though I were famished, ô let me not go away unfed. Although before I eat, I sigh and sorrow, yet good Lord I beseech thee, give me somewhat to eat. For behold, with that godly heroical matron of Canaan (Matt. 15, verse 22), I come unto thee and say, Lord help me, according to thy promise, for I feel the burthen of thy displeasure—­even my miseries and uncleanness—­and suffer not the sight of mine own unworthiness to withdraw me from thee. Make me sweetly and reverently to reason with thee, as thy Holy Spirit enforced that good woman to do, in these and the like words: I am unworthy, I am guilty and unclean, I am a dog . . . I am defiled with the filth of idolatry, with foulness of life, with the spots of disobedience against thee; but have mercy upon me, ô Son of God, which appearedst in the flesh and becamest a worm to wash us from our sins which were unclean beasts. Have mercy upon me, ô Lord, have mercy upon me. For behold, I am unto thee even as the little whelp nigh famished for lack of meat and drink, wearied with seeking about for relief, and almost dead. I fall down before thy glorious table where the sweet hippocras and precious nectar of immortality is tasted. The fathers and prophets, confessors and virgins, most excellent lights of thy Church, sit already at thine heavenly table; they feed upon the meat of eternal glory. O suffer me to eat of the crumbs. Thou art the bread of life: repel my hunger, satisfy my desire with thy presence, fill me with thy comfort and spiritual dainties. Make my faith strong to believe thy word and promises, that being made holy as thou art holy, I may now holily taste and see how sweet thou art, in this life by inchoation; and in the life to come perfectly, pleasantly, and perpetually enjoy thy heavenly table. O our Father, give us this day our daily bread, that we may walk in the strength thereof day and night until we come to thy holy hill of Horeb. My sweet Lord, let me feed upon thee. My life, enter into my soul. O sweet love, ô loving sweetness, let my belly eat thee and my soul be refreshed by thee, the heavenly Bridegroom. . . . Upon thee do I call for my soul, which thou preparest to receive thee through the desire which thou breathest into it. . . . Give me thyself, ô God, my God; restore thyself unto me, for nothing else can suffice thy servant; and mercifully grant unto me, according to the 469



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multitude of thy great mercies, that my baseness may please thy majesty, and my vileness thine almighty power. O sweet Christ, ô Charity, my God, dulcet honey, snowy milk, the food of angels, make me to grow in thee that I may eat thee with a savory taste. Make me to overcome the enemy of my salvation, that thou mayst vouchsafe to give me (according to thy promise) to eat of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God, and of the manna that is hid; and that I may one day or other be called unto the Lamb’s Supper and eat bread at thy table in the Kingdom of God among the blessed ones. O dear God, I pray thee, let my mind, thus kindled with the love of thee, fly even till it come to the beauty of thy celestial house and to the throne of thy glory, and there let it be fed at the dining table of the heavenly citizens, in the place of full feeding, by the plentiful running streams and pleasant pastures. Behold Lord, I stand at the door and knock; I beseech thee, by the bowels of thy mercy wherewith thou, being the day-­spring from on high, hast visited us . . . vouchsafe mercifully to bid me enter into thee, that I may rest with thee, dwell with thee, and sup with thee, and thou with me, and that I may be refreshed to the full of thee which art the living sweet white-­bread and heavenly repast; wherewith when I am once fed and that my strength is come perfectly unto me again, I may ascend unto the more high things and never from henceforth hunger or thirst any more so greatly after vanities. So be it. ‡ {IV} For the authority of discipline to be established in the Church6

Mother. Because that crookedness and disobedience have taken so deep root in all estates that nowadays many dare boldly refuse all ecclesiastical censure, to the great hindrance of the course of the Gospel, grant therefore, we beseech thee, that like as thou hast dealt with other nations, even so may it please thee now at the length to extend thy like mercy unto this realm also, and all others that are in the same necessity, that the authority of ecclesiastical censure and discipline (which for our sins thou hast hitherto kept back from us) may be placed in the Church, to the due punishment of sinful life and contempt of thy word, in such sort that it may extend indifferently unto all estates both high and low, as well to the terror of the ill and comfort of the good as also to the speedy and perfect reformation of all such things as are yet disordered in this thy Church, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose name, for these and all things else expedient for us, we lift up our hearts unto thee, saying as he hath taught us: Mother and Daughter altogether. Our Father, &c.

6 {This prayer comes from the section entitled “A compendious form of prayer for the whole estate of Christ’s Church, necessary to be used of all estates at time convenient, especially every Sabbath or Holy Day in the evening, by the mother and daughter, and their family.”}

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‡ {V} On the feast day of the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary: Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation7

By thy wisdom, ô eternal God, are the times distinguished, whereby we are certified of thy benefits and everlasting bliss, which after this life, and destruction of the world, is prepared for thine elect. Now are there past 5,543 years sith the creation of heaven and earth, of thine angels, and of all creatures. By thy word thou madest man out of the slime of the earth; thou breathedst on him the breath of life and inspiredst into him a soul adorned with perfect wisdom and righteousness. Afterward thy Son did utter a secret decree about the restoring of man, fallen through sin out of thy favor into everlasting death. About the same time of the year was innocent Abel murdered, which was a figure of the sacrifice to come, whose blood indeed crieth unto thee, Father in heaven, and beggeth the forgiveness of sins to all believers. In the like time was Isaac carried to be offered. And thou commandedst the people of Israel to keep holy these days in which thou wouldst have thy benefits to be spoken of. Likewise on this solemn and joyful day of the equinoctial spring time which sithence is 1,582 years, thy Son, as the Angel Gabriel signified to Mary the Virgin, by the working of the Holy Ghost, coupled the human nature to himself after a wonderful and unspeakable manner. The same day 1,549 years sithence, thy Son, redeemer of mankind, in his weak and bloody flesh hung upon the cross. . . . and when the sun going between Orion and the Pleiades leeseth his light, he left his life through intolerable sorrow and torments. And an old saying it hath been that about this time of the year our Lord and Savior Christ will return in the clouds both to vanquish his enemies and to exalt his Church and chosen most graciously unto a new and eternal kingdom. O Son of God, stir us up unto the consideration of those so excellent mysteries and work thou so in our hearts by thy grace that as we have known thy holy Incarnation by the message of an angel, so by thy Cross and Passion we may be brought unto the glory of thy Resurrection. . . .8 ‡ {VI} A prayer called ô bone Jesu, necessary to be said at all times for mercy and grace9

O bountiful Lord Jesu Christ, ô sweet Savior, ô Christ the Son of God, have pity upon me, mercifully hear me, and despise not my prayers. Thou hast created me of nothing; thou hast redeemed me from the bondage of sin, death, and hell—­neither with gold nor silver, but with thy most precious body once offered upon the Cross and thine own blood shed once for all for my ransom. Therefore cast me not away, whom thou by thy great wisdom hast made; despise me not, whom thou hast redeemed with such a precious treasure, {This prayer comes from the section entitled “Christian prayers and divine meditations, as generally to be used at all times, so especially and properly upon all the holy feasts and saints’ days throughout the year, as they fall in order and are commonly kept here in the Church of England and Ireland.”} 8 {This ¶ is the Prayer Book collect for the Feast of the Annunciation.} 9 {Compare with Rouen primer of 1536 . Bentley’s version is that of Henry Bull’s popular Christian prayers and holy meditations (1566; repr. Cambridge, 1842), 189–­90.} 7

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nor let my wickedness destroy that which thy goodness hath builded. Now whilst I live, ô Jesu, have mercy upon me. For if I die out of thy favor, it will be too late afterward to call for thy mercy. Whilst I have time to repent, look upon me with thy merciful eyes, as thou didst vouchsafe to look upon Peter, thine apostle, that I may bewail my sinful life and obtain thy favor to live and die therein. I acknowledge that, if thou shouldst deal with me according to thy justice, I have deserved everlasting death; therefore I appeal to thy high throne of mercy, trusting to obtain thy favor, not for my merits, but for thy merits, ô Jesu, who hast given thyself an acceptable sacrifice to the Father, to appease his wrath and to bring all sinners truly repenting and amending their evil life into his favor again. Accept me, ô Lord, among the number of them whom thou hast in Christ elected and chosen to salvation; forgive my sins, give me grace to lead a godly and innocent life . . . give me grace to be humble in prosperity, patient in adversity, obedient to my rulers, faithful unto them that trust me, dealing truly with all men; to live chastely in wedlock (or in this my single life) . . . to do good after my power unto all men, to hurt no man—­t hat thy name may be glorified in me during this present life, and that I afterward may attain everlasting life, through thy mercy and the merits of thy precious death and passion. Amen. ‡ {VII} Another prayer to be said last of the husband and wife before they give themselves to sleep

O Lord, assist us that peaceably we may now rest and sleep in quiet. Let our eyes sleep, but let our hearts wake unto thee. O lighten thou our eyes that we sleep not in death; that Satan hurt us not and our enemy say, I have prevailed against thee; but watch over us, ô eternal Savior, least the subtle tempter overtake us and we sleep a perpetual sleep and wake no more. For thou art made our everlasting helper and protector. Give us this night a good sleep, that quietly without cares and anguish of mind we may take our rest. Let not troublesome dreams and vain fantasies and apparitions of the night nor the devil disquiet us. Defend us this night from unclean and troublesome spirits; let not their rushings, ragings, and misrule disquiet us. Keep us, good Lord, from sleights of Satan, from snares and illusions of the devil. But admonish our souls of miseries to come, even as thou didst arm the patriarchs and prophets by dreams and visions in the night, when sleep came upon them, from dangers nigh at hand, through thine heavenly oracles; so govern and preserve us in sleep that our souls come not into danger, neither fall upon the sword and pit of perils. Let us not sleep in sin and contempt of salvation, as do the children of night and darkness, but make us of the number of those which sleep in Jesus; and whom thou, ô Lord, in the resurrection of the just and coming of thy Son . . . wilt bring with thine elect to meet him in the clouds . . . Finally, at our last gasp, when our hearts pant, our strength faileth, our sight departeth, our hearing is deaf, our mouth dumb; when our feet cannot go nor our hands feel; when all our senses forsake us: give us, ô blessed Trinity, some sense of eternal life, that we may taste in this world the beginning of thine everlasting joy, and at our departure 472



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out of this world behold by faith thy divine presence, and so sleep quietly to eternal life. Amen, Amen. [\ Text: Thomas Bentley, The monument of matrones conteining seuen seuerall lamps of virginitie, or distinct treatises; whereof the first fiue concerne praier and meditation: the other two last, precepts and examples, as the woorthie works partlie of men, partlie of women; compiled for the necessarie vse of both sexes out of the sacred Scriptures, and other approoued authors (London, 1582) (NSTC 1892).

473

JOHN NORDEN (c. 1547–­1625)

A pensive man’s practice

Norden probably came from minor gentry stock. In 1568 he graduated BA, receiving his MA five years later, both from Hart Hall, Oxford, which at the time was where sons of recusant families gravitated (including John Donne, who matriculated in 1584), although there is no evidence putting Norden in this cohort. It has only recently been established that the John Norden who wrote a series of best-­selling devotional works was indeed the same John Norden who became a prominent surveyor and cartographer. After leaving Oxford in 1573, Norden found employment in this latter capacity with the widowed Lady Anne Knyvett, where he remained until her death in 1582. The Pensive man’s practice (PMP), published in 1584, is dedicated to Lady Knyvett’s son and his wife; the volume opens with her acrostic poem (“A godly motion to awaken the hearts of such as sleep in security by the Lady Anne Knyvett”). From 1582 to 1600 Norden worked as a freelance surveyor, thereafter as the Queen’s surveyor of crown woods and forests throughout southern England; in 1605 he was also appointed surveyor of the duchy of Cornwall, a position he held until shortly before death. Beginning in 1593, he also published a series of important choreographic and cartographic works; both Camden’s 1607 Britannia and Speed’s 1611 Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain feature his maps. [\

A pensive man’s practice (PMP) was the first and most successful of Norden’s devotional volumes, going through at least twenty-­six editions by 1640.1 The 1584 title page describes its prayers as “written by John Norden,” but some must be based on a medieval original (in particular, “A prayer against the devil, the world, and the flesh”), and most of them probably draw on earlier prayers, although the changes Norden introduced between 1584 and 1592 show that he revised ad libitum. The significance of PMP, however, lies not in its The 1640 title page claims that there had been forty-two previous impression, but see Appendix A in Patterson (319). 1

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originality but in its popularity—­and hence its prima facie claim to express the devotional ideals, and devotional tastes, of some considerable number of book-­buying Elizabethans. Moreover, while Norden seems to have been, in the words of the ODNB, a “faithful follower of the reformed Elizabethan Church,” his piety inclined towards the godly end of the conformist spectrum—­increasingly so, as the changes between the 1584 and 1592 PMP attest. One notes, for example, the repeated “Lord, increase our faith,” replacing the primers’ Hail Mary and Paternoster; the dry-­as-­dust prayer before Communion (the only Ante-­Communion prayer in the volume), with 1592 additions that try to fit sacramental grace within a predestinarian frame. Yet Norden’s prayers do not breathe the experimental predestinarianism of Perkins and Dent . His “Prayer against the devil, the world, and the flesh” retains its apparently pre-­Reformation petition against security and its equally pre-­Reformation understanding of merit as God rewarding the good works that his grace has enabled us to perform, although the 1592 additions fiercely resist any notion of our cooperation with grace, we ourselves being “wicked, wretched, and weak.” The 1592 Ante-­Communion petition to “be received into the number of those whom from the beginning of the world he [God] hath chosen” does not suggest any deep concern with the logic of the divine decrees. PMP is of interest precisely because it does not look like Cambridge-­style puritan divinity but instead affords a window on rather different aspects (or strains) of low-­churchmanship.2 Of these, the most striking may be the new-­modeling of time evident in the calendar that, as in the primers, stands at the beginning. In the pre-­Reformation primers, and even in A goodly primer, the calendar is a list of saints’ days and liturgical feasts; the Book of Common Prayer eliminates the non-­biblical saints, but keeps the same basic structure of sacred time. Norden notes the Book of Common Prayer’s saints and festivals, but relegates them to the bottom of the page, filling the calendar proper with, instead of holy people, historical events, supplemented by information regarding ancient calendars (the Egyptians begin their year on July 18th) and Jewish festivals (to mark the burning of Jerusalem, Jews fast barefoot on September 10th). The events are mostly those of biblical and classical antiquity—­Noah’s sending out a dove from the Ark, the birth of Alexander the Great, the burning of the Ephesian Temple of Diana—­but with a scattering from modern history (the death of Emperor Constantius in 364; the Saracens’ seizure of Jerusalem in 1187; the birth of Martin Luther in 1483, of Elizabeth in 1533). The calendar gives the year for all these modern events, but there is no B.C. dating in the sixteenth century, so that the events of pre-­Christian past, like the saints in the old calendars, occupy the same temporal plane: on the third of May “the Temple of Jerusalem was finished,” on the tenth “Christ was advertised that Lazarus was sick,” on the fourteenth “the Jews under Ahasuerus were commanded to be put to death.” The first dated event is Christ’s birth on December 25th, “the year after the world’s creation 4018.” The absence of perspectival depth in Norden’s handling of pre-­Christian history would remind one of medieval painting, were it not 2 The prayers in many Elizabethan books of private devotion, particularly those by Reformed clergymen, tend to read like divinity lectures: contrast, e.g., Norden’s “A prayer against the devil, the world, and the flesh” and “A prayer to be said before the receiving of the Communion” with the similarly titled ones in Henry Bull’s 1566 Christian prayers and holy meditations (Cambridge, 1842), 90–­91, 124–­25.

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offset by the humanist top border that, for each month, gives the Greek and Hebrew counterpart. The prayers themselves return time and again to “economic” issues:3 we are called to labor in our vocations, to avoid idleness, to gain financial independence; they express gratitude for soft pillows, warm blankets, and the other good gifts of God that make life comfortable; yet mingled with these thanks is the recognition that such worldly comforts can tempt the soul to its own destruction. The prayers remind us of the sufferings of the poor and of our duty to share with all in need (not just with the deserving poor), if only because God has promised mercy to the merciful. A passage added in 1592 warns against sharp business practices. An evening prayer rejects the suggestion that the cold, sick, and hungry wretches we pass huddled on street corners are outside the sphere of God’s love, yet it seems to take as a given that it is not the poor who are blessed (pace Luke 6:20) but those who “by thy fatherly goodness . . . [have] received at thy merciful hands infinite good gifts.” The 1592 revisions foreground a third salient aspect of Norden’s religion: namely, the recentering of devotion on the Father.4 The shift away from the Christ-­centered Anselmian piety of the late Middle Ages is already visible in the 1584 PMP. One notes, for example, the longing to be received “into the bosom” of the Father’s “sweet embracings” in “A morning prayer” and the tendency throughout to view the Son as a patronus who long ago did some amazing things that restored us to favor with the king, for which we will be forever grateful. The one notable exception is the 1584 “Prayer against the devil, the world, and the flesh,” whose stress on the humanity of Christ and reiterated apostrophes to “O sweet Jesus” evoke the late medieval devotional world of the xv Oes and O bone Jesu (see the introduction to Three primers ).5 By 1592 even one such prayer apparently seemed too many: the revisions thus mute the ardent tenderness of the 1584 text and redirect most of its petitions to the Father. The 1592 edition likewise retitles the 1584 opening “prayer to Christ” (the only such prayer in the volume6) as “A prayer to Christ that he will present our prayers to God the Father,” underscoring that this is not prayer to Christ as God but as “our intercessor & advocate” with God the Father’s “heavenly Majesty.” [\

Note on the Text: The prayers that follow incorporate both the 1584 and 1592 readings. Where they correspond (except for minor stylistic variants, which we have ignored), 3 On the centrality of economic conduct to Tudor-­Stuart Christian ethics, see Craig Muldrew, The economy of obligation: the culture of credit and social relations in early modern England (Basingstoke, 1998). 4 See section iv in Leif Dixon, “Richard Greenham and the Calvinist construction of God,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 4 (2010): 729–­45. 5 Yet the prayer’s unusual interpretation of Christ promise that his disciples will do even greater works than he (John 12:14)—­that for ordinary fallen humans it is a harder and therefore a greater thing to resist sin than it was for the sinless Jesus—­rather erodes its Anselmian claim that Christ has felt the “grievous assaults and temptations” by which we are assailed . Origen gives the same reading of John 12:14 in his seventh homily on Numbers, but we have not found it elsewhere in either Fathers or Reformers. 6 PMP has no prayer to the Holy Spirit or to the Trinity; its “A thanksgiving to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, worthy to be often said,” although concluding with an orthodox Trinitarian confession, consistently uses “God” for the Father alone (216–­24 in the 1592 edition).

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the text is printed in ordinary typeface. Passages that appear only in 1584 are in italic. Those appearing only in 1592 are underlined and, if necessary to avoid confusion, set off in brackets: for example, if a 1584 sentence began with “Hark ye sinners” and its 1592 counterpart with “Look ye sinners,” it would become “Hark [Look] ye sinners.” [\ Sources: ODNB; Mary Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation (Teaneck, N.J., 2007); Helen White, Tudor books of private devotion (Madison, Wisc., 1951).

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1584 and 1592

A prayer to Christ that he will present our prayers to God the Father O sweet Jesus, who hast taken upon thee to be our intercessor & advocate unto God thine heavenly Father, vouchsafe (I humbly beseech thee) to accompany me in these my supplications and prayers, presenting them unto his heavenly Majesty in such sort as, for thy sake (sweet Jesus), they may be acceptable unto him, to the washing away of my sins & obtaining things necessary for me and all men, according unto his heavenly will in all things. Amen. O Lord increase [our] my faith. . . .

A morning prayer for the working day Before thou do thy work begin, Thank God; crave pardon for thy sin: And then thy work shall prosper so, As want shall never breed thee woe. What a great benefit we receive at the hands of almighty God by our natural sleep, none is ignorant; what perils we escape in the dark & doleful night, we may easily judge. And what favor the Almighty extendeth towards us in giving us lodging, not in the fields but in houses, not upon the hard and cold ground but upon soft pillows, warmly covered, experience teacheth. What thanks for this so bountiful benefits of his we are daily bound to yield, I would we all knew, and had will to yield them accordingly, [The benefits of our comfortable sleep is great, and God’s work in the same & in preserving us is wonderful. Wherefore, let us be mindful to give him thanks and with] as did David who (Psal. 55) in the morning, at midday, and at night, calling on the name of the Lord, with thanks said (Psal. 143:6): Lord let me hear thy loving kindness betimes in the morning, for in thee is my trust. 478



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And let us consider that, as the night is ordained for rest, so is the day for travail, for the obtaining of things necessary to ourselves and such as God hath given us, and not to stand in hope of relief by other men’s helps, but laboring as did Paul and the rest of the apostles, who took nothing of any, but wrought with their hands for it because they would be chargeable to none. And our labor being joined with faith and prayer, the blessing of God shall so prosper our endeavors as nothing shall be wanting unto us. And therefore, before we begin our labor, we must prostrate ourselves before his throne, yielding unto his heavenly Majesty due praises for his continual loving-­k indness towards us; so shall we be free from danger and prosper in our callings from day to day during the whole course of our life, which else, although our vocations breed in us (in respect of the great increase of riches) security and pride, yet will it be in the last day a heavy burden to our conscience and accuse us of ingratitude to our eternal condemnation. So let us yield his Majesty due praises for his continual loving kindness towards us saying, The Prayer

. . .

Oh sweet Lord, such hath been thy fatherly care of me this night past that the sleep which thou hast given me is most comfortable, both to my body and soul, in so much as I am the more aptly given to the execution of my worldly business and the service of thy divine Majesty this morning—­wherein assist me (sweet Lord) with the help of thine Holy Spirit. Comfort and defend me this day and ever with thy merciful aid, that none affliction, hurt, or misfortune dismay me; no tribulation, want, or anguish of mind draw me from thee; no worldly care, delight, or fantasy carry me at any time into any wicked cogitation, action, or speech. For (Lord) I know that it is not thy will that any evil should dwell in us, or that we should at any time offend thee, but to keep our hearts pure and undefiled, as a fit receptacle for thy Majesty. Yet thou sufferest sometimes unlawful affections to have the upper hand, to the end that we (feeling our weakness and corruption) should wholly confess all our strength, all our godly cogitations and works, to proceed from thee and all evil motions to come of our own corruption. And for that all flesh is full of sin, and that the just fall seven times a day, and I, sinful wretch, fall seventy times seven times a day; wherefore forgive (Lord) my wickedness, mine offences and sin committed—­ either this night past by foolish dreams, fantasies, or other temptations; or at any time since I came into this miserable world, being a most sinful creature; and that (being pardoned by thy mercy in Jesus Christ) I may proceed in the residue of my days (governed by thy Holy Spirit) void of all offences, using my vocation and calling so as may be to the setting forth of thy glory, maintenance of thy favor towards me, and getting those things which may be sufficient for the maintenance of mine estate here and for the relief of such as are committed to my charge, without using any sinister or unlawful means, policy, or worldly devices which are not agreeable to thy laws. And grant me always such regard of serving thee, as thine hand may always direct me to good and happy success in all mine affairs. Bless thou the work of mine hands (good Lord) and grant me so to fly idleness, the mother and nurse of all evil, that both this day and all my life I may, by godly care and travail, get me a sufficient & competent living here, that I be no burden and charge to such as are rich and wealthy, nor depend upon the succor, help, and furtherance of others, whose 479



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help is most slippery and deceitful—­lest that in hope thereof, I, giving myself to idleness and loitering, when their help shall be withholden from me, I be driven (as the wise man saith) to go in a ragged coat & to want my food. But contrariwise (O Lord), grant that I may so employ myself to labor and diligent execution of [my] thy business, this day and ever, that, I may (through [thy] my blessing) luckily prosper therein, and show myself so helpful to the poor, impotent, and needy as the fruit of my travail shall extend unto, that thou mayst fulfill in me that most sweet promise of thine: that whoso considereth the poor and needy, thou wilt deliver him in the time of trouble. Lord, thy mercy is infinite and thy love towards us unspeakable, wherefore give me grace always to serve thee; yea, at all times and in all places, both in labor and rest, wealth and poverty, sickness and health; yea, all my life, and at the hour of my death; that I may pass this day and all the rest of my transitory life in the fulfilling of thy laws, and be ready at thy favorable beck and call to come and appear before thy throne of mercy, in perfect hope of thy loving receiving me into the bosom of thy sweet embracings, not for my worthiness or deserts (which is but corruption) but for the merits of thy son Jesus Christ, there to rest, enjoying the fruits and benefit of his death and bitter Passion; in whose name, I refer myself and all mine, both this day and ever, unto thy fatherly protection, humbly beseeching thee to direct all my thoughts, words, and actions unto my life’s end, good God. Amen. Oh Lord increase my faith. ‡

A prayer for the evening When thou betakest thee to thy rest Commit thee to th’Almighty’s hest For when thou liest down at night Thou art not sure to see day light. . . . O heavenly God and eternal Father, giver of all good things and protector of all that love thee, I yield thee most humble and hearty thanks for thine inestimable benefits, not only for keeping and preserving me this day, but all my life, that neither mine enemies have prevailed against me as they sought and desired, nor any other misfortune which within this world is incident unto mankind hath overcome me, but hast like a most loving father and careful purveyor given and provided for me all things necessary. Insomuch as I have been well refreshed and replenished with thy great benefit of feeding me and with thy gracious benefit of clothing me, so that I have not fainted through want of food nor been oppressed with overmuch cold for lack of raiment, as with mine eyes (to my great grief) I may and do behold a number daily, in divers corners of the streets and ways as I pass, who are most grievously tormented with hunger, cold, sores, and sickness (lamentable to see), whom also thou hast bought most dearly, and yet sufferest them to be oppressed; and I, who have deserved no less, nay rather, good Lord, a great deal more than some of them have, by thy fatherly goodness not only escaped those afflictions, but received at thy merciful hands infinite good gifts and unspeakable benefits, for which thine inestimable love, I cannot sufficiently praise thee. O Lord, forgive mine offences which this day I 480



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have committed & done against thine almighty Majesty, whether they be secret and unknown or open, whether they were done in my youth or at any time since; pardon them, O God, for Jesus Christ’s sake, and vouchsafe me thy grace to amend my life and to return unfeignedly to the service of thee. . . . ‡

A prayer against the devil, the world, and the flesh, very necessary to be often said If thou these captain [furious] foes wilt fly Thou must crave aid of God on high. Who by his Son hath put to flight The deeds of sin, to purchase light. The devil, who is prince of darkness and who ruleth in this world, goeth about seeking whom he may devour and lead headlong into destruction, by putting before our eyes the veil of the vanities of this world, that we should not see the light of the truth but to continue in darkness, in haughtiness and pride, as bond-­slaves and captives to him, whose children they are that continue in voluntary blindness, whose end shall be the fire everlasting prepared for him and his angels. Pray that the world overcome you not (1 Joh. 5), wherein resteth nothing but wickedness and sin. [Wherefore let us pray that he prevail not against us and that the world overcome us not, wherein resteth nothing but weakness and sin.] The whole world is full of unrighteousness and wickedness, which whoso loveth is an enemy to God. Let us therefore live unto God, & not direct our minds too much unto worldly things, for the world ministereth nothing but what is enmity unto our souls. Furthermore, we must beware that we yield not unto the evil desires of the flesh nor fulfill the lusts thereof, for they that are in the flesh cannot please God, but shall die. That is, such as yield themselves to follow the lusts thereof, shall have the reward of the wicked in eternal perdition. Pray therefore that ye enter not into temptation, but that ye may walk godly, as the servants of Christ and not as the servants of sin. And forasmuch as the devil, the world, and the flesh are the mighty enemies of our salvation, let us watch diligently that we yield not unto their temptations; let us pray that God will strengthen us forevermore. The prayer

O Christ, Son of the living God, who in the time of thy humanity, when thou walkedst here in the vale of this miserable world in the form of a servant, in the substance of mankind, art not ignorant of [hadst proof of] the sundry grievous assaults and temptations wherewith Satan, that monstrous enemy to mankind, tried thee, thou being altogether clean and clear from all corruption, yea, without all desire of sin, yet hardly assaulted by sundry means to procure thee to yield to his allurings, whereby (sweet Jesus) thou hadst sufficient trial and experience of his like assaults unto our corruptible and weak flesh, who are by reason of the Fall & willful transgression of our great grandfather Adam (as thou knowest) most easy to be overcome, who in all assaults have none other refuge or defense but only to fly unto thee and to rest under the shadow of thy wings, which is so sure a 481



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harbor and so strong a defense as whoso faithfully betaketh him unto the same is safe from all the raging storms of Satan, the deceits of the world, and motions of the unbridled flesh, all which are, unto our souls, most monstrous, mortal, and most cruel enemies. Oh Lord let thine Holy Spirit dwell in me, let it never depart from the inner part of mine heart, but decking the house of my soul with the flowers of love, faith, and unfeigned zeal, it may please thy divine Majesty to settle thee and frame thyself therein to abide, that thy presence may be so terrible unto his assaults, as he, approaching near unto me, [perceiving thine Holy Spirit to have the possession thereof] seeing thee and hearing thy name (O Jesus), may fly away, as he did from thee in the wilderness, as he did from thee on the pinnacle and in all his temptations. O sweet Jesus, thou wert pure at that time, without spot of sin. I am sinful and full of corruption. He could not overcome or prevail against thy sanctity, but I full of impiety am prone to fall, & therefore easy to be overcome. Strengthen me therefore, oh good Father; stand with me, fight for me, that he take me not captive and make me a bond-­slave of sin; keep me free out of his claws (sweet Jesus); let the brightness of thy grace so shine about me that his darkness come not near me to overshadow me with the darkness of iniquity. Let thy favor O Christ be a wall, a bulwark, and strong buckler for my defense; for, Lord, thou knowest that his force is so great, his will so ready, & his doings so wily, as if thou do but pluck back thine hand, he striketh [and buffeteth me] us; if thou turn thy face, he winneth [me] us to his will, and if thou depart utterly from [me] us, [he draweth me] we shall run headlong into most horrible destruction. Wherefore [O good Father] (O sweet Jesus) save me, sweet Jesus keep me, sweet Jesus embrace me, hold thine holy hand over me, conduct me, and lead me in the midst of the path of truth to celestial happiness, and let me not be drawn away to the left hand or to the right, but keep a middle and direct course until I come to the place of celestial bliss, where neither Satan shall overcome me, the world deceive me, nor the flesh procure me to sin, but be in the light of thy most glorious presence, with the residue of thy saints, singing eternal praises unto thee. But, O my most loving Redeemer, my time is not yet come, my journey is not yet at an end, my days (which though they be but a span long) are not yet finished. And until this body of mine shall pass to the grave, my poor soul must have and abide continual conflicts with the devil, the king and emperor of this world, and with as many his ministers as my tongue cannot number, and principally with the world, who setteth before me, instead of divine and heavenly contemplations, worldly vanities; instead of celestial and true comfort, worldly delights; instead of heavenly hope, worldly and unavailable {i.e., empty} promises—­to bring (as much as in him lieth) my godly enterprises to wicked end. Lord, he labors by all means to draw [me] us into despair by loading [my] our minds with too much doubt of the performance of thy most comfortable promises. But [most loving Lord God], sweet Jesus, though his power be in show great, thine is in deed greater; though he be strong, thou art stronger; though his instigations & prickings forward to wickedness be many, thy loving and fatherly callings to grace are more. O good Father, thou hast promised us thy help, and that most marvelous to our eyes, for thou hast said that thou wilt give us power to do, not only as thou didst, but more and greater things, which is [marvelous] so strange to the dullness of our understanding that we can not but marvel that we who are nothing but corruption, nothing but an heap of sin, should do greater things then thyself (sweet Jesus); [O immaculate Lamb], who are only [good] God, only pure, only holiness, and only grace and power itself; Oh Lord make 482



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this perfectly known unto me, make me faithful, & then I know I shall rightly understand it. Lord, if we that are sinful & full of frailty give Satan the repulse, despise the world, and withstand the evil motions of the flesh, we do that which thou didst not—­in respect that thou, being pure and without sin or will to sin, were not so soon to be won as we whose strength is weakness, whose holiness is mere corruption, & therefore was thy victory less than ours.1 [O good Father] Sweet Jesus give [us] me thy strength, thine help, and the light of thy grace to obtain the victory and to avoid his tyranny. Save [us] me from the detestable cruelty of his ministers, for great are the conflicts which daily arise in our consciences between thy grace and Satan, between thy spirit and our flesh, between thy divine will and the wicked world. Oh what an heavy burden is it to bear the innumerable temptations which the devil, the world, and the flesh do offer? and especially to those that take not hold by the anchor of patience and who settle not themselves within the harbor of thy fear, but give the reins of their ungodly desires scope to run whither the force of every unlawful motion of the wicked fiend, the vain world, or the corrupt flesh shall move and drive them. . . . Strengthen me (sweet Jesus) in my conflicts, and temper them so with patience that they may rather be medicines than maladies to my poor soul; [that being exercised therewith] and healthful exercises that I never think myself to be secure, but always subject to trial, [considering that] for without exercise we remain unskillful; and without an enemy, we prepare not weapon; neither is victory gotten without battle, nor reward without victory. Yet though we overcome, the victory is not ours but thine who fightest and overcomest for us; and yet such is thy love that thou givest us the reward & crown of victory. Make me strong [good Father] (sweet Jesus); fortify the castle of my soul with spiritual weapons—­a s with faith, love, hope, peace, long suffering, gentleness, humbleness, thankfulness, meekness, strength, and patience, and such like, that I may continually withstand the proud attempts of these my ghostly enemies, through thee, and by thee, sweet Jesus, mine only Savior and Redeemer, being of myself wicked, wretched, and weak, and always prone to that which is contrary to thy will. Strengthen me, O Lord, and leave me not in darkness, but send me light from the throne of grace. In the name of thy Son, our only Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. O Lord, confirm my faith, strengthen my weakness, and wash me from my sin. Amen. ‡

A prayer to be said before the receiving of the Communion Before thou come his table near, Prepare thy soul, make conscience clear.

{The 1592 edition rewords this somewhat complex thought: “Lord, is it not that, if we that are sinful and full of frailty give Satan the repulse, despise the world, and withstand the evil motions of the flesh, do we not that which thou didst not—­in respect that thou, being pure and without sin or will to sin, were not overcome—­a nd we whose strength is weakness, whose holiness is mere corruption, prone to yield: if we resist him, is not our victory greater than thine?” This reading of John 14:12 comes ultimately from Origen’s seventh homily on Numbers.} 1

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There is said sufficient in a certain [goodly] exhortation set down in the Book of Common Prayer to stir up the minds of all well-­disposed persons willingly and zealously to come to this holy table, whereunto, before we come, we ought to address and prepare our hearts to put off all rancor, malice, wickedness, and all kind of vice, with the fruits of the old man, which is disobedience and sin, and to put on the new man, which is righteousness, coming thereunto in a pure & clean heart abounding with love, peace faith, & charity that we may receive it to our comfort. Read the 11 chapter of the first Corinthians from the 20 verse unto the 29 and there shall you find not only the manner of the institution and right celebration thereof, but also how to receive it with heavenly profit, the danger in the unreverent and unfaithful receiving of the same: to the comfort of the godly & shame of the wicked.2 Before thou presume to come to this holy table, forgive all men that have offended thee—­not for a time, but even from the bottom of thy hear—­to be at once with all men in perfect charity, entire in faith, putting away all hypocrisy, dissimulation, doubting, and unstayedness; being prepared in earnest and hearty prayer, joined with true repentance and purpose of amendment, that thou mayst faithfully eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, in the remembrance of his bitter Passion, for the cleansing of thy sins, that thou mayst through his mercy be received into the number of those whom from the beginning of the world he hath chosen and by their obedience he accounteth worthy to be his; and so possessing that peace in thy soul which passeth the understanding of man, thou mayst yield praise and thanksgiving unto Jesus Christ, thy Redeemer and only author of thy salvation, in the congregation of the faithful without intermission. The prayer

Sweet Jesus, son of the ever-­living and omnipotent God, vouchsafe [O Lord Jesus, the Son of the ever-­living and omnipotent God, who when we through the fall of our first father were made subjects to the snares of sin, bonds of death, and tyranny of Satan, wherein according to the corruption of our nature & justice of thy Father we had continued, hadst not thou vouchsafed to pacify him & purge us, grant] I humbly pray and beseech thee even for thy death sake, to instill into mine heart the gift of thy grace, whereby approaching unto the sweet banquet of thine holy body & blood which thou vouchsafest to give for the redemption of us miserable sinners, I may by faith eat and drink the same, and be made a fit and faithful member of thy mystical body, laying aside the darkness of old Adam, embracing the light of thine obedience, love, and patience, that that most precious body of thine be not given nor thy blood shed for me in vain, but may direct the whole course of the residue of my life by thine Holy Spirit according to thine heavenly will in all things, that after this life ended, I may appear before the tribunal seat of his [thy] high and heavenly Majesty as a faithful member of thine, and enjoy that heavenly inheritance which thou our head and guide hast purchased for all true believers in thee. Amen. O Lord increase my faith. 2 {1592 reads “the danger being likewise manifested which hangeth over the head of the unreverent and unfaithful in receiving the same, unto the exceeding comfort and consolation of the godly, and to the utter shame and confusion of the wicked and sinners.”}

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‡

A short prayer to use wealth as we ought3 O God almighty, the giver of all good things, the only stay of mankind, their guide and comfort, give grace unto me thy servant, that as thou hast blessed my store and increased my wealth, insomuch as I have not only that which may suffice mine own necessary want but have also sufficient to relieve others in need, drive from mine heart all natural desire of more, and give me a will to distribute and, according to the abundance of my wealth, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and do all things else which thou requirest of them on whom thou bestowest thy blessing, to the furtherance of godliness, and not to live to myself and for myself only but to the help of all that want my furtherance, that laying up a good foundation, in the end I may leave the world willingly and purchase through Jesus Christ thy kingdom eternally; which for his sake grant us, sweet God. Amen. O Lord, increase [our] my faith. [\ T exts: John Norden, A pensiue mans practise Very profitable for all personnes, wherein are conteyned verie deuout and necessary prayers for sundry godlie purposes. VVith requisite perswasions before euery prayer (London, 1584) (NSTC 18616). John Norden, A pensive mans practise Verie profitable for all persons, wherein are conteined verie deuout and necessarie praiers for sundrie godly purposes, with requisite perswasions before euerie praier (London, 1592) (NSTC 18617.3).

In 1584, the title is “A short prayer to the like purpose,” referring to the preceding “A prayer for the true ordering of worldly riches, very necessary for such as God hath endued with the wealth of this world.” 3

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SIR THOMAS WYATT (c. 1503–­1542)

Certain psalms chosen out of the psalter of David, commonly called the vii penitential psalms, drawn into English meter

Wyatt’s father, Sir Henry Wyatt (1460–­1536), reaped the rewards of having been one of Henry Tudor’s early allies. In 1492, Sir Henry purchased Allington Castle, Kent, where he forged enduring links with his neighbors, the Boleyns and Cromwells. His will makes it clear that he did not embrace the new religion; his respect for the new learning, however, comes across in his decision, then unusual for man of his rank, to have his son and heir, Thomas, attend university: the newly founded St. John’s College, Cambridge, whose presiding spirit was the future Henrician martyr, John Fisher, bishop of Rochester. Later, in the 1530s, William Cecil, Roger Ascham, Thomas Smith, and John Cheke would make St. John’s the vanguard of humanist reform. Although he did not take a degree (gentlemen undergraduates almost never did), Wyatt holds his own among this notable company. He was one of the first and finest lyric poets of the English Renaissance, his oeuvre including the earliest English adaptations of both the Petrarchan sonnet and Horatian verse epistle. From the early 1520s until his death, he also served prince and country in the intertwined capacities of courtier, diplomat, and administrator. According to the French ambassador Marillac, “there was no one with whom the King was more private” (ODNB). He held numerous offices during his short life: most notably a 1537–­1540 stint as ambassador to Spain, entrusted with the impossible task of blocking the imminent peace treaty between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Wyatt was also twice imprisoned. The grounds for first imprisonment (May–­June 1536) remain unclear; it had something to do with the fall of Anne Boleyn, but Wyatt was never charged with being her lover—­or, for that matter, with anything else. Cromwell apparently interceded, securing Wyatt’s release little more than a month after his arrest. The second visit to the Tower (January–­March 1541) came in the wake of Cromwell’s fall in June of 1540, when his enemies found documents that could be interpreted as implicating Wyatt in treasonous conspiracy. Wyatt countered with a plausible reading of the same documents that rendered them innocuous, and he was soon a free man, restored to royal favor and public office—­a lthough according to the Spanish 486



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ambassador Chapuys, the pardon was conditional on Wyatt’s taking back his wife, whom he had married ca. 1520 and from whom he had reportedly been separated for over fifteen years; Elizabeth Darrell, his mistress since at least 1537, was living at Allington Castle when Wyatt was arrested in 1541. Whether Wyatt fulfilled the condition of his pardon (or whether such a condition ever existed) is unknown. By the time of his release, Wyatt’s health was failing. He made his will in June of 1542, leaving his estate to his legitimate son, but also providing for Darrell and the son born of their union. He died four months later, on his way to meet the Spanish envoy at Falmouth. [\

We do not know when Wyatt composed his paraphrase of the penitential psalms, except that it had to be after 1534, the date of its principal source, Pietro Aretino’s I sette salmi de la penitentia di David; its unrevised state and penultimate position in Wyatt’s autograph manuscript suggest a late date. If Chapuys’ report about Wyatt’s conditional pardon is correct, one would be tempted to link its Nathan-­like censure of Wyatt’s adultery with these psalm paraphrases on an adulterer’s repentance.1 An alternative critical tradition connects the paraphrases to Wyatt’s experience in the court of Henry VIII: to the King’s adultery with Anne Boleyn, to Wyatt’s 1536 imprisonment at the time of Anne’s fall, to his 1541 imprisonment on suspicion of treason. However, since we do not know when Wyatt composed his paraphrases, such connections are, rather obviously, speculative; and Rivkah Zim makes a strong case against reading the paraphrases as autobiographical or confusing Wyatt with Wyatt’s David. Wyatt’s penitential psalms follow—­sometimes closely, sometimes at a distance—­A retino’s I sette salmi. It is from Aretino that Wyatt took his reading of the penitential psalms; the narrative links come likewise from Aretino, as does the overall shape of the narrative and much of its phrasing.2 However, over the course of the paraphrases, Wyatt increasingly breaks away from his Catholic model. In particular, they increasingly mute or remove the Arentine David’s explicit Christianity. In Aretino’s version of psalm 51, David thus asks God to “let thy forgiveness be as thy Son in his preaching . . . shall ordain” (117); in psalm 130, he speaks of how God “wilt send thy Son to die for the salvation of sinners” (202), and then in the link that follows, David’s beholds in a vision the full Gospel narrative of Christ’s nativity, passion, resurrection, ascension. Wyatt, by contrast, makes his David an ancient Hebrew king who, illumined by grace, slowly, gropingly, comes to apprehend the distant outlines of a promised redemption. This historicization of David’s consciousness informs the psycho-­spiritual narrative of Wyatt’s psalms throughout. Up to the final two psalms, David’s “laments and pleas are full of specious argument, self-­pity, and moral confusion” (Zim 48), primarily because David does not know whether or how God’s justice could allow forgiveness of

1 In truth, it seems hard to imagine someone living in adultery choosing to work on the penitential psalms. 2 His interpretation of individual verses also draws on the psalter of the Protestant Hebraist Johannes Campensis.

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sin.3 His attempt to reconcile the two in psalm 51 present “a compressed dramatization of the fear-­beset mind doing quick but semi-­irrational thinking” (Twombly, 369) that ends in the verbal tangle of “Just I am judged by justice of thy grace,” followed by a string of apologies, excuses, and offers of quid pro quo that betray the “confusion” of “one [who] wants to excuse in oneself the inexcusable” (Twombly, 371). Yet he is struggling to grasp the reality of God’s mercy, and shortly thereafter receives his first intimation of the “gladsome tidings.”4 The following narrative link describes David’s astonishment at the “deep secrets . . . of mercy, of faith, of frailty, of grace” that his own words have somehow uttered; he cannot imagine how he, a sinner, could have expressed them. He responds in faith to this mysterious inner working of the Spirit, and in what follows one watches his deepening trust in God’s goodness and mercy, and then, in the final link, his vision of the Word veiling itself in flesh, then the veil “torn off with death,” but the Word leaping from darkness like dawn light glinting on the horizon. Like Aretino (and the Christian exegetical tradition tout court), Wyatt reads the psalms as messianic prophecies, but their vision is seen through a glass darkly—­t he vision of an ancient Jewish prophet-­k ing, who does not know the names of the figures he beholds. David’s struggle to believe that God might forgive him gratis defines his pre-­Christian historicity; it is only when, through a glass darkly, he sees “the Christ that is to be,” that he knows “I my pardon have.” Yet the same struggle that historicizes Wyatt’s David, that marks him—­in contrast to his counterpart in Aretino—­as a Hebrew figure, also makes him an Henrician figura.5 For it would have been no more obvious to a Henrician Christian than to the Hebrew David that God does not require some punishment, some satisfaction, for violations of divine justice, that he pardons repentant sinners just for the asking. Catholic orthodoxy, from the high Middle Ages on, held that even when God forgave the guilt of sin, there remained a penalty to be paid to God’s offended justice, either by works of satisfaction in this life or by penal suffering in Purgatory.6 The English Catholic scholars at Douai thus read psalm 51 as denying God’s free forgiveness of penitent sinners: David knowing that more was required than only confession, for that the bond of satisfaction remained after his sins were remitted, persisted in penance, praying, lamenting, and beseeching God according to his great and manifold mercies, to take away his iniquity, albeit the prophet Nathan had now told him that our Lord had taken away his sin, because there yet remained temporal pain due for the same.7 Conversely, the proclamation that God freely justified and forgave sinners lay at the theological center of the Reformation throughout the half century following Luther’s 1517 3 Christian orthodoxy held that, without the sacrifice of Christ, God’s justice would not have allowed the forgiveness of sin. See Anselm, Cur Deus Homo bk. 1, chap. 12. 4 “Tidings” is already in Tyndale’s translation of Luke 2:10. 5 See Eric Auerbach, “Figura,” in his Scenes from the drama of European literature (New York, 1959), 11–­76. 6 For a powerful argument in support of this position, see Allen’s Defense . 7 The holie Bible faithfully translated into English, out of the authentical Latin . . . by the English College of Doway (Douai, 1609–­1610), 2:100.

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denunciation of indulgences. Wyatt’s David, like many of Wyatt’s contemporaries, gropes in fear and longing towards the assurance that, in the words of an Henrician Protestant, “whosoever repententh him of his sins from the very heart, and is sorry for them, lamenteth his misery, hungereth for strength to do the will of God, knowledgeth his offences, laboreth with all main to walk in a new life, needeth not to doubt but that Christ by his death hath abundantly satisfied to God the Father for his sins” (Becon, 102).8 [\ Sources: [Pietro Aretino], Paraphrase vpon the seaven pen[i]tentiall psalmes of [t]he kingly prophet tra[n]slated out of Italian by I.H. (Douai, 1635); Thomas Becon, The early works of Thomas Becon . . . being the treatises published by him in the reign of Henry VIII, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1843); H. A. Mason, Humanism and poetry in the early Tudor period (London, 1959); R. A. Rebholz, Sir Thomas Wyatt: the complete poems (London, 1978); Robert Twombly, “Thomas Wyatt’s paraphrase of the penitential psalms of David,” Texas Stduies in Language and Literature 12, no. 3 (1970):345–­80; Rivkah Zim, English metrical psalms: poetry as praise and prayer, 1535–­1601 (Cambridge, 1987).

8

46.

On the Protestant inflection of Wyatt’s psalms, see Mason, 207–­20; Rebholz, 454; Twombly; Zim,

489

SIR THOMAS WYATT

Certain psalms chosen out of the psalter of David, commonly called the vii penitential psalms, drawn into English meter

c. 1536–­1542 (pub. 1549)1

The Author Like as the pilgrim that in a long way Fainting for heat, provoked by some wind, In some fresh shade lieth down at mid of day, So doth of David the wearied voice and mind Take breath of sighs, when he had sung this lay, Under such shade as sorrow hath assign’d; And as the one still minds his voyage end, So doth the other to mercy still pretend*. On sonour* chords his fingers he extends, Without hearing or judgment of the sound; Down from his eyes a stream of tears descends, Without feeling, that trickle on the ground; As he that bleeds in baign,2 right so intends* The alter’d senses to that that they are bound; But sigh and weep he can none other thing,3 And look up still unto the heaven’s King.

*reach out towards *sonorous

*strain towards

But who had been without the cavè’s mouth And heard the tears and sighs that he did strain,

1 {Wyatt versifies all seven penitential psalms (i.e., psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143); the following selection includes only psalms 51 and 130, with their narrative links.} 2 {A bathtub (i.e., as a man bleeding in a bathtub does not perceive the loss of blood [presumably a reference to the suicide of Seneca]).} 3 {He can do nothing but sigh and weep.}

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He would have sworn there had out of the south A lukewarm wind brought forth a smoky rain. But that so close the cave was and uncouth* That none but God was record of his pain, Else had the wind blown in all Israel’s ears The woeful plaint and, of their king, the tears. Of which some part when he up-­supped* had, Like as he whom his own thought affrays,* He turns his look; him seemeth that the shade Of his offence again his force assays By violence despair on him to lade; Starting like him whom sudden fear dismays, His voice he strains, and from his heart out brings This song, that I note* whether he cries or sings.

*unknown

*swallowed *frightens

*know not

Psalm 51. Miserere mei, Domine Rue on me, Lord, for thy goodness and grace, That of thy nature art so bountiful: For that goodness that in the world doth brace* Repugnant natures in quiet wonderful; And for thy mercies’ number without end, In heaven and earth perceived so plentiful That over all they do themselves extend, For those mercies—­much more than man can sin—­ Do away my sins that so thy grace offend. Again wash me, but wash me well within, And from my sin, that thus makes me afraid, Make thou me clean, as aye thy wont hath been. For unto thee no number can be laid For to prescribe remissions of offence In hearts returned, as thou thyself hast said; And I beknow* my fault, my negligence; And in my sight my sin is fixed fast, Thereof to have more perfect penitence. To thee alone, to thee have I trespass’d; For none can measure my fault but thou alone: For in thy sight, I have not been aghast For to offend—­judging thy sight as none, So that my fault were hid from sight of man; Thy majesty so from my mind was gone. This know I, and repent; pardon thou then; Whereby thou shall keep still thy word stable, Thy justice pure and clean, because that when I pardoned am, then forthwith justly able, 491

*embrace, clasp

*confess



Religion in Tudor England

Just I am judged by justice of thy grace.4 For I myself, lo! thing most unstable, Formed in offence, conceived in like case, Am nought but sin from my nativity. Be not this said for mine excuse, alas! But of thy help to show necessity. For, lo! thou lovest truth of the inward heart, Which yet doth live in my fidelity, Though I have fallen by frailty overthwart; For willful malice led me not the way So much as hath the flesh drawn me apart. Wherefore, O Lord, as thou hast done alway, Teach me the hidden wisdom of thy lore, Since that my faith doth not yet decay. And, as the Jews to heal the leper sore With hyssop cleanse, cleanse me, and I am clean. Thou shalt me wash, and more than snow therefore I shall be white, how* foul my fault hath been. Thou of my health5 shalt gladsome tidings bring, When from above remission shall be seen Descend on earth; then shall for joy up spring The bones, that were afore consumed to dust. Look not, O Lord, upon mine offending, But do away my deeds that are unjust. Make a clean heart in the middest of my breast, With spirit upright, voided from filthy lust. From thine eyes’ cure* cast me not in unrest Nor take from me thy spirit of holiness. Render to me joy of thy help and rest; My will confirm with the spirit of steadfastness; And by this shall these goodly things ensue: Sinners I shall into thy ways address; They shall return to thee, and thy grace sue; My tongue shall praise thy justification; My mouth shall spread thy glorious praises true. But of thyself, O God, this operation6 It must proceed, by purging me from blood,

*howsoever

*care

4 {The tangled syntax of “because . . . grace” suggests David’s difficulty in conceiving how to reconcile the mercy he desires with God’s justice. However, if one takes the second line to mean “I am judged by the justice of grace to be just,” then David is groping towards Luther’s doctrine of imputed righteousness (see Lock ), in which case “able” in the previous line may have the legal sense of “qualified to hold a certain office or status”; as a royal pardon restores someone attainted to his former legal standing, so likewise God’s free pardon.} 5 {I.e., salvation; the Latin salus means both health and salvation.} 6 {“Operation” can mean work, force, and/or result; but the reference to purging blood (David’s blood-­ guilt for Uriah’s murder) in the next line activates the medical sense, which goes back to the late Middle Ages.}

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Among the just that I may have relation. And of thy lauds for to let out the flood, Thou must, O Lord, my lips first unloose. For if thou hadst esteemed pleasant good The outward deeds, that outward men disclose, I would have offer’d unto thee sacrifice: But thou delightest not in no such glose Of outward deed as men dream and devise. The sacrifice that the Lord liketh most Is spirit contrite; low heart in humble wise Thou dost accept, O God, for pleasant host*. Make Sion, Lord, according to thy will, Inward Sion, the Sion of the ghost; Of heart’s Jerusalem strength the walls still: Then shalt thou take for good the outward deeds, As a sacrifice thy pleasure to fulfill.7 Of thee alone thus all our good proceeds.

*sacrifice

The Author Of deep secrets, that David here did sing, Of mercy, of faith, of frailty, of grace, Of God’s goodness and of justifying, The greatness did so astony himself a space, As who might say, Who hath express’d this thing? I sinner, I, what have I said? alas! That God’s goodness would in my song entreat*, Let me again consider and repeat. And so he doth, but not express’d by word; But in his heart he turneth and paiseth* Each word that erst his lips might forth afford: He points, he pauseth, he wonders, he praiseth The mercy that hides of justice the sword, The justice that so his promise complisheth, For his word’s sake, to worthiless desert, That gratis his graces to men doth depert*.

*treat of

*weighs

*impart

Here hath he comfort when he doth measure Measureless mercy to measureless fault, To prodigal sinners infinite treasure, Treasure termless, that never shall default.8 {Wyatt 1969 cites Campensis’ Tum grata tibi erunt sacrificia, quae signa sunt iustitiae internae (378).} {One suspects that this inexhaustible freely bestowed “treasure” of divine mercy takes an oblique swipe at the Roman Church’s doctrine of the treasury of merits and its monetization of penance.} 7

8

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Yea, when that sin shall fail and may not dure, Mercy shall reign, ‘gainst whom shall no assault Of hell prevail; by whom, lo! at this day Of heaven gates remission is the key.9 And when David had pondered well and tried, And seeth himself not utterly deprived From light of grace, that dark of sin did hide, He findeth his hope much therewith revived; He dare importune the Lord on every side (For he knoweth well to mercy is ascribed Respectless10 labor): importune, cry, and call; And thus beginneth his song therewithal. ‡

Psalm 130. De profundis clamavi From depth of sin and from a deep despair, From depth of death, from depth of heartés sorrow, From this deep cave, of darkness deep repair,11 Thee have I called, O Lord, to be my borrow.* Thou in my voice, O Lord, perceive and hear My heart, my hope, my plaint, my overthrow, My will to rise; and let by grant appear That to my voice thine ears do well attend. No place so far that to thee it is not near; No depth so deep that thou ne mayst extend Thine ear thereto; hear then my woeful plaint. For, Lord, if thou do observe what men offend, And put thy native mercy in restraint, If just exaction demand recompense, Who may endure, O Lord? who shall not faint At such accompt? So dread, not reverence, Should so reign large.* But thou seeks rather love, For in thy hand is mercy’s residence, By hope whereof thou dost our heartés move. I in thee, Lord, have set my confidence. My soul such trust doth evermore approve. Thy holy word of eterne excellence, Thy mercy’s promise, that is alway just, Have been my stay, my pillar, and pretence.

*bail, surety, redeemer

*far and wide

{God’s mercy grants remission of sin, the key opening heaven’s gates.} {The thought seems to be that either that one seeking mercy strives heedless of the cost or that mercy itself is no respecter of persons, but labors on behalf of all, including undeserving sinners.} 11 {The abode (repair) of deep darkness} 9

10

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My soul in God hath more desirous trust Than hath the watchman looking for the day, By the relief, to quench of sleep the thrust. Let Israel trust unto the Lord alway, For grace and favor are his property. Plenteous ransom shall come with him, I say, And shall redeem all our iniquity.

The Author This word, redeem, that in his mouth did sound, Did put David, it seemeth unto me, As in a trance, to stare upon the ground, And with his thought the height of heaven to see: Where he beholds the Word that should confound The sword of death, by humble ear to be12 In mortal maid, in mortal habit made, Eternal life in mortal veil to shade. He seeth that Word,13 when full ripe time should come, Do away that veil by fervent affection, Torn off with death, for death should have her doom, And leapeth lighter from such corruption Than glint of light that in the air doth loom; Man redeemed, death hath her destruction, That mortal veil hath immortality, David assurance of his iniquity.14 Whereby15 he frames this reason in his heart: That Goodness which doth not forbear his Son From death for me, and can thereby convert My death to life, my sin to salvation, Both can and will a smaller grace depert To him that sueth by humble supplication; And since I have his larger grace assay’d, To ask this thing why am I then afraid? He granteth most to them that most do crave, And he delights in suit without respect. Alas, my son pursues me to the grave, {Some mss. read “humility” rather than “humble ear.”} {In Aretino, David has here a vision of the Incarnation, the adoration of the Magi, the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, Christ’s baptism by John, the Crucifixion, Christ’s descent into Limbo, the Resurrection and Ascension, etc.} 14 {I.e., his assurance that his iniquity has been forgiven} 15 {From this point on, Wyatt’s version has no counterpart in Aretino.} 12 13

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Suffered by God my sin for to correct.16 But of my sin, since I my pardon have, My son’s pursuit shall shortly be reject;17 Then will I crave with sured confidence. And thus begins the suit of his pretence.18 [\ T ext: The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Boston, 1880). Checked against Certayne psalmes chosen out of the psalter of Dauid, commonlye called the vii penytentiall psalmes, drawen into englyshe meter by Sir Thomas Wyat knyght, wherunto is added a prolage of [the] auctore before euery psalme, very pleasau[n]t [and] profettable to the godly reader (London, 1549) (NSTC 2726); The collected poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Kenneth Muir and Patricia Thomson (Liverpool, 1969); and Sir Thomas Wyatt: the complete poems, ed. R. A. Rebholz (London, 1978).19

{See Calvin, Institutes 3.4.31-­33 on God’s medicinal chastisement of his elect.} {David here refers to Absalom’s revolt (2 Sam. 15-­18), which ended in his defeat and death; however, the context throughout the rest of Wyatt’s text is 2 Sam. 11-­12, David’s earlier liaison with Bathsheba and judicial murder of her husband. The probable reason for Wyatt’s fast-­forward to Absalom’s revolt was to avoid dealing with the prophet Nathan’s final words to David (2 Sam. 12:14), for he tells the king that, although God has forgiven his sins, nonetheless as punishment the child born from the liaison will die. Catholics cited this as a key proof text for the necessity of satisfactory punishment even after absolution (see Allen, A defense ). Wyatt, who affirms God’s free pardon, passes in silence over this child’s death, which ends the David and Bathsheba story.} 18 {His plea for that which he seeks} 19 {These follow the Egerton manuscript readings, which are in Wyatt’s own hand, rather than those of the 1549 posthumous printed version.} 16 17

496

ANNE LOCK NÉE VAUGHAN (c. 1530–­c. 1590)1

A meditation of a penitent sinner, written in manner of a paraphrase upon the 51 psalm of David

Lock’s mother, a skilled seamstress at the Henrician court, died when Lock was perhaps twelve or thirteen. Her father, Stephen Vaughan, was a leading citizen, also with court connections. Following his first wife’s death, Vaughan chose a known Protestant as tutor for his children and shortly thereafter married the widow of the social-­gospel Protestant polemicist Henry Brinklow, author of The complaynt of Roderyck Mors (c. 1544). Vaughan himself died in 1549. Within the next couple of years, his daughter, who would have been around eighteen, married Henry Lock, who was, like his bride, a well-­educated Protestant from a wealthy merchant family with ties to the court. Anne Lock, whose entire existence seems improbable, enters the historical record as the unlikely yet intimate friend of the polemical Scots Reformer, John Knox, author of the infamous First blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women (1558) and part-­author of Form of prayers . Knox had come to London in 1552, having been newly appointed one of the young King’s six chaplains. On several occasions during the winter of 1552–­1553, Knox stayed with the Locks, who must already have been prominent members of the City’s Protestant elite. Edward VI died in July of 1553, and after an unsettled summer, Mary assumed the throne that October. Knox fled to Geneva that January, where, after two difficult years, he became minister to the English congregation.2 During his year in London, this fire-­breathing misogynist and Anne Lock began, in Patrick Collinson’s words, a “remarkable friendship . . . conducted on a basis of spiritual and intellectual parity” (ODNB). Thirteen of his letters to her survive. These span the period 1556–­1562, the earliest urging her to come to him in Geneva, “the maist perfyt schoole of Chryst that ever was in the erth since the dayis of the Apostillis,” even if she had to come alone, obedience to God being a higher duty than conjugal solidarity (ODNB). Lock, who might well have been in danger, accepted Knox’s invitation, and in May of 1557, without The last name is sometimes spelled either “Lok” or “Locke.” Knox had been offered the post in November 1555, but he only accepted the offer after returning to Geneva from Scotland in the fall of 1556. 1 2

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her husband but apparently with his consent, went into exile. With her came the couple’s two infant children: the girl died four days after they reached Geneva; the boy, Henry, lived to become a minor religious poet. In the fall of 1557, Calvin preached four sermons on Hezekiah’s song (Isaiah 38); these would have been taken down in shorthand, with Calvin then overseeing their transcription. Since the earliest French printing of these sermons dates from 1562, Lock must have had access to the manuscript for her 1560 translation, which, as printed, opened with her own theological reflections in the form of a dedicatory epistle and concluded with a sonnet sequence (the first English sonnet sequence): the verse paraphrase of psalm 51 entitled A meditation of a penitent sinner reproduced below.3 Like the sermons, the sequence may date from Lock’s years in Geneva. Her dedication links the two, comparing Calvin’s sermons to the medicine prescribed by a physician, her own Meditation to the advice of “honest neighbors” who have “gathered understanding of some special disease and the healing thereof by their own experiment” (CWAL, 4–­5). Upon returning to England, Lock and her husband were reunited; the latter at his death in 1571 left her all his worldly goods. From the time of Lock’s return, scattered evidence points to her central position in London’s radical Protestant elite. Knox’s letters seeking help and support for the Scottish Reformation are addressed to Cecil and Lock, whom he clearly regarded as having considerable behind-­the-­scenes influence. His letters also reveal Lock’s early reservations about the Elizabethan Settlement; a 1559 letter responds to such reservations by counseling nonconformity, making her (possibly) “the very first documented protestant separatist from the Elizabethan church” (ODNB). In 1572 Lock married Edward Dering, a fiery Knox-­style puritan minister who had censured the Queen to her face in a 1570 sermon and been suspended from preaching. Lock, by then Anne Dering, strove to get his suspension lifted, in which attempt she had the support of the Cooke sisters: the superbly educated daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, who by 1570 were among the most influential women in all England.4 The attempt failed, but in 1572 the bishop of London (Sandys) appointed Dering divinity reader at St. Paul’s, where he gave a popular series of lectures on Hebrews. However, his denunciations of the Elizabethan clergy and some ill-­considered remarks (e.g., that Parker would be England’s last archbishop) led to charges in Star Chamber and, in 1573, temporary loss of his lectureship. During these unsettled years, Dering was also struggling with tuberculosis, to which he succumbed in 1576. The dedicatory epistle to the 1576 Houres of recreation, or afterdinners pays tribute to Lock, yoking her name with the Cooke sisters’ as “noble gentlewomen famous for their learning” (A4r). The secular, literary character of the volume and its dedication to the actively anti-­puritan Christopher Hatton, suggest that Lock’s was known and admired outside the nonconformist circles, where she remained a prominent figure. The volume was reprinted in 1569 and 1574, although no copies of either edition survive (CWAL, xxxi). In particular, the two eldest: Mildred being the wife of William Cecil; Ann, the wife of Nicholas Bacon and mother of Francis—­a nd translator of Jewel’s Apology . Elizabeth Cooke married Sir Thomas Hoby (translator of The Courtier) and, after his death, Lord John Russell. The youngest, Katharine, was the wife of the diplomat, Sir Henry Killigrew. Dering was closest to the Killigrews; some of his letters of spiritual direction to Katharine survive (see Certaine godly and verie comfortable letters, full of Christian consolation [Middelburg, 1590]). 3 4

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Anne Lock née Vaughan

Having remarried in 1584—­this time to a respected Exeter merchant, mayor, and MP—­in 1590 Lock translated and published Jean Taffin’s 1585 Of the markes of the children of God, a work of Calvinist spirituality grappling with the same issues that inform Lock’s Meditation of three decades prior. The translation went through seven further editions by 1634. Lock herself died unremarked sometime between 1590 and 1607. [\

A meditation consists of twenty-­six “Shakespearean” sonnets: five prefatory followed by twenty-­one freely paraphrasing psalm 51—­the psalm itself, in Lock’s own translation from the Vulgate, printed in the margin of the corresponding verse paraphrase. It is, as noted above, the earliest sonnet sequence in English. Although both Wyatt and Lock structure their psalmic material as narrative, Lock’s speaker is not David but, as the title states, a “penitent sinner,” and, as sonnet 18 makes explicit, a Christian. In this, Lock draws on the traditional reading of psalm 51 as, in Luther’s words, “containing an universal doctrine, applicable to the whole people of God from the beginning down to the present day” (Cole, 55). Lock’s sequence departs from the traditional Catholic reading in its engagement throughout with Protestantism’s Law-­to-­Gospel paradigm of repentance;5 but it also differs from tradition tout court in its refusal of exemplarity (teaching how to repent) in favor of a more private and wayward expressivity: a moment-by-moment (or quatrain-by-quatrain) record of a complex and troubled inwardness. The work is a sonnet sequence for a reason. This refusal of exemplarity is part and parcel of the work’s extraordinary theological structure. Other readings of psalm 51 (to the best of our knowledge, all other readings) trace an upward trajectory from wracking guilt to renewal and reconciliation. Thus Luther describes the psalm as initially presenting David “laboring under the knowledge of his sin,” but “in the end, he comforts himself from his trust in the goodness of God” (Cole, 47–­48).6 By contrast, Lock’s Meditation presents “a constant struggle against despair” (Hannay, 74). The prefatory sonnets compose a litany of anguish: the abjection of ii where she imagines herself thrown down into the muck of her own ordure by an angry God; her terrified sense of her own reprobation in iv; the spiritual confusion born of pain and need that, in the same sonnet, makes her imagine that God torments her out of his “everlasting hate” and yet to beg relief of his “endless mercy.” The darkness carries over into the psalm paraphrase unrelieved, until the ninth sonnet, where for the first time the speaker apprehends the possibility of grace “sprinkl[ing] her soul” with the blood of Christ—­but only to sink back into “redoubled horror” in the next sonnet, overwhelmed with “dreadful threats and thunders of the Law.” Sonnet 13 implores God not to take from her the comfort of the Holy Spirit, whose interior presence “is mine only stay” against the assaults of despair. This “stay” seems hopeful, but the respite is momentary, illusory; by sonnet 14 she now must endure “the absence of thy Sprite.” This alternation between glimpses of light and returning waves of misery continues for the rest of the sequence. Sonnets 20 and 21, where the speaker turns from her own suffering to pray for See in this volume, the Dent and Greenham readings. See also Synder, 23; Twombly, 359; Calvin on psalm 51:18 in his Commentary on the Psalms (http:// www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom09.xvii.vi.html [accessed March 22, 2013]). 5 6

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the peace of Jerusalem, seem to mark a spiritual breakthrough, but the final lines of the sequence return to the desolation of its beginning.7 There is a fearful psychological honesty at work here. For all Lock’s doctrinal correctness, her poetry gets across what despair feels like—­and, in truth, what depression feels like.8 Yet, since the experience limned in these sonnets echoes Lock’s doctrinal analysis of the “afflicted spirit” in her dedicatory epistle (CWAL, 6–­7), it may be that what the Meditation depicts is not emotion (or honesty) getting the better of Reformed theology but rather the emotional honesty of that theology: its grounding in an experiential core of misery, fear, doubt. In its basic outlines, this theology was peculiar neither to Lock nor to the Reformation. Medieval churchmen note that the line between repentance and despair can be whisker-­thin, as also that despair often proves “the special temptation of God’s elect” (Snyder, 26). Early modern Protestantism foregrounded both claims. For Calvin something very close to despair characterizes the godly; they alone feel its agonizing remorse and terror (Institutes 3.3.20, 24). However, Calvin pulls back from the specter of ambiguity: if elect and reprobate alike feel the pain and terror of God’s lash, only the elect “betake themselves as suppliants to implore mercy,” while the rest either harden themselves against the pain or futilely struggle to escape it (Institutes 3.4.32). Moreover, theologians on either side of the Reformation divide treat the penitent soul’s near-­despair as the dark night in which the pilgrim enters on the path of holiness that ascends to joy (e.g., Institutes 3.2.21; see Snyder, 23, 28). In Lock, however, the sonnets enact “a repetitive cycle” across the hairsbreadth divide between despair and contrition (CWAL, lvi). The poetry registers the ambiguity of the unfolding spiritual narrative via patterns of formal ambiguity: the ambiguity of the biblical allusions identifying the speaker both with the Samaritan woman begging for crumbs of mercy (v) and with Dives lying in eternal darkness (4); the grammatical ambiguity in sonnet 5 as to whether God does not regard her or she did not regard him, or in sonnet 10 as to whether “Mercy’s gentle voice” is that of God’s mercy, calling too softly for her to hear, but nonetheless calling—­or whether, as the following line suggests, the voice is her own, crying for mercy but drowned out by the threatenings of the Law so that even she cannot hear it. A more startling ambiguity inflects the second half of the sequence, where the language repeatedly seems to associate the speaker with the suffering Christ—­more specifically, the suffering Christ of Reformed theology. For Luther, Snyder notes, “found the experience of despair so necessary a part of holiness that he extended it to Christ himself . . . who on his cross touched the depths of despair” (27), and Calvin reads Christ’s descent into hell as meaning that “he bore in his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined man,” felt “abandoned and forsaken of God” (Institutes 2.16.10-­11). Lock’s speaker is not Christ: her sense of personal sin is too strong. Yet in sonnet 12, she staggers and falls, like Jesus on the via dolorosa, under the intolerable weight of her burden. The speaker in sonnet 19 echoes the previous sonnet’s reference to Christ as “that sacred host,” but now

The last two words, “in vain,” echo the “in vain” or “vain” of sonnets ii, iii, and iv. See Hooker’s “Of the certainty” for an explicit recognition that melancholia can manifest itself as a spiritual crisis. 7 8

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makes her own “troubled sprite” the “pleasing host” offered to God.9 The self which to this point had been imagined as suffering subject becomes the sacrificial victim (hostia) as well. What makes the speaker’s identification with the Crucified particularly strange is that she barely mentions Christ himself—­except in sonnets 9 and 18, never. It is as if the suffering subject of A meditation has displaced Christ; her own suffering becomes the sacrifice that matters. Indeed sonnet 18 calls attention to the silence, since its orthodox affirmation that Christ’s “one sufficing sacrifice” makes God “at one / With sinful man” sets in high relief the fact that Lock’s speaker faces the unappeased wrath of God; nor in her own agony does she ever turn to the Cross. In this, A meditation would seem to depart from Protestant as well as Catholic templates. According to Calvin, for example, the Law shows God “as the stern avenger of wickedness” so that they might cling “to mercy alone, as offered in Christ” whose “countenance beams forth full of grace and gentleness towards poor unworthy sinners” (Institutes 2.7.8). Lock’s speaker, by contrast, has no interest in a mediator; she seeks mercy from the God whose “enflamed ire / With piercing stroke hath thrown [her] unto the ground” (ii). The sonnets attend to the individual’s present experience of spiritual torment. This focusing down onto the felt inwardness of the “tormented soul” means that everything else, including whatever happened so long ago in Nazareth and Golgotha, gets cut out of the frame. As James Simpson observes with regard not to Lock but to the aftermath of the Reformation in general: a sense of individuality rises dramatically . . . because self-­ consciousness is enlarged as it confronts a single and menacing source of absolute power. Confronted directly with a punishing God, Christian subjectivity is suddenly magnified to itself in its terror (84). [\ Sources: Henry Cole, ed. and trans., “Commentary on the Fifty-­first Psalm,” in vol. 1 of Select works of Martin Luther, 4. vols. (London, 1824), 43–­200; Collinson, “The role of women in the English Reformation illustrated by the life and friendships of Anne Locke,” in Godly people; Susan Felch, ed., “Introduction,” The collected works of Anne Vaughan Lock (CWAL) (Tempe, Ariz., 1999), xv–­xxxvii; Flech, “‘Noble gentlewomen famous for their learning’: the London circle of Anne Vaughan Lock,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 16, no. 2 (2003): 14–­19; Margaret Hannay, “’Wisdome the wordes’: psalm translation and Elizabethan women’s spirituality,” Religion & Literature 23, no. 3 (1991): 65–­82; Charles Huttar, “Translating French proverbs and idioms: Anne Locke’s renderings from Calvin,” Modern Philology 96.2 (1998): 158–­83; ODNB (q.v. Anne Locke, Edward Dering); Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart women writers (Bloomington, 1994); James Simpson, Burning to read: English fundamentalism and its Reformation opponents (Cambridge, Mass., 2007); Susan Snyder, “The left hand of God: despair in medieval and renaissance tradition,” Studies in the Renaissance 12 (1965): 18–­59; Robert Twombly, “Thomas Wyatt’s paraphrase of the penitential psalms of David,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 12, no. 3 (1970): 345–­80.

In the final sonnet, each “humbled heart” lies, “a yielden host,” on God’s altar; here, however, the image seems less fraught, closer to the language of Cranmer’s eucharistic liturgy. 9

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ANNE LOCK

A meditation of a penitent sinner, written in manner of a paraphrase upon the 51 psalm of David

1560

The preface, expressing the passioned mind of the penitent sinner The heinous guilt of my forsaken ghost So threats, alas, unto my feebled sprite Deserved death; and (that me grieveth most) Still stand so fixt before my dazzl’d sight The loathsome filth of my distained life, The mighty wrath of mine offended Lord—­ My Lord, whose wrath is sharper than the knife, And deeper wounds than double-­edged sword—­ That, as the dimmed and fordulled eyen Full fraught with tears & more & more oppress’d With growing streams of the distilled brine Sent from the furnace of a grief-­full breast Cannot enjoy the comfort of the light Nor find the way wherein to walk aright,

{i}

So I, blind wretch, whom God’s enflamed ire With piercing stroke hath thrown unto the ground, Amid my sins still groveling in the mire, Find not the way that other oft have found, Whom cheerful glimpse of God’s abounding grace Hath oft relieved and oft with shining light Hath brought to joy out of the ugly place, Where I in dark of everlasting night Bewail my woeful and unhappy case, And fret my dying soul with gnawing pain. Yet blind, alas, I grope about for grace;

{ii}

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While blind, for grace I grope about in vain, My fainting breath I gather up and strain, Mercy, mercy, to cry and cry again. But mercy while I sound with shrieking cry, For grant of grace and pardon while I pray, Even then despair before my ruthful eye Spreads forth my sin & shame, & seems to say ‘In vain thou brayest forth thy bootless noise To him for mercy, O refused wight, That hears not the forsaken sinner’s voice. Thy reprobate and fore-­ordained sprite, Fore-­damned vessel of his heavy wrath (As self-­witness of thy beknowing heart, And secret guilt of thine own conscience saith), Of his sweet promises can claim no part; But thee, caitiff, deserved curse doth draw To hell, by justice, for offended law.’

{iii}

This horror when my trembling soul doth hear, When marks and tokens of the reprobate—­ My growing sins, of grace my senseless cheer—­ Enforce the proof of everlasting hate That I conceive the heaven’s King to bear Against my sinful and forsaken ghost, As in the throat of hell, I quake for fear; And then in present peril to be lost (Although my1 conscience wanteth to reply,2 But with remorse enforcing mine offence, Doth argue vain my not-­availing cry), With woeful sighs and bitter penitence, To him, from whom the endless mercy flows, I cry for mercy to relieve my woes.

{iv}

And then not daring with presuming eye  Once to behold the angry heaven’s face, From troubled sprite I send confused cry, To crave the crumbs of all-­sufficing grace. With falt’ring knee, I—­falling to the ground, Bending my yielding hands to heaven’s throne—­ Pour forth my piteous plaint with woeful sound, With smoking sighs & oft repeated groan,

{v}

1 2

{The text reads “by,” which makes no sense. The emendation to “my” is suggested by Felch.} {Finds nothing to say in its own defense}

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Before the Lord, the Lord, whom sinner I, I, cursed wretch, I have offended so, That dreading in his wreakful wrath to die And, damned, down to depth of hell to go, Thus toss’d with pangs and passions of despair, Thus crave I mercy with repentant cheer.

A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, upon the 51 Psalm Have mercy, God, for thy great mercy’s sake. O God, my God, unto my shame I say: Being fled from thee, so as I dread to take Thy name in wretched mouth, and fear to pray Or ask the mercy that I have abus’d. But, God of mercy, let me come to thee: Not for justice, that justly am accus’d—­ Which self word justice so amazeth me That scarce I dare thy mercy sound again. But mercy, Lord, yet suffer me to crave. Mercy is thine. Let me not cry in vain, Thy great mercy for my great fault to have. Have mercy, God. Pity my penitence With greater mercy than my great offence. My many sins in number are increas’d; With weight whereof, in sea of deep despair, My sinking soul is now so sore oppress’d, That now in peril and in present fear, I cry: sustain me, Lord; and, Lord, I pray, With endless number of thy mercies take The endless number of my sins away. So by thy mercy, for thy mercy’s sake, Rue on me, Lord. Relieve me with thy grace. My sin is cause that I so need to have Thy mercy’s aid in my so woeful case. My sin is cause that scarce I dare to crave Thy mercy manifold, which only may Relieve my soul and take my sins away. . . . Have mercy, Lord, have mercy, for I know How much I need thy mercy in this case. The horror of my guilt doth daily grow, And growing wears3 my feeble hope of grace. I feel and suffer in my thralled breast Secret remorse and gnawing of my heart. 3

{Wears down}

504

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Anne Lock

I feel my sin, my sin that hath oppress’d My soul with sorrow and surmounting smart.* Draw me to mercy; for so oft as I Presume to mercy to direct my sight, My chaos and my heap of sin doth lie Between me and thy mercy’s shining light.4 Whatever way I gaze about for grace, My filth and fault are ever in my face. Grant thou me mercy, Lord. Thee, thee alone, I have offended; and, offending thee, For mercy, lo, how I do lie and groan. Thou with all-­piercing eye beheldest me Without regard that sinned in thy sight. Behold again, how now my spirite it rues, And wails the time when I with foul delight Thy sweet forbearing mercy did abuse. My cruël consciënce with sharpen’d knife Doth splat my ripped heart, and lays abroad The loathsome secrets of my filthy life, And spreads them forth before the face of God. Whom shame from deed shameless could not restrain, Shame for my deed is added to my pain. . . . For lo, in sin, Lord, I begotten was; With seed and shape, my sin I took also. Sin is my nature and my kind, alas. In sin my mother me conceived. Lo, I am but sin, and sinful ought to die—­ Die in his wrath that hath forbidden sin. Such bloom and fruit, lo, sin doth multiply: Such was my root, such is my juice within. I plead not this as to excuse my blame, On kind or parents mine own guilt to lay, But by disclosing of my sin, my shame, And need of help, the plainer to display Thy mighty mercy, if with plenteous grace My plenteous sins it please thee to deface. Thou lovest simple sooth, not hidden face With truthless visor of deceiving show. Lo, simply, Lord, I do confess my case,

*pain

[5]

[7]

[8]

4 {In her prefatory epistle, Lock describes Dives, the rich man who spurned the beggar Lazarus (Luke 16:19-­31), as now in the “place of flames where th’everlasting Chaos suffreth no droppe of Godes mercye to descende.” Her allusion to “Chaos” here thus implicitly places her in a place likewise beyond God’s mercy. On her use of “chaos,” the Vulgate’s translation of χάσμα, see Felch, CWAL, xxxviii.}

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And simply crave thy mercy in my woe. This secret wisdom hast thou granted me: To see my sins & whence my sins do grow. This hidden knowledge have I learn’d of thee: To feel my sins and how my sins do flow With such excess, that with unfeigned heart, Dreading to drown, my Lord, lo, how I flee, Simply with tears bewailing my desert, Relieved simply by thy hand to be. Thou lovest truth; thou taughtest me the same. Help, Lord of truth, for glory of thy name. With sweet hyssop besprinkle thou my sprite: Not such hyssop, nor so besprinkle me, As Law, unperfect shade of perfect light, Did use as an appointed sign to be Foreshowing figure of thy grace behight. With death and bloodshed of thine only Son, The sweet hyssop, cleanse me, defiled wight. Sprinkle my soul. And when thou so hast done, Bedew’d with drops of mercy and of grace, I shall be clean, as cleansed of my sin. Ah, wash me, Lord, for I am foul, alas. That only canst, Lord, wash me well within; Wash me, O Lord; when I am washed so, I shall be whiter than the whitest snow. Long have I heard, & yet I hear the sounds Of dreadful threats and thunders of the Law, Which echo of my guilty mind resounds, And with redoubled horror doth so draw My listening soul from Mercy’s gentle voice, That louder, Lord, I am constrain’d to call: Lord, pierce mine ears, & make me to rejoice, When I shall hear, and when thy mercy shall Sound in my heart the Gospel of thy grace. Then shalt thou give my hearing joy again, The joy that only may relieve my case. And then my bruised bones, that thou with pain Hast made too weak my feebled corps* to bear, Shall leap for joy, to show mine inward cheer. Look on me, Lord; though trembling I beknow* That sight of sin so sore offendeth thee That, seeing sin—­how it doth overflow My whelmed soul—­thou canst not look on me But with disdain, with horror and despite. Look on me, Lord, but look not on my sin. 506

[9]

[10]

*body *confess [11]



Anne Lock

Not that I hope to hide it from thy sight, Which seest me all without and eke within, But so remove it from thy wrathful eye And from the justice of thine angry face That thou impute it not. Look not how I Am foul by sin, but make me, by thy grace, Pure in thy mercy’s sight; and, Lord (I pray), That hatest sin, wipe all my sins away. Sin and despair have so possess’d my heart, And hold my captive soul in such restraint, As of thy mercies I can feel no part, But still in languor do I lie and faint. Create a new pure heart within my breast; Mine old can hold no liquor of thy grace. My feeble faith with heavy load oppress’d Stagg’ring doth scarcely creep a reeling pace; And fallen, it is too faint to rise again. Renew, O Lord, in me a constant sprite That, stay’d with mercy, may my soul sustain; A sprite so settled and so firmly pight* Within my bowels that it never move, But still uphold th’assurance of thy love. Lo, prostrate, Lord, before thy face I lie, With sighs deep-­drawn deep sorrow to express. O Lord of mercy, mercy do I cry; Drive me not from thy face in my distress, Thy face of mercy and of sweet relief, The face that feeds angels with only sight, The face of comfort in extremest grief. Take not away the succor of thy Sprite, Thy Holy Sprite, which is mine only stay, The stay that when despair assaileth me, In faintest hope yet moveth me to pray: To pray for mercy, and to pray to thee. Lord, cast me not from presence of thy face, Nor take from me the Spirit of thy grace. But render me my wonted joys again, [14] Which sin hath reft, and planted in their place Doubt of thy mercy (ground of all my pain). The taste that thy love whilome* did embrace, My cheerful soul, the signs that did assure My feeling ghost of favor in thy sight Are fled from me; and wretched I endure, Senseless of grace, the absence of thy Sprite. Restore my joys, and make me feel again 507

[12]

*fixed [13]

*formerly



Religion in Tudor England

The sweet return of grace that I have lost, That I may hope I pray not all in vain. With thy free Sprite confirm my feeble ghost To hold my faith from ruin and decay With fast affiance and assured stay. Lord, of thy mercy, if thou me withdraw From gaping throat of deep devouring hell, Lo, I shall preach the justice of thy Law. By mercy saved, thy mercy shall I tell. The wicked I will teach thine only way, Thy ways to take and man’s devise to flee, And such as lewd delight hath led astray, To rue their error and return to thee. So shall the proof of mine example preach The bitter fruit of lust and foul delight; So shall my pardon by thy mercy teach The way to find sweet mercy in thy sight. Have mercy, Lord; in me example make Of law and mercy, for thy mercy’s sake. O God, God of my health, my saving God, Have mercy Lord, and show thy might to save. Assoil me, God, from guilt of guiltless blood, And eke from sin that I ingrowing have By flesh and blood and by corrupted kind. Upon my blood and soul extend not, Lord, Vengeance for blood, but mercy let me find, And strike me not with thy revenging sword. So, Lord, my joying tongue shall talk thy praise; Thy name my mouth shall utter in delight; My voice shall sound thy justice and thy ways, Thy ways to justify thy sinful wight. God of my health, from blood, I, saved so, Shall spread thy praise for all the world to know. Lo, straining cramp of cold despair again In feeble breast doth pinch my pining heart, So as, in greatest need to cry and plain, My speech doth fail to utter thee my smart. Refresh my yielding heart with warming grace, And loose my speech, and make me call to thee. Lord, open thou my lips to show my case. My Lord, for mercy, lo, to thee I flee. I cannot pray without thy moving aid, Ne can I rise, ne can I stand alone. Lord, make me pray, & grant when I have prayed. Lord, loose my lips, I may express my moan, 508

[15]

[16]

[17]



Anne Lock

And, finding grace, with open mouth I may Thy mercies praise, and holy name display. Thy mercies’ praise, instead of sacrifice, With thankful mind so shall I yield to thee. For if it were delightful in thine eyes Or hereby mought thy wrath appeased be, Of cattle slain and burnt with sacred flame Up to the heaven the vapr’y smoke to send Of guiltless beasts to purge my guilt and blame, On altars broil’d the savor should ascend, To ’pease thy wrath. But thy sweet Son alone, With one sufficing sacrifice for all, Appeaseth thee and maketh thee at one With sinful man, and hath repair’d our fall. That sacred host is ever in thine eyes. The praise of that I yield for sacrifice. I yield myself, I offer up my ghost, My slain delights, my dying heart to thee. To God a troubled sprite is pleasing host. My troubled sprite doth dread like him to be, In whom tasteless languor5 with ling’ring pain Hath feebled so the starved appetite, That food too late is offered, all in vain, To hold in fainting corps the fleeing sprite. My pining soul for famine of thy grace So fears, alas, the faintness of my faith. I offer up my troubled sprite, alas; My troubled sprite refuse not in thy wrath. Such off’ring likes thee, ne wilt thou despise The broken humbled heart in angry wise.* Show mercy, Lord, not unto me alone, But stretch thy favor and thy pleased will To spread thy bounty and thy grace upon Sion, for Sion is thy holy hill, That thy Hierusalem with mighty wall May be enclosed under thy defense, And builded so that it may never fall By mining fraud or mighty violence. Defend thy Church, Lord, and advance it so, So in despite of tyranny to stand, That, trembling at thy power, the world may know It is upholden by thy mighty hand: That Sion and Hierusalem may be 5

{The inability to taste caused by disease}

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[18]

[19]

*way, manner [20]



Religion in Tudor England

A safe abode for them that honor thee. Then on thy hill and in thy walled town Thou shalt receive the pleasing sacrifice: The bruit* shall of thy praised name resound In thankful mouths; and then with gentle eyes Thou shalt behold upon thine altar lie Many a yielden host of humbled heart; And round about then shall thy people cry: We praise thee, God, our God: thou only art The God of might, of mercy, and of grace. That I then, Lord, may also honor thee, Relieve my sorrow, and my sins deface. Be, Lord of mercy, merciful to me. Restore my feeling of thy grace again; Assure my soul I crave it not in vain.

[21] *report

[\ T ext: Anne Locke, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner (1560), transcribed by Greg Foster from the UMI microfilm copy of STC 4450 (luminarium.org/renascence-editions/locke2.html [accessed June 20, 2014]). Checked against The collected works of Anne Vaughan Lock (CWAL).

510

MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1561–­1621)

The Psalms of David

At the time of her birth, Pembroke’s father, Sir Henry Sidney, was lord president of the council in the marches of Wales, shortly thereafter becoming lord deputy of Ireland. Her mother, Lady Mary Sidney, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, had been a bright star of the Elizabethan court until, ravaged by smallpox, she withdrew into semi-­ seclusion. Lady Sidney had received a fine humanist education, a family tradition continued by Pembroke, who was fluent in Latin, French, and Italian, and probably knew some Hebrew. Pembroke’s most important family tie, however, was to her beloved older brother and literary collaborator, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–­1586). Elizabeth invited her to court in 1575. Two years later, her uncle, the Earl of Leicester, helped arrange her marriage to the considerably older, twice-widowed, childless, and exceedingly wealthy Earl of Pembroke (Henry Herbert [c. 1538–­1601]). Between 1580 and 1584, Pembroke bore four children, two of whom would become the third (William) and fourth (Philip) earls of Pembroke. When not in London, the Pembrokes resided primarily at Wilton, their country estate near Salisbury. In 1580, Sir Philip Sidney, banished from court for opposing the Queen’s projected marriage to the Catholic Duke of Alençon, retreated to Wilton, where he spent his exile writing the Arcadia and perhaps also his verse translation of the first forty-­three psalms. There is no evidence that Pembroke herself had yet begun to write in any serious way, but Sidney respected her literary judgment enough to entrust her with the manuscripts of these, and of Astrophil and Stella, the Lady of May, and Certain sonnets, all of which—­excepting the psalms—­she edited and saw into print after Sidney died at Zutphen in 1586. Both Pembroke’s parents had died earlier the same year, and after Sidney’s death, she withdrew to Wilton and started writing. Sometime after 1590 Pembroke turned her attention to Sidney’s unfinished metrical psalter, completing the remaining 107 psalms around 1600,1 the same year that John Bodenham’s verse miscellany, Bel-­vedere, places her A 1600 letter of Sir John Harington contains Pembroke’s psalms 51, 104, and 137, establishing a terminus ad quem. 1

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with Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare in the ranks of his English “Muses’ garden.” She is the only female author on the list. During these same years, she also became an important literary patron. Samuel Daniel, Abraham Fraunce, Nicholas Breton, and Thomas Nashe were among those who benefited from her support and hospitality. Both writing and patronage seem to have ended with her husband’s death in 1601. With one exception, the glimpses we have of her thereafter show a fashionable noblewoman, arranging marriages for her children and amusing herself at Spa. The exception is her 1618 portrait engraving, where, framed by a laurel wreath and “a design of quill pens in ink wells,” she holds a tiny volume marked “David’s Psalms” to signify her identity as the psalms’ translator-­poet. [\

The psalms are Pembroke’s magnum opus, although the layers of revisions in her working manuscript suggest that she became a poet—­and indeed a lyric poet of then-­unparalleled formal brilliance and originality—­as it were, on the job.2 As students of the Sidney-­ Pembroke psalter ever since Grosart have remarked (until recently, with surprise), “there can be no question that the Countess’ portion is infinitely in advance of her brother’s in thought, epithet, and melody” (3:79).3 Although she refused to allow print publication (despite the “great suit” made “for their liberty”),4 the psalms circulated widely. Of the eighteen surviving manuscripts, two are formatted for private devotional use. A further manuscript includes her paraphrases of psalms 51 and 130 set for voice and lute. The Sidney-­Pembroke psalter provided the crucial model for the seventeenth-­century religious lyric, especially Herbert’s. As Donne put it in his splendid verse encomium “Upon the translation of the psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney and the Countesse of Pembroke his sister”: “They tell us why, and teach us how to sing” (l. 22).5 For the half-­century after its initial 1823 printing, the Sidney-­Pembroke psalter was acclaimed and anthologized. However, although Grosart included the first forty-­three psalms in his edition of Sidney’s verse, by 1900 the psalter, and Pembroke’s contribution in particular, had vanished into obscurity, where it remained until Rathmell’s 1963 edition. Subsequent criticism has recognized Sidney-­Pembroke psalter as “one of the best but most underrated achievements in the Renaissance lyric” (Coburn Freer [1972], quoted in CWP 1:52–­53), many of whose psalms “can stand, as poems, alongside the greatest lyric accomplishments of the period” (Hamlin 119). Their excellence clearly has something to do with the psalter’s dazzling metrical experiments. Going beyond this, however, has proven difficult, since, unlike those of Wyatt and Lock, the Pembroke psalms lack the “personal and individualized voice” On Samuel Woodforde’s late seventeenth-­century transcription of Pembroke’s (now-­lost) working copy, see Rathmell xxvi. 3 See also E. T. Cook, “Introduction,” in Ruskin 31:xvi. 4 Sir John Harington, “Treatise on play,” in Nugae antiquae, 2 vols., ed. Henry Harington (London, 1775), 2:6. 5 First printed in the 1635 edition of Donne’s poetry. 2

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(1561–­1621)

that for modern readers (especially, perhaps, when dealing with female-­authored texts) belongs to the definition of lyric poetry (Targoff 78). The Pembroke psalms reveal nothing about their author, being, in a strict sense, metrical paraphrases of the biblical text. “Paraphrase” sounds disheartening. Yet, as John Ruskin realized, in what is arguably still the best discussion of the Sidney-­Pembroke psalms, herein lies their true excellence. His analysis is worth quoting at some length:6 Now Pembroke’s paraphrase . . . differs wholly from such modern attempts in this main particular: that it aims straight and with almost fiercely fixed purpose at getting into the heart and truth of the thing it has got to say . . . Pembroke will use any cowboy’s or tinker’s words, if only they help her to say precisely in English what David said in Hebrew: impressed, the while, herself so vividly by the majesty of the thought itself, that no tinker’s language can lower it or vulgarize it in her mind. And, again, while the modern paraphraser will put in anything that happens to strike his fancy to fill the fag end of a stanza, but never thinks of expanding or illustrating the matter in hand, Pembroke, if the thought in her original appears to her pregnant, and partly latent, instantly breaks up her verse into franker and fuller illustration; but never adds a syllable of any other matter to fill even the most hungry gap of verse. One sees this poetic intelligence in Pembroke’s rendering of psalm 58:9 . Early modern translators had trouble with this passage. Coverdale offers the alarming, “Or ever your pots be made hot with thorns, so let indignation vex him, even as a thing that is raw.” Other English Bibles do little better. Pembroke’s version of the curse appears in the opening quatrain of her last stanza. Drawing on Calvin’s suggestion that the first half-­ verse might have nothing to do with pots but instead mean “before your thorns grow to a bush,” and correctly understanding Coverdale’s “indignation” as, literally, a tempest, she traces the intelligible image latent in the Hebrew. In place of the “thing that is raw,” she then introduces the green fruits—­the image of God’s justice tempest-­like tearing the unripe fruit off its branches echoing the terrible curse of the preceding stanza that God would make his enemies rot like an aborted fetus. Recent scholarship has shown that Pembroke consulted several top-­flight Protestant commentaries (principally those by Calvin and Beza). Yet in contrast to The whole book of psalms—­the then semiofficial metrical psalter—­her psalms have neither doctrinal headnotes nor discernible doctrinal inflection. Thus, for example, in the former’s psalm 77, after the middle verses’ agonized questioning of God’s justice, its speaker confesses, “my weakness is / the cause of this mistrust.” The second half-­line, which has no counterpart in the Hebrew, is Protestant self-­accusation, the speaker blaming himself for his own fear

6 Ruskin consistently writes as though all the psalms were Sidney’s. Since the error seemed likely to prove distracting, we have silently corrected it by changing pronoun-­gender and replacing “Philip” with “Mary” throughout.

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and confusion.7 Pembroke’s rendering, “Then lo, my wrack I see,” expresses instead the psalmist’s dark sense of impending destruction at the hands of God’s burning anger—­the anger detailed in the previous stanza. In general, her paraphrases eschew the doctrinal lexicon of the Reformation; except for the absence of Christological allusion, her psalms contain little that might be called theologically Protestant. What she takes from Protestant exegesis is the humanist-­historicist focus on the literal sense: on the Hebraic specificity and thickness, as it were, of the psalms. Hence, rather than the timeless spiritual-­a llegorical landscape of Coverdale’s psalm 84:5-­6 (“Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are thy ways, who going through the vale of misery use it for a well”), her paraphrase describes a procession through mulberry fields. Her preference for the hard physical core of words informs and is informed by her preference for that closest to the Hebrew. It is this commitment to the philological “truth of the thing” that gives her psalms their spiritual meaningfulness: they are spiritually meaningful because Pembroke has found the meaning of her text. [\ Sources: DNB; ODNB; Alexander Grosart, ed., The complete poems of Sir Philip Sidney, 3 vols. (London, 1873–­1877); Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, The collected works (CWP), 2 vols., ed. and intro. Margaret Hannay, Noel Kinnamon, Michael Brennan (Oxford, 1998); J. C. A. Rathmell, “Introduction,” in The psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, ed. J. C. A. Rathmell (New York, 1963); John Ruskin, Rock Honeycomb (1877), in Bibliotheca Pastorum, 31:103–­323 of The Works of John Ruskin, 39 vols., ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London, 1907); T. Steinberg, “The Sidneys and the Psalms,” Studies in Philology, 92 (1995): 1–­17; Ramie Targoff, Common prayer: the language of public devotion in early modern England (Chicago, 2001); Mary Trull, “‘Theise dearest offrings of my heart’: the sacrifice of praise in Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke’s psalmes,” in English women, religion, and textual production, 1500–­1625, ed. Micheline White (Farnham, 2011), 37–­58.

7 English Protestant Bibles similarly likewise construe the psalmist’s words as an admission of fault for having questioned God’s mercy; thus Coverdale translates 77:10 as “It is mine own infirmity,” Geneva as “this is my death.” The Hebrew can mean infirmity, but also grief or beseeching.

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MARY SIDNEY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE, TRANS. The Psalms of David

c. 1600

Psalm 58 Si vere utique And call ye this to utter what is just, You that of justice hold the sovereign throne? And call ye this to yield, O sons of dust, To wronged brethren every man his own?1 O no. It is your long-­malicious will Now to the world to make by practice known, With whose oppression you the balance fill; Just to yourselves, indiff’rent* else to none. But what could they, who even in birth declined From truth and right to lies and injuries To show the venom of their canker’d mind? The adder’s image scarcely can suffice; Nay scarce the aspic* may with them contend, On whom the charmer all in vain applies His skilfull’st spells, ay missing of his end, While she self-­deaf and unaffected lies. Lord, crack their teeth; Lord, crush these lions’ jaws. So let them sink as water in the sand. When deadly bow their aiming fury draws, Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter’s hand. So make them melt as the dishoused snail Or as the embryo whose vital band 1

{Justice is traditionally defined as giving to each his own.}

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Breaks ere it holds, and formless eyes do fail To see the sun, though brought to lightful land. O let their brood, a brood of springing thorns, Be by untimely rooting overthrown—­ Ere, bushes waxed, they push with pricking horns—­ As fruits yet green are off by tempest blown. The good with gladness this revenge shall see, And bathe his feet in blood of wicked one; While all shall say: the just rewarded be; There is a God that carves to each his own.

Psalm 77 Voce mea ad Dominum To thee my crying call, To thee my calling cry, I did, ô God, address, And thou didst me attend, To nightly anguish thrall. From thee I sought redress; To thee incessantly Did praying hands extend. All comfort fled my soul; Yea, God to mind I call’d, Yet calling God to mind My thoughts could not appease. Nought else but bitter dole Could I in thinking find; My sprite with pain appal’d, Could entertain no ease. Whole troops of busy cares, Of cares that from thee came, Took up their restless rest In sleepy sleepless eyes; So lay I all oppress’d, My heart in office lame, My tongue as lamely fares, No part his part supplies. At length, with turned thought, Anew I fell to think Upon the ancient times, Upon the years of old; Yea to my mind was brought, 516



Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, trans.

And in my heart did sink, What in my former rhymes Myself of thee had told. Lo then to search the truth I sent my thoughts abroad; Meanwhile my silent heart Distracted thus did plain: Will God no more take ruth? No further love impart? No longer be my God? Unmoved still remain? Are all the conduits dry Of his erst flowing grace? Could rusty teeth of time To nought his promise turn? Can mercy no more climb And come before his face? Must all compassion die? Must nought but anger burn? Then lo, my wrack I see, Say I, and do I know That change lies in his hand, Who changeless sits aloft?2 Can I ought understand, And yet unmindful be What wonders from him flow? What works his will hath wrought? Nay, still thy acts I mind, Still of thy deeds I muse, Still see thy glory’s light Within thy Temple shine. What god can any find (For term them so they use)3 Whose majesty, whose might, May strive, ô God, with thine?

2 {The sense of 77:10 is much debated. CWP cites Beza’s “the change of things dependeth in thy hand” as Pembroke’s probable source. The Book of Common Prayer reads “I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest.” The rest of the stanza is Pembroke’s attempt to unpack the meaning of this cryptic verse.} 3 {I.e., they are accustomed to term their idols “gods.”}

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Thou only wonders do’st; The wonders by thee done All earth do wonder make: As when thy hand of old From servitude unjust Both Jacob’s sons did take And sons of Jacob’s son, Whom Jacob’s sons had sold. The waves thee saw, saw thee, And fearful fled the field; The deep with panting breast Engulfed, quaking lay; The clouds thy fingers press’d Did rushing rivers yield; Thy shafts did flaming flee Through fiery airy way. Thy voice’s thund’ring crash From one to other pole, Twixt roof of starry sphere And earth’s then trembling floor—­ While light of lightning’s flash Did pitchy clouds enclear—­ Did round with terror roll, And rattling horror roar. Meanwhile through dusky deep On sea’s discovered bed, Where none thy trace could view, A path by thee was wrought: A path whereon thy crew, As shepherds use their sheep, Moses and Aaron led And to glad pastures brought.

Psalm 84 Quam dilecta! How lovely is thy dwelling, Great God, to whom all greatness is belonging! To view thy courts, far, far from any telling, My soul doth long, and pine with longing. Unto the God that liveth, The God that all life giveth, 518



Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, trans.

My heart and body both aspire, Above delight, beyond desire. Alas! the sparrow knoweth The house, where free and fearless she resideth; Directly to the nest the swallow goeth, Where with her sons she safe abideth. O altars thine, most mighty In war, yea most almighty: Thy altars, Lord! ah, why should I From altars thine excluded lie? O happy who remaineth Thy household-­man and still thy praise unfoldeth; O happy who himself on thee sustaineth, Who to thy house his journey holdeth. Me seems I see them going Where mulberries are growing; How wells they dig in thirsty plain, And cisterns make for falling rain. Me seems I see augmented Still troop with troop, till all at length discover Sion, where to their sight is represented The Lord of hosts, the Sion lover. O Lord, O God, most mighty In war, yea most almighty: Hear what I beg; hearken, I say, O Jacob’s God, to what I pray. Thou art the shield us shieldeth; Then, Lord, behold the face of thine anointed. One day spent in thy courts more comfort yieldeth Than thousands otherwise appointed. I count it clearer pleasure To spend my age’s treasure Waiting a porter at thy gates, Then dwell a lord with wicked mates. Thou art the sun that shineth, Thou art the buckler, Lord, that us defendeth. Glory and grace Jehovah’s hand assigneth; And good, without refusal, sendeth To him who truly treadeth The path to pureness leadeth. 519



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O Lord of might, thrice blessed he Whose confidence is built on thee.

Psalm 88 Domine Deus My God, my lord, my help, my health, To thee my cry Doth restless fly, Both when of sun the day The treasures doth display, And night locks up his golden wealth. Admit to presence what I crave: O bow thine ear My cry to hear, Whose soul with ills and woes So flows, so overflows. That now my life draws nigh the grave. With them that fall into the pit I stand esteem’d: Quite forceless deem’d, As one who free from strife And stir of mortal life, Among the dead at rest doth sit. Right like unto the murd’red sort, Who in the grave Their biding have; Who now thou dost no more Remember as before, Quite, quite cut off from thy support. Thrown down into the grave of graves, In darkness deep Thou dost me keep, Where lightning of thy wrath Upon me lighted hath, All overwhelm’d with all thy waves. Who did know me, whom I did know, Remov’d by thee, Are gone from me. Are gone? That is the best. They all me so detest, That now abroad I blush to go. 520



Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, trans.

My wasted eye doth melt away, Fleeting amain In streams of pain, While I my prayers send, While I my hands extend, To thee my God, and fail no day. Alas, my Lord, wilt then be time, When men are dead, Thy truth to spread? Shall they, whom death hath slain, To praise thee live again, And from their lowly lodgings climb? Shall buried mouths thy mercies tell? Dust and decay Thy truth display? And shall thy works of mark Shine in the dreadful dark? Thy justice where oblivions dwell? Good reason then I cry to thee, And ere the light Salute my sight, My plaint to thee direct: Lord why dost thou reject My soul, and hide thy face from me? Ay me, alas, I faint, I die, So still, so still Thou dost me fill, And hast from youngest years, With terrifying fears, That I in trance amaz’d do lie. All, over me, thy furies pass’d; Thy fears my mind Do fett’ring bind, Flowing about me so, As flocking waters flow, No day can overrun their haste, Who erst to me were near and dear, Far now, ô far Disjoined are: 521



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And when I would them see, Who my acquaintance be, As darkness they to me appear.

Psalm 90 Domine refugiam Thou our refuge, thou our dwelling, O Lord, hast been from time to time*; Long ere mountains proudly swelling Above the lowly dales did clime, Long ere the earth embowl’d* by thee Bare the form it now doth bear: Yea, thou art God for ever, free From all touch of age and year. O but man by thee created, As he at first of earth arose, When thy word his end hath dated, In equal state to earth he goes. Thou sayst, and saying, mak’st it so: Be no more, ô Adam’s heir; From whence ye came, dispatch to go, Dust again, as dust you were. Grant a thousand years be spared To mortal men of life and light: What is that to thee compared? One day? one-­quarter of a night? When death upon them storm-­like falls, Like unto a dream they grow, Which goes and comes as fancy calls: Nought in substance, all in show. As the herb that early groweth, Which leaved green and flow’red fair, Ev’ning change with ruin moweth, And lays to roast in withering air. So in thy wrath we fade away, With thy fury overthrown, When thou in sight our faults dost lay, Looking on our sins unknown. Therefore in thy angry fuming, Our life of days his measure spends,4 All our years in death consuming, Right like a sound that, sounded, ends. Our days of life make seventy years, Eighty, if one stronger be, 4

{I.e., our life spends its allotted number of days}

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*at all times *formed into a globe



Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, trans.

Whose crop is labors, dolors, fears; Then away in post* we flee. Yet who notes thy angry power, As he should fear, so fearing thee? Make us count each vital hour. Make thou us wise; we wise shall be. Turn, Lord. Shall these things thus go still? Let thy servants peace obtain; Us with thy joyful bounty fill, Endless joys in us shall reign. Glad us now as erst we grieved: Send years of good for years of ill; When thy hand hath us relieved, Show us and ours thy glory still.5 Both them and us, not one exempt, With thy beauty beautify; Supply with aid what we attempt, Our attempts with aid supply.

*swiftly

Psalm 96 Cantate Domino Sing, and let the song be new, Unto him that never endeth; Sing all earth, and all in you. Sing to God and bless his name; Of the help, the health, he sendeth, Day by day new ditties frame. Make each country know his worth; Of his acts the wonder’d story Paint unto each people forth. For Jehovah great alone, All the gods, for awe and glory, Far above doth hold his throne.6 For, but idols, what are they, Whom besides mad Earth adoreth?7 He the skies in frame did lay; Grace and Honor are his guides, Majesty his Temple storeth,8 Might in guard about him bides. 5 {The following two lines have no counterpart in the biblical text; their foregrounding of God’s beauty and their desire that all, “not one exempt,” partake of the coming good times is extraordinary.} 6 {Jehovah, who is alone great, holds his throne far above the other gods, being far above them in awe and glory.} 7 {For what, compared to Jehovah, are these gods except mere idols—­i.e., the gods that the peoples in their madness adore.} 8 {“Temple” is the grammatical subject; “Majesty” the object of “storeth.”}

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Kindreds come, Jehovah give, Give Jehovah all together, Force and fame whereso you live. Give his name the glory fit. Take your off’rings, get you thither, Where he doth enshrined sit. Go, adore him in the place Where his pomp is most displayed.9 Earth, ô go with quaking pace, Go proclaim Jehovah king. Stayless* world shall now be stayed; Righteous doom his rule shall bring. Starry roof and earthy floor, Sea and all thy wideness yieldeth, Now rejoice and leap and roar. Leafy infants of the wood, Fields and all that on you feedeth, Dance, ô dance, at such a good. For Jehovah cometh, lo! Lo, to reign Jehovah cometh: Under whom you all shall go. He the world shall rightly guide; Truly, as a king becometh, For the peoples’ weal provide.

*ever-­changing

Psalm 130 De profundis From depth of grief Where drown’d I lie, Lord, for relief To thee I cry: My earnest, vehement, crying, praying, Grant quick, attentive hearing, weighing. O Lord, if thou Offences mark, Who shall not bow To bear the cark*? But with thy justice mercy dwelleth, Whereby thy worship more excelleth.

*burden

On thee,10 my soul, On thee, ô Lord 9

{Book of Common Prayer: “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”} {There are many scratch-­outs and erasures in this half-­line. CWP reads “Yea makes.”}

10

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Dependeth whole, And on thy word, Though sore with blot of sin defaced, Yet surest hope hath firmly placed. Who longest watch, Who soonest rise Can nothing match The early eyes, The greedy eyes my soul erecteth, While God’s true promise it expecteth. Then Israël On God attend: Attend him well, Who still thy friend In kindness hath thee dear esteemed, And often, often erst redeemed. Now, as before, Unchanged he Will thee restore, Thy state will free: All wickedness from Jacob driving, Forgetting follies, faults forgiving. [\ T ext: The Psalms of David translated into divers and sundry kindes of verse, more rare and excellent for the method and varietie than ever yet hath been done in English, begun by the noble and learned gent. Sir Philip Sidney, Knt. And finished by the right honorable, the Countess of Pembroke, his sister, ed. Samuel Weller Singer ([London], 1823). Corrected against CWP.

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VIII

PASTORAL THEOLOGY

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RICHARD GREENHAM (early 1540s–­1594)

Παραμύθιον: two treatises of the comforting of an afflicted conscience

We know nothing of Greenham’s early years; presumably his family was of modest means, since in 1559 he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar (work-study student), receiving his BA in 1564, his MA in 1567, at which point he took up a fellowship at Pembroke. In 1570 he signed two letters in support of Thomas Cartwright, the overtly presbyterian Lady Margaret professor of divinity, whom Whitgift had expelled.1 Yet preaching in the University church, he reportedly warned against allowing disagreement over externals to threaten the Church’s peace—­his consistent position regarding questions of ecclesiastical ceremony and polity. The same year he left Cambridge for Dry Drayton, a rural village of perhaps 150 souls a few miles north of the university. The living had been the gift of John Hutton, a godly Cambridgeshire gentleman whose sister-­in-­law, Katherine Bownd, Greenham married three years later. The marriage may have been fortunate for the godly cause, because their kinship tie probably made Hutton more willing to shield his partially nonconformist minister. For in 1573, the year of his marriage, a royal proclamation, responding to the gauntlet thrown down by The admonition to the Parliament (1572), ordered the bishops to enforce subscription in their diocese, under pain of suspension for clergy who refused. Greenham was among the refusniks,2 but he also made it clear to his diocesan, Richard Cox, that he was no troublemaker and preached only Christ crucified. Cox did not press the matter, and thereafter sought Greenham’s help in persuading recusants and sectaries to return to the English Church. During his years at Dry Drayton, Greenham turned his home into England’s first (informal) Protestant seminary; a considerable number of young godly ministers spent 1 It is not clear how much one can infer from this. Richard Bancroft, Whitgift’s future ally, protested Cartwright’s removal; by contrast, Edmund Grindal, who as archbishop would risk everything (and lose) by defending the godly cause, shared Whitgift’s view regarding Cartwright. 2 The articles are those reprinted in Field, Popish abuses .

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time there, learning experimental divinity and the comforting of wounded consciences. These pastoral arts were Greenham’s distinctive and lasting contribution to English spirituality, and a key factor in puritanism’s “pietist turn” away from presbyterian activism (Bozeman 64). In 1591 Greenham left his country parish for London’s Christ Church, Greyfriars. He is famously supposed to have told his successor that there had been “no good wrought by my ministry on any but one family” (ODNB)—­a confession often cited as evidence for the godly clergy’s failure to remake England into a nation of true Protestants. It is probably unwise, however, to take Greenham’s confession of personal failure as a statement of fact. We know little about his brief ministry in London. He died in April 1594 of unknown causes. [\

Greenham himself published only the tract on household discipline . His writings on pastoral care all came out posthumously, their texts based on unpolished manuscripts, viva voce transcripts, and private correspondence. The first edition of the collected Works appeared in 1599, with four more editions by 1612, each incorporating whatever new manuscripts had turned up in the interim. All include, substantially unchanged, the two tracts reprinted here from the 1598 Paramythion.3 Greenham occupies a position at or near the headwaters of a puritan spirituality whose currents ran through the seventeenth century: Sibbes, Baxter, and Bunyan are among his heirs; Dent and Perkins, both at Cambridge during Greenham’s years at Dry Drayton, bear the impress of his example. By the 1590s, the distinctive contours of this spirituality had been hammered out, but Greenham’s efforts at “comforting of an afflicted conscience” date from some ten to twenty years earlier. They are thus experimental in the literal sense—­and difficult to summarize for that reason: concepts in Paramythion evolve unpredictably, key terms shifting (sometimes reversing) meaning under the pressure of sustained reflection. The shape-­shifting of thought-­in-­progress becomes instantly visible if one tries to track what Greenham means by the “afflicted conscience.” The opening paragraphs describe this as divine punishment inflicted on pagans, papists, and “the common sort of Christians,” typically resulting in suicide and damnation. Within a few pages, however, Greenham notes that sometimes “the children of God” also feel “this wound of mind” . He then goes on to explain that his aim is to teach us how to avoid this “wound of the spirit” , but the argument immediately takes an odd turn, since the only way people escape the terrible moment when God sets their sins before their faces is, we learn, by having their “sins ransacked, sifted, searched, & ripped up” to reveal everything from long-­forgotten adolescent fantasies to possible future trespasses. The prophylaxis seems indistinguishable from the wounding itself, which Greenham must have recognized, since he drops both the notion of the wound as punishment and the attempt to teach his readers how to avoid such wounding. Instead the wound becomes (at one point or another in the pages that follow) a paternal discipline designed to liberate us from We have not attempted a systematic collation, but a spot comparison of the 1598 text with that in the 1612 Works did not turn up any noteworthy differences. 3

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delusions of self-­ownership or imagining this world a place of “mirth and delight”; a token of our election; a shield of dis-­ease guarding us from sin and sloth; and, finally, the field in which God’s children, by pressing on in faith despite “thorns of temptations and briars of evil affections,” attain, in Milton’s words, “the better fortitude / Of patience and heroic martyrdom” (Paradise Lost 9.31–­32). Yet despite these swerves in the argument, the basic theological framework of the tracts initially seems straightforward and familiar: in Kendall’s words, “The whole of Greenham’s soteriology is summed up in this: the ‘Law is to prepare, the Gospel is to follow after.’”4 A Law-­to-­Gospel ordo salutis dominates puritan practical divinity through the seventeenth century.5 Yet, in contrast to Tyndale’s Lutheran version, where the terrors of the Law give way to a joyous faith in the free discharge of one’s sins through Christ’s righteousness to us imputed, Greenham at moments portrays the wounding moment of the Law as stretching out to months, even years, of anguish, guilt, and temptation. Yet, however painful, this sense of being “harrowed with the rake of God’s judgments” does not place us among the lost, but rather, Greenham argues, is itself “the undoubted earnest of our regeneration”; it is the reprobate who are insensible to the wound of conscience . As Michael Winship notes, this position is alien to earlier Tudor Protestantism, which saw saving faith as the comfortable certainty of salvation. But at some time during the Elizabethan period, the experience of dealing with afflicted consciences led numerous puritan divines to relocate the ground of assurance in “the feeling of our sins” rather than in comfort and certainty (Winship, 472–­73). This shift, which seems to originate with Greenham, leaves its mark on English Calvinist spirituality for decades; in the 1620s, the radical puritan Michael Sparke includes the following under the title “A godly prayer”: “I run after sin as swine after filth. I delight in evil.”6 The saints are those sinners who know and bewail the “sinkhole of iniquity” within them . However much English puritanism made common cause with the reformation of manners, this a strikingly non-­moralistic notion of godliness. What matters is having “our sins ransacked, sifted, searched, & ripped up” , making “confession of particular sins” . The emphasis on full, itemized confession is surprising; the early English Reformers had decried the “popish” demand for an exhaustive enumeration of sins as an intolerable burden breeding despair more often than repentance.7 Greenham’s commitment to mea culpa, mea maxima culpa (and his near-­silence on God’s free forgiveness of sin) led T. D. Bozeman to propose a “profound elective affinity” with and perhaps direct borrowing from Catholic spirituality.8 Is it Calvinist or Counter-­Reformation divinity that holds “true religion must begin with a painful examen of conscience, generate a Kendall, 45. On the Law-­to-­Gospel core of Greenham’s theology, see also Dixon, Bozeman. The Law-­to-­Gospel paradigm goes back to Luther (note its presence in Tyndale), but seems to have penetrated Elizabethan divinity via the Reformed theologians Theodore Beza, Zacharias Ursinus, and Girolamo Zanchius. See Kendall, 26–­27, 37–­40. 6 Shuger, ed., Religion, 299. 7 E.g., John Bradford, The writings of John Bradford, 2 vols., ed. Aubrey Townsend (Cambridge, 1848–­ 1853), 1:47; 2:118–­19. 8 Bozeman 78–­80; on the broader question of the relation of puritan to Roman Catholic spirituality, see his bibliographic note on p. 80; see also Jean Delumeau, Sin and fear: the emergence of a Western guilt culture, 13th–­18th centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York, 1990); John Bossy, Peace in the post-­Reformation. 4 5

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‘holy hatred of self,’ be brought thereby to a personal conversion understood above all as ethical transformation, and serve the honor and majesty of the divine monarch through ceaseless effort and combat against self”?9 Yet the significant confessional overlap cannot be the whole story. The understanding of sin as debt that informs virtually every sentence of Allen’s purgatory tract plays almost no role in Greenham,10 nor do Counter-­ Reformation treatments of spiritual conflict offer any counterpart to Greenham’s concluding list of the “sweet and sure signs of election” . [\ Sources: ODNB (Richard Greenham, Thomas Cartwright); Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The precisianist strain: disciplinary religion & antinomian backlash in puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, 2004); Leif Dixon, “Richard Greenham and the Calvinist construction of God,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 4 (2010): 729–­45; Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism; Michael Winship, “Weak Christians, backsliders, and carnal gospelers: assurance of salvation and the pastoral origins of puritan practical divinity in the 1580s,” Church History 70, no. 3 (2001): 462–­81.

9 Bozeman 81; the notes cite Robert Parsons, S. J., Luis de Granada, O. P., and the Theatine Lorenzo Scupoli. For a Catholic example in this volume, see Southwell’s St. Peter’s complaint in The complete poems of Robert Southwell, ed. Alexander Grosart (London, 1872), 1–­55. 10 Greenham speaks once of sin as “debts” .

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RICHARD GREENHAM

Παραμύθιον: two treatises of the comforting of an afflicted conscience 1

c. 1580 (pub. 1598) 2

A Most Sweet Comfort for an afflicted Conscience It is thus written, Proverbs 18:14, The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity: But a wounded spirit who can bear it?

. . . Which sentence3 briefly speaketh thus much unto us, that what trouble befalleth a man (his mind being unappalled) he will indifferently bear it out; but if the spirit of a man be once troubled and dismayed, he cannot tell how to be delivered. And no marvel: for if the mind of man be the fountain of consolation which ministreth comfort unto him in all other troubles, if that become comfortless, what shall comfort it? . . . To show this the better, I will first declare how great a punishment of God this wound of conscience is. Secondly I will teach how this trouble of mind may be prevented and avoided. Lastly I will set down how God’s children falling in some measure into this affliction of spirit, may be recovered out of it. . . . . . . If we look among the heathen. . . . even their wise philosophers . . . who in bearing and forbearing thought the chiefest point of vertue to consist, and ye shall see when once some great distress of mind did wound them, some would make an end of it by preparing a cup of deadly poison . . . some would not stick to stab most monstrously their own bodies with daggers or such like instruments of death: all which men would seem to have great courage in sustaining many harms, so long as their minds were not overmastered. But when their divine and supreme Essence (which they acknowledged to be God) did by his power cross & overturn their witty devises and headstrong attempts, so as {Greek (translit. Paramythion) for comfort. See Phil 2:1.} {There are no paragraph breaks for pages on end; we have therefore silently inserted a few to clarify the structure of the argument.} 3 {I.e., the verse from Proverbs with which the treatise begins} 1 2

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without hope of remedy they were hampered in pensiveness and sorrow of mind, then, not being able to turn themselves under so heavy a burthen, they shrunk down, and by violent death would rid themselves of that disquietness & impatience of their troubled minds. But let us come nearer: and whether we behold the Papists or the Family of Love or the common sort of Christians, we shall see they will pass quietly through many afflictions . . . but yet when the Lord shall let loose the cord of their consciences and shall set before their faces their sins committed, see what fearful ends they have, whilst some of them by hanging themselves, some by casting themselves into the water, some by cutting their own throats have rid themselves out of these intolerable griefs. . . . But let us come to the children of God who have in some degree felt this wound of mind, and it will appear, both in the members and in the head, of all burthens to be a thing most intolerable to sustain a wounded conscience. And to begin with, let us set in the first rank Job, that man of God, commended unto us by the Holy Ghost for a mirror of patience. . . . But behold when at the strange conference of his comfortless friends, his mind began to be aghast . . . when he saw the Lord fasten in him sharp arrows and to set him up as a butt to shoot at, when he thought God caused him to possess the sins of his youth, this glorious pattern of patience could not bear his grief. . . . David, a man chosen according to the Lord’s own heart; Hezekiah, a pure worshipper of God and careful restorer of true religion; Jeremiah, the prophet of the Lord, sanctified and ordained to that office before he was formed in his mother’s womb, were rare and singular in the graces and favor of God; yet when they felt this wound piercing them with grief of heart, they were as sparrows mourning, as cranes chattering, as pelicans casting out fearful cries; they thought themselves as in the grave; they wished to have dwelt solitary; they were as bottles parched in the smoke; they were as doves mourning, not able without sighs and groans to utter their words; their hearts clove to the dust, and their tongues to the roof of their mouths. ‡ But let us show what way is to be used to keep us from this wound of the spirit . . . It is a chief point of worldly wisdom not to tarry for the use of physic until we be deadly sick, but to be acquainted with God’s merciful preservations to defend us from it; likewise it is a chief policy of a godly Christian not only to seek comfort when the agony is upon him, but also to use all good helps to meet with it before it comes. . . . The remedies preservative are, first, the searching of our sins, & then, the examining of our faith.4 . . . . . . For as it fareth often with sores, it cometh to pass in sins: we are loath to have our wounds often grated upon; we cannot so well away to have our sores rifled, seared, and lanced, but fed with healing salves; so we are hardly brought to have our consciences ground or our sins ransacked, sifted, searched, & ripped up, but would still have them plastered with sweet promises and bathed in the mercies of God: whereas it is far safer, before incarnative5 4 5

{The printed text does not include a section on “the examining of our faith.”} {Promoting the growth of flesh in a wound or sore (OED).}

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and healing medicines, to use corrosive and mundifying6 waters, without which, though some sores may seem to close and skin up a pace, yet they prove worse; and being rotten still at the core, they have above a thin skin & underneath dead flesh. In like manner, we would cloak, we would hide and cover our sins, as it were with a curtain, but it is more sound surgery to prick and pierce our consciences with the burning iron of the Law, and to cleanse the wound of the soul by sharp threatenings, lest that a skin pulled over the conscience for a while, we leave the rotten corruption uncured underneath. . . . ‡ But now coming to the salving of this sore, I shall seem very strange in my cure: and so much the more be wondered at, by how much in manner of proceeding I differ from the most sort of men herein.7 I am not ignorant that many visiting afflicted consciences cry still, oh comfort them, oh speak joyful and comfortable things unto them. . . . Why art thou so heavy, my brother? Why art thou so cast down, my sister? . . . God is merciful; Christ is a Savior. These be speeches of good comfort indeed, but they often do the poor souls as much good herein as if they should pour cold water into their bosoms; when as without further searching of their sores, they may as well minister a malady as a medicine. For nutritive and cordial medicines are not good for every sick person, especially when the body needeth rather a strong purgation. . . . . . . Now that the confession of particular sins is requisite, it may appear by the two and thirtieth Psalm, wherein . . . the prophet (by his own experience) teacheth us that he could find no relief of his sickness until he had remembered and made confession of his sins. . . . Now if in this trouble the person humbled cannot come to the particular sight of sin in themselves, it is good to use the help of others, unto whom they may offer their hearts to be gauged and searched, and their lives to be examined more deeply, by hearing the several articles of the Law laid open before them,8 whereby they may try the whole course of their actions. For (as we said before) the grossest hypocrites will generally complain of sin. . . . ‡ . . . And here again, to answer them that deny the Law wholly, or at all, to be used when we would breed comfort in one, I demand whether, if it be necessary to maintain the righteousness of Christ, it be not also as necessary to preserve the righteousness of the Law? Seeing the righteousness of the Law, of us not fulfilled, will draw us unto the righteousness of Christ, to us imputed. . . . Moreover, seeing all the promises of God in the Gospel are commended unto us under the title and tenor of restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the lame, health to the sick, and life to the dead; it is manifest . . . that we must first find ourselves blind, deaf, dumb, lame, sick, and dead before he will meddle with us, because they that are whole need not the physician; and he came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. . . .

{Cleansing; ridding a wound of pus} {Pages 42–­43 are missing from EEBO facsimile; the missing portion has been inserted from the 1595 version (in italics), A most sweet and assured comfort, E10r–­F1v.} 8 {See Theologus’ interrogation of Asunetus in Dent’s Plain man’s pathway .} 6 7

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Another short treatise belonging to the comfort of an afflicted conscience In all afflictions, God’s children must look unto the end. They are to desire to profit by them and in them to seek the way of perfect comfort and consolation: which, that they may find, they must know that the afflictions of the godly last but a while; they serve them but for salves and medicines; the end of them is always happy. In them they are not only preserved and purified from many sins, but also much beautified with the image of Jesus Christ, who is the eldest son in the house of God. Again, the cross of true Christians is the sweet and amiable call of God unto repentance, in that he putteth us in mind thereby to bethink us of our debts—­because we are given to think the day of payment is yet far off; yea, we fall asleep until our turn be ended; and whilst God lengtheneth our days, waiting for our repentance, we never think of our sins until the hour come wherein we perish with shame. The best meeting then with the Lord’s visitation is, without delay and in sincerity, to pray for our sins to be pardoned. For therefore doth the Lord oftentimes shackle us the more with the chains of his chastisements, because we are more careful to be unburdened of our sickness than to be freed from our sin. . . . Others there be that, hearing of their sins in the time of their afflictions, will acknowledge indeed their infirmities to be the mother of such a brood, yet they have no true remorse to restrain themselves from sin because they have but a confused conceit thereof, and though their ship be never so much tossed and turmoiled, yet think they not that God holdeth the stern. These men, if God bear with them, do as it were settle in their lees, and are as it were soaked in their sins. For prosperity is a drunkenness to cast ourselves into a dead sleep; and when the Lord letteth us alone, we cease not to soothe up ourselves, bearing ourselves in hand that we are in God’s favor and that he loveth us, because he scourgeth us not. . . . Wherein we bewray our ignorance of the exercise of the Cross, in that affliction is the mother of humility, humility breedeth repentance, & repentance obtaineth mercy. Some also there are who, usually whilst the fearful judgment of God is before their eyes . . . have a few glancing motions and starting cogitations of their sins and of Christ his passion; yet at all other times their minds are so clasped up from thinking of temptations, & their hearts so locked up from foreseeing or forethinking of judgments, that they feel no godly sorrow. They mock the mourning days of the elect as of them that be of a melancholy nature; they make a sport of sin, as little remembering the sting which will either prick them to the heart blood most fearfully in the hour of death, or meet them with gripping agonies in the day of their visitation more speedily. . . . So that whilst the Lord in prosperity affordeth large pennyworths of his love unto them, they dally with his majesty and make a sport of his mercy. All which imperfections may be better corrected, if in our deepest rest {sic}, with a reverent & humble fear of God’s judgments, we did wait for the day of our trial & prepare ourselves to the Lord’s visitations . . . for the feeling of God’s mercy must come from the sight of our misery by sin; which being pardoned, we shall soon have our infirmities healed. . . . Sure it is that if we have suffered our hearts to be harrowed with the rake of God’s judgments . . . that we are become soft & well exercised in the fear of God, we shall come to the feeling of our sins—­the sense whereof, if it bring as it were a sickness to the body & a corsey9 to the soul, it is an undoubted earnest of our regeneration; 9

{Corrosive (often used for a medicine that stings and burns as it heals).}

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& happy are we if we find ourselves so diseased and troubled with our sins that we can hardly (being in the skirmish & agony) make any difference between the motions to any evil & the consent unto the same: for oftentimes evil motions do so possess the souls of God’s children, sucking down so strongly in them that, though they weep, pray, and meditate . . . yet those motions will be continually in them without diminishing, the delight only excepted. Wherefore, for our comfort herein, we are not to martyr ourselves with disquietness of mind because we are so pestered, thronged with wicked motions and assaults. . . . For the godly shall not be so freed from sin but that they shall be assaulted with evil motions, suspicions, delusions, vain fantasies & imaginations; the body of sin shall never be from us so long as we live. For the scum thereof is almost continually boiling & walloping in us, foaming out such filthy froth & stinking savor into our minds that it is not only detestable to the mind regenerate and renewed by the Spirit of God, but also it would make abashed the very natural man to look into so loathsome a sty of sin & sink-­hole of iniquity. Yea, it maketh us often to quail, & if it were possible, it would corrupt the very part regenerate. For mighty is the power, & raging is the strength of sin. Neither for all this must we cease to sorrow for our sins; nor despair, on the other side, although our sorrow be but small. For if we be sorrowful for the hardness of our hearts, if we can be grieved for that we are no more grieved for our sins, if we can but sigh and groan because we feel our iniquities, it is so much a greater comfort unto us as it is a greater testimony that our hearts are not altogether hardened. So that if we feel sorrow indeed, although we weep not, yet we may gather comfort, considering that this sorrow is for sin, with a love and hunger after righteousness. Yea, if our assaults be distrust, pride, arrogancy, ambition, envy, concupiscence as hot as the fire in the furnace all our days; and though Satan layeth out oil in great measure—­& out of measure—­that it is the wonderful mercy of the Lord that we stand; and though our prayers be dull and full of wearisomeness; if the striving and straining of ourselves to goodness be so hard that we know not whether we strive for fear of punishment or for love of so good a Father: yet if we feel this in ourselves—­that we would fain love the Lord, and be better—­and being wearied and tired with our sins, long gladly to enjoy the peace of righteousness and desire to please God in a simple obedience of faith, then let us comfort ourselves: there is no time too late to repent in. For he cometh quickly to Christ, although in the hour of death, that cometh willingly and in a desire of a better life—­howsoever sin and Satan at that time would especially persuade him. . . . Wherefore if Satan charge our consciences with sin . . . let us bid him not tell us what we have been, but what we would be. For such we are by imputation as we be in affection; and he is now no sinner who, for the love he beareth to righteousness, would be no sinner. Such as we be in desire and purpose, such we be in reckoning and account with God, who giveth that true desire and holy purpose to none but to his children whom he justifieth. . . . If Satan summon thee to answer for thy debts, send him also to Christ and say that the wife is not suable, but the husband; enter thine action against Christ mine husband, and he will make thee a sufficient answer.10 Who then shall condemn us or what judge shall daunt us, sith God is our judge, and acquitted us? and Christ was condemned, & justifieth us? He is our judge, that willeth not the death of a sinner. . . . O gluttonous hell, where is thy defense? O cruel sin, where is thy tyrannous 10

{In early modern English law, wives could not contract in their own name, so they could not be sued.}

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power? . . . Thou didst desire to pave my way to the burning lake of damned souls, but, contrary to thy will, thou art constrained to lift up the ladder whereby I must ascend into the New Jerusalem. . . . But peradventure some will say, my faith is weak and cold, and my conscience is as a flaming lamp and burning furnace. I fear the Lord will still pursue me with his wrathful indignation. Thou dost well to fear, but fear and sin not. For fear which subdueth the security of the flesh is in all most requisite, in that the weaker we are in ourselves, the stronger we are in God. But that fear is dangerous which hindereth the certainty of faith, in that it encourageth our enemy more fiercely to set upon us, when we (coming into the camp) will cast away our armor especially which should defend us. Comfort thyself, the Lord will not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed; he looketh not on the quantity but on the quality of our faith. For as a good mother doth not reject her child because through some infirmity it is weak, feeble, and not able to go alone, but rather doth pity and support it least peradventure it should fall, & recompenseth that with more motherly affection, which in her child is wanting by occasion: in like manner the Lord God our most gracious Father doth not cast us off because through our imperfections we are unable or afraid to draw nearer to the throne of grace; but rather pitieth us, and seeing us afar off desirous to come unto him, meeteth us by the way, & by grace & strength of his own hand, directeth our steps unto his kingdom. . . . Neither are we to look on our faith which the Gospel hath called us unto, because we never believe as we ought; but rather on that which the Gospel offereth & giveth—­ that is, on God’s mercy and peace in Christ: in whose lap if we can lay our heads with Saint John, then we are in felicity, security, and perfect quietness. Contrariwise there be some who (notwithstanding that a tormented conscience is a stinging serpent, that it were much better that all the creatures rose up against us, every one bringing their bane, than once to come before the dreadful face of God) are so blockish that they are wholly resolved into hardness. If they be pricked with sickness, they cry alas; if they be pinched with poverty, they can complain; but as for the torment of mind, they cannot skill of it; and even to talk of a bruised, contrite, & broken heart is a strange language. For proof whereof our consciences are rocked asleep so that not one amongst a thousand knoweth what it is to be pressed and harrowed with the rake of God’s judgments. But blessed are they that to their own salvation feel this in their bodies, whilst sin may be both punished and purged. For though God spare us for a time, yet we know what he keepeth for our end. Wherefore it is the best for us to run to the Lord in this life with a troubled mind lest we tarry till the Lord have locked us up with the heavy fetters of desperation, when he shall summon us to the bar of his judgment in the sight of his angels, and impaneling the great inquest of his saints against us, shall denounce our fearful and final sentence of eternal condemnation. For we see many that have been careless and have made good cheer all their life long—­yea, and when men have labored to make them feel the judgments of God, they have turned all to mockery—­but whose jollity the Lord hath so abated when they draw towards death, that instead of resting and sporting (whereunto they had been given) they have felt the terror of death, hell, and damnation. . . . Wherefore if we, in the tempest of our temptations, will sail a right course . . . let us in a contrite spirit cry unto the Lord: Have mercy upon me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee; forgive all mine iniquities and heal all mine infirmities. Thou healest those 538



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that are broken in heart and bindst up their sores. Why art thou cast down, my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me; wait on God, for I will yet give him thanks; he is my present help, & my God. . . . I believe that my Lord and my God allureth me daily thither, that I might not doubt that when my body is laid in the grave and there consumed as it were to nothing, yet notwithstanding my soul resting in the bosom of the Lord shall return unto me and shall rise to glory. . . . Verily I see, & that with joy, that my flesh must go to decay: for look, what freshness soever was in it, it diminished day by day. And I need not go far to seek for death, for I feel not so small an infirmity in my body but the same is unto me a messenger of dissolution. Yet for all this I shall see my God. And when I am covered in the belly of the grave with molds, I am assured that he will reach me his hand to lift me up again to the beauty of his inheritance, so that this small cottage and shed of leaves, being brought to the grave, shall be carried into an incorruptible tabernacle. Thus communing with our own hearts . . . we shall find that the Lord, by his fatherly and loving chastisements, intendeth nothing more than to prove our obedience, as good reason it is that he should, and to confirm our faith, as also is most necessary. Howbeit still, as I said, he useth a fatherly correction: that is, in mercy, measure, and judgment. . . . For albeit his corrections be wearisome wounds to flesh and blood, yet are they sovereign medicines to the soul and conscience, especially when the Lord giveth us that privilege of his children, that by his Holy Spirit he doth overmaster us lest that finally we should be his judge, and he not ours. And for this cause the Lord is often times provoked to put on (as it were) a contrary face & to lock us up in a prison of adversity, to restrain us from the liberty of our sins which Satan fain would make us violently to rush into. . . . Again, the Lord fitteth us often by inward temptations and outward crosses, to flit us from the stake of security and untowardness to good works, lest in time we should lose the experience of our knowledge and faith in Christ and seek some easier kind of life for flesh & blood. Neither can we truly repent until by some cross we know this world to be a place of sorrow, and not of mirth and delight. . . . Let us learn then, when the world beginneth to favor us and we have as it were an hundred thousand soldiers to bear us up, not to be secure. For there is nothing more easy for a man than for to make himself believe that he shall always continue in happy estate, and think he shall die in the nest. But we must be as birds on a bough, to remove at God’s pleasure, and that without resistance, when the Lord shall visit us. And because we are given too much to think that we have the things in our own right which we hold of the free goodness of God, we are taught in affliction how heinous unthankfulness it were to bind the Lord continually to entertain11 us in this life at so full charge and cost without respect of his free & undeserved gifts; or to hold plea against and sue him as it were by an obligation, at whose hands we ought to beg daily and at whose gate we receive all our maintenance;12 or to make a rentcharge13 of all that which he giveth of his he liberality. Thus in the end we make a challenge of ownership of God’s gifts, and make accompt to have their company to the grave, whereby we provoke the Lord often to 11 12

gates.} 13

{Both to provide hospitality to a guest and to retain a person in one’s service} {Means of subsistence—­a s alms and leftovers distributed to the poor gathered at the manor house {A payment that the owner of land must make at regular intervals to a third party}

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prove to our faces that all that we have is but lent and borrowed. . . . Let us learn not to reckon without our host, & that we hold our prosperity of the Lord not in fee simple14 but as tenants at will (that is, from day to day), resigning to God the sovereignty of revoking us when it pleaseth him. . . . Concerning things of this life, the faithful are to stand in a doubt that that which they hold with one hand may be taken away with the other. We must not think that we shall ever be shut up in a mew15 so that we should see no cross, but we must lay open ourselves to receive stripes from the Lord, knowing that our least cries will stay his greatest scourges. Let us love to be assaulted, but not immeasurably, because God will assist us. Let us look to fall, but on our knees, because God’s hand doth hold us up. . . . So it is our part continually to confess before the Lord that we ever give new occasions that he should follow us with new punishments and that our sins do often shake off the wings of God’s mercy, under the which we have been long comforted. For God’s children acknowledge themselves without ceasing that God hath rods in a readiness (though they see no present evil) to beat them from their sins; and bend all their care how they may rather suffer adversity to God’s glory than to sleep securely in prosperity unto their own pleasure. . . . And though we see nothing but thorns of temptations and briars of evil affections, so as we must be fain to leap over hedges, rocks, and ditches, yet must we not cease to continue in God’s service. For if that were not, what trial and examination of our faith should there be? Were we as in a fair meadow, that we might run on along by the water side in a shade, and that there might be nothing but pleasure and joy all our lifetime, who could vaunt that he had served God with good affection? But when God doth send us things clean contrary to our desires—­that we must be fain one while to enter into a quagmire, and another while to march upon ragged rocks & stones—­then we shall have the use of a well-­exercised mind in prayer, in repentance, and in contempt of this life. . . . But let us remember that God hath so pinched his servants, even them whom he loved and whose welfare was dear and precious in his sight. . . . Let us call to mind the saints of God, who were constrained with sighs and groans to stoop under the hand of God, whose martyrs and tormented children ought to be our looking glasses, to the end that by them we may learn that, according as God dealeth forth the gifts of the Spirit, thereafter doth he send greater afflictions. . . . How was David, the servant of God, exercised in God’s school, who felt all God’s darts and had all his arrows shot at him. . . . It is much available to mortification and Christian patience also, to occupy our hearts in the house of mourning even in our greatest banqueting, and to betake ourselves unto some serious meditation of adversity when present pleasures would most divorce us from the remembrance thereof. . . . For if the Lord God, by multiplying his mercies, increaseth our account, we are often to suspect, to call to judgment, and to arraign ourselves for the using of God’s creatures, who often giveth that in judgment, which he might deny us in mercy; and often weaneth us from some things in his love, which he might give unto us in his anger. FINIS

14 15

{Having legal title} {A hidden or protected enclosure}

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Sweet and sure signs of election, to them especially that are brought low A clearing of judgment, conceiving of the truth and true meaning of the Scripture making for us or against us. A rebuking of sin inwardly, a poverty of spirit from thence, and a mourning therefore. A being cast down in our own conceit, & a meekness to bear our punishment thereby wrought. An hungering after the righteousness which is in Christ, and a prizing and esteeming it above all earthly things. A musing upon and a desire to think and speak of heavenly things. A conflict of the flesh and spirit, and therein by practice the power of the spirit getting the upper hand. A sowing to the spirit, by the use of the means: as of the word, prayer, &c. A purpose unfeigned, upon strength received, of vowing one’s self wholly to the glory of God and good of our brethren. A resignation of ourselves into God’s hands. An expecting of the daily increase of our soul’s health, and our body’s resurrection. The forgiving of our enemies. An acknowledging of our offences with a purpose truly to leave them. A delight in God’s saints. A desire that after death the Church of God may flourish and have all peace. A spirit without guile: that is, an unfeigned purpose always to do well, howsoever our infirmities put us by it. FINIS [\ T ext: Richard Greenham, Παραμύθιον: tvvo treatises of the comforting of an afflicted conscience, written by M. Richard Greenham, with certaine epistles of the same argument (London, 1598) (NSTC 12322). Checked against Greenham, A most sweete and assured comfort for all those that are afflicted in consciscience [sic], or troubled in minde (London, 1595).

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1

(1554–­1600)

A learned and comfortable sermon of the certainy and perpetuity of faith in the elect

Hooker’s parents had fallen on hard times, but his father came from a prominent Exeter family; his father’s brother, John Hooker, was an Exeter magistrate with long-­standing ties to Bishop Jewel. When Exeter’s schoolmaster discerned that the young Richard was more above average than his classmates, his uncle arranged an interview with Jewel, who secured his admission to Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he matriculated in late 1569. His tutor John Rainolds was a newly minted BA and recent convert from Roman Catholicism; he would soon gain renown as an antipapal controversialist and committed puritan. In 1576 Rainolds spearheaded the opposition to the émigré Protestant divine Antonio del Corro, whose irenic, Erasmian theology, which allowed for the salvation of Jews and Muslims, threatened “the very foundations of reformed Christianity as the Calvinists articulated it” (Collinson, 151). By then Hooker had received his BA (1574). He graduated MA from Corpus Christi in 1577, around the same time that the archbishop of York, Edwin Sandys, chose Hooker as the tutor for his son and namesake; shortly thereafter, George Cranmer, nephew of the martyred archbishop, was likewise entrusted to Hooker’s care. The three became lifelong friends; in the 1590s Cranmer and Sandys commented on drafts of the Laws and helped finance the initial printing. In 1583 Whitgift succeeded Grindal as archbishop of Canterbury. The following fall Hooker preached at Paul’s Cross, with the bishop of London (Aylmer) in attendance. Although the two extant sermons from Hooker’s Oxford days stand squarely within the Calvinist mainstream, the Paul’s Cross sermon (now lost) dealt with predestination along lines that alarmed the godly. In the fall of 1584 Hooker also resigned his Oxford fellowship, having been presented the living of Drayton Beauchamp and, six months later, appointed master of the Temple (the church serving one of the Inns of Court). He preached Of the certainty at the Temple in This introduction covers only the first part of Hooker’s career; for the second, see the introduction to Hooker’s Laws in the ecclesiology readings . 1

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late 1585, the second of a series of sermons on Habakkuk, of which only this and A learned discourse of justification survive. A half-century later, Hooker’s position would be described as “pure Canterbury.”2 In 1585 Hooker’s stance is these sermons was, as Bauckham notes, “simply his own” (41), but the Habakkuk sermons mark perhaps the first attempt by a Church of England divine to rethink the increasingly Calvinist premises of Elizabethan orthodoxy: the first stage of what Peter Lake half-­seriously termed Hooker’s invention of Anglicanism (Anglicans, 230). However, to Walter Travers, who, had it not been for Whitgift’s veto, would himself have been the new master of the Temple, Hooker’s teaching sounded alarmingly like “that wherewith Coranus [del Corro] sometime troubled this Church” (FLE, 5:198)—­at least that is how he put it in his 1586 complaint to the Privy Council. Travers was a committed presbyterian; driven out of Cambridge in 1571, he ended up in Beza’s Geneva. Upon his return to England in 1580, Lord Burghley (who had a big-­tent vision of the English Church and consistently sought both to draw back in those straying beyond the pegs and also to stretch its fabric to the very limits of the ridge pole) found Travers a post as deputy to the elderly master of the Temple, Richard Alvey. Travers had hoped to succeed Alvey, but given his irregular ordination and open non-­conformity, neither Whitgift nor the Queen could be brought to approve him. Upon Hooker’s appointment, Travers first sought to win him over, and when this effort had failed, started preaching afternoon counter-­sermons against the errors of Hooker’s morning ones. Such pulpit wrangling was forbidden, and in March of 1586 Whitgift silenced Travers, who appealed his suspension to the Privy Council via a manuscript account of how, faced with the new master’s obstinate persistence in error, it was his duty to defend God’s cause. Hooker’s response was, first, to provide Whitgift with his “Answer to the Supplication” (1586) and then to begin his magisterial Laws of ecclesiastical polity, portions of which, with separate introductions, can be found earlier in this volume. [\

“Of the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect” breaks with the godly ordo salutis at two major points. First, Hooker jettisons the Law-­to-­Gospel paradigm. “Law” remains a key term throughout Hooker’s sermon, but it refers to God’s promises—­above all, his promise of goodness and mercy to his people. The Reformed sense of the Law—­the mirror disclosing one’s own catastrophic guilt and thereby driving the sinner to fall prostrate before his Savior—­simply vanishes, and with it, not only the structure of Reformed spirituality but also much of the rationale for puritanism.3 If salvation does not require a sense of overwhelming personal sinfulness, then there is no need (at least no theological need) to label sinful as many things as possible. Travers, however, says nothing about Hooker’s redefinition of “Law.” His principal objection to Hooker’s sermon, Travers explained to the Privy Council, was its claim “that the assurance of that we believe by the word is not so certain as of that we perceive by sense” (FLE 5:200). From the standpoint of Calvinist experimental predestinarianism, which up 2 Thomas Fuller, The history of the worthies of England (London, 1662), 264. For the influence of Hooker’s sermon on later divines (including Laud, Chillingworth, and Baxter), see Shuger, “Faith.” 3 I.e., in the sense of preciseness, scrupulosity: the strict-­Sabbath, no-­dancing sort of puritanism.

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to 1584 had supplied the Elizabethan Church’s only pastoral theology, this dislodged “the foundation-­stone” on which “the confidence of the Calvinist” rested: that assurance—­ where “assurance” means subjective certainty of one’s own salvation—­is both possible and essential (Porter, 310). So for Calvin faith simply is a “full and fixed assuredness, such as men are wont to have of things found by experience and proved” (Institutes 3.2.15). It takes little imagination to see that this Reformed teaching might terrify those who fell short of such certainty. Indeed, the Calvinist divines in this section address the anguish of these weak believers, each offering some version of Calvin’s own reassurance that “the faithful have a perpetual strife with their own distrustfulness,” for “in all things alway unbelief is mingled with faith” (Institutes 3.2.16–­18). Yet such words of comfort sit in uncomfortable proximity to contradictory claims about the “full and fixed assuredness” felt by the elect, and by them alone. Given the central role of sola fides in Protestant theology, the incoherence plaguing the Reformed accounts of the nature of saving faith is a serious problem. Hooker solves it, but to do so he must jettison assurance, thereby arousing Travers’ ire. The sermon makes the case against assurance on epistemic grounds: that is, on the grounds that, with regard to spiritual realities, certainty in the ordinary evidential sense is not possible because spiritual realities are not, to us, evident.4 The crucial distinction Hooker then introduces between the certainties of evidence and adherence comes from Aquinas’ explanation as to how, if faith requires assent under conditions of insufficient evidence, such assent can be total rather than merely tentative: how it is that people who will not risk five dollars for their opinions will die for what they believe. In such cases, Aquinas argues, the will commands the intellect to cling to that which it cannot clearly see; and the will, in turn, takes the risk because it apprehends the object of faith as good.5 The certainty of faith is thus a matter of adherence rather than evidence; and for Hooker, as for Aquinas, “this certainty is greater in us” than, but also (pace Calvin) essentially different from, such certainty as “men are wont to have of things found by experience and proved.” The will’s command does not, Aquinas notes, quiet the restless motion of the intellect, which continues to puzzle over “those things which it believes, even though it assents to them with absolute firmness. For just taken by itself, the intellect is not satisfied.”6 Hooker’s certainty of adherence further differs from Calvinist assurance in that the object of certainty is not principally one’s own salvation. The overriding issue in “Of the certainty” is not whether I am saved but whether God is good. The problem that haunts the second half of the sermon is not merely the insufficiency of the evidence for the promise but the apparent contradiction between the evidence and the promise. The sermon, that is, seeks to respond to the fear that the reality of suffering—­both one’s own and the world’s—­belies God’s justice and love. Hence at times true faith can only be weak faith, a striving to believe “against all reason of believing,” to believe despite the counter-­evidence adduced by Satan, who “laboreth continually to pervert . . . the mind For a fuller discussion of this epistemic model, see Shuger, “Faith.” The will’s natural object is the good. Hence, as Voak observes, although a demon is “compelled by the evidence to believe in Christian doctrine” (after all, he’s seen hell), his will plays no role in the matter. This is to say that the demons know; they do not believe. See Voak, 198–­99. 6 Shuger, “Faith,” 238. 4 5

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with vain imaginations of repugnancy and contrariety between the promise of God and those things which sense or experience . . . hath inprinted” . If it seems (and it should) hard to grasp how believing against the evidence could result in anything other than delusion, one might try replacing Hooker’s “Satan” with “Iago” as the name for the one who dangles before our eyes the evidence that shatters our belief in what we love. Othello transposes the epistemic scenario of Hooker’s sermon: where evidence discredits faith, and faith crumbles in the face of ocular proof to the contrary, and yet in the end it was the proof, not the promise, that turns out to have been the cheat. The Shakespearean analogy helps clarify why believing against the evidence need not be self-­deception, but also why “the perfectest that have lived upon earth” at times can “but faintly and fearfully believe” . [\ Sources: ODNB (Corro, Hooker, Rainolds, Travers); Bauckham, “Hooker, Travers, and the Church of Rome,” Journal of Ecclesiastical Hististory 29 (1978): 37–­50; Edward Boehmer, “Antonio del Corro,” in Bibliotheca Wiffeniana: Spanish reformers of two centuries from 1520, 3 vols. (Strassburg, 1904), 3:1–­146; Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 1519–­1583 (Berkeley, 1979); Hooker, FLE; Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism; Lake, Anglicans; Lake, “The ‘Anglican’ moment,” in Anglicanism and the Western Christian tradition, ed. Stephen Platten (Norwich, 2003), 90–­122; Porter, Reformation and Reaction; Debora Shuger, “Faith and assurance,” in A companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, 2008), 221–­50; Nigel Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed theology (Oxford, 2003); Izaak Walton, Lives (London, 1858).

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A learned and comfortable sermon of the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect

1585 (pub. 1612)

Habakkuk 1:41 Whether the Prophet Habakkuk, by admitting this cogitation into his mind, the Law doth fail, did thereby show himself an unbeliever.

. . .

That mere natural men do neither know nor acknowledge the things of God we do not marvel, because they are spiritually to be discerned; but they in whose hearts the light of grace doth shine, they that are taught of God, why are they so weak in faith? Why is their assenting to the Law so scrupulous, so much mingled with fear and wavering? It seemeth strange that ever they should imagine the Law to fail. It cannot seem strange if we weigh the reason. If the things which we believe be considered in themselves, it may truly be said that faith is more certain than any science. That which we know either by sense or by infallible demonstration is not so certain as the principles, articles, and conclusions of Christian faith. Concerning which we must note that there is a certainty of evidence and a certainty of adherence. Certainty of evidence we call that, when the mind doth assent unto this or that, not because it is true in itself, but because the truth is clear, because it is manifest to us. Of things in themselves most certain, except they be also most evident, our persuasion is not so assured as it is of things more evident, although in themselves they be less certain. It is as sure, if not surer, that there be spirits as that there be men; but we be more assured of these than of them, because these are more evident. The truth of some things is so evident that no man which heareth them can doubt of them: as when we hear that a part of any thing is less than the whole, the mind is constrained to say this is true. If it were so in matters of faith, then, as all men have equal certainty of this, so no believer should be more scrupulous and doubtful than another. But we find the contrary. The angels & spirits of the righteous in heaven have certainty most evident of things {“Therefore the Law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth” (KJV).} 1

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spiritual, but this they have by the light of glory. That which we see by the light of grace, though it be indeed more certain, yet is it not to us so evidently certain as that which sense or the light of nature will not suffer a man to doubt of. Proofs are vain & frivolous except they be more certain than is the thing proved; and do we not see how the Spirit everywhere in the Scripture proveth matters of faith, laboreth to confirm us in the thing which we believe, by things whereof we have sensible knowledge? I conclude therefore that we have less certainty of evidence concerning things believed than concerning sensible or naturally perceived. Of these who doth doubt at any time? Of them at some time who doubteth not? I will not here allege the sundry confessions of the perfectest that have lived upon earth concerning their great imperfections this way—­which if I did, I should dwell too long upon a matter sufficiently known by every faithful man that doth know himself. The other, which we call the certainty of adherence, is when the heart doth cleave and stick unto that which it doth believe. This certainty is greater in us than the other. The reason is this. The faith of a Christian doth apprehend the words of the Law, the promises of God, not only as true but also as good; and therefore, even then when the evidence which he hath of the truth is so small that it grieveth him to feel his weakness in assenting thereto, yet is there in him such a sure adherence unto that which he doth but faintly and fearfully believe, that his spirit having once truly tasted the heavenly sweetness thereof, all the world is not able quite and clean to remove him from it, but he striveth with himself to hope against all reason of believing, being settled with Job upon this unmoveable resolution, Though God kill me I will not give over trusting in him. For why? This lesson remaineth forever imprinted in him, It is good for me to cleave unto God. Psal. 73. Now the minds of all men being so darkened as they are with the foggy damp of original corruption, it cannot be that any man’s heart living should be either so enlightened in the knowledge or so established in the love of that wherein his salvation standeth as to be perfect, neither doubting nor shrinking at all. If any such were, what doth let why that man should not be justified by his own inherent righteousness? For righteousness inherent, being perfect, will justify. And perfect faith is a part of perfect righteousness inherent; yea, a principal part, the root and the mother of all the rest; so that if the fruit of every tree be such as the root is, faith being perfect, as it is if it be not at all mingled with distrust and fear, what is there to exclude other Christian virtues from the like perfections? And then what need we the righteousness of Christ? His garment is superfluous; we may be honorably clothed with our own robes, if it be thus. But let them beware who challenge to themselves a strength which they have not, lest they lose the comfortable support of that weakness which indeed they have. . . . That2 which cometh last of all in this first branch to be considered concerning the weakness of the Prophet’s faith: whether he did by this very thought, the Law doth fail, quench the Spirit, fall from faith, and show himself an unbeliever or no. The question is of moment, the repose and tranquility of infinite souls doth depend upon it. The Prophet’s case is the case of many; which way soever we cast for him, the same way it passeth for all others. If in him this cogitation did extinguish grace, why the like thoughts in us should {At this point, paragraph divisions largely cease; we have added breaks to clarify the structure of the argument.} 2

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not take the like effect, there is no cause. Forasmuch therefore as the matter is weighty, dear and precious which we have in hand, it behooveth us with so much the greater chariness to wade through it, taking special heed both what we build & whereon we build: that if our building be pearl, our foundation be not stubble; if the doctrine we teach be full of comfort and consolation, the ground whereupon we gather it be sure; otherwise we shall not save but deceive both ourselves and others. In this we know we are not deceived, neither can we deceive you, when we teach that the faith whereby ye are sanctified cannot fail; it did not in the Prophet; it shall not in you. If it be so, let the difference be showed between the condition of unbelievers and his, in this or in the like imbecility & weakness. There was in Habakkuk that which S. John doth call the seed of God, meaning thereby the first grace which God poureth into the hearts of them that are incorporated into Christ; which having received, if, because it is an adversary unto sin, we do therefore think we sin not—­both otherwise, and also by distrustful and doubtful apprehending of that which we ought steadfastly to believe—­surely we do but deceive ourselves. Yet they which are of God do not sin either in this or in anything any such sin as doth quite extinguish grace, clean cut them off from Christ Jesus, because the seed of God abideth in them and doth shield them from receiving any irremediable wound. Their faith when it is at strongest is but weak; yet even then when it is at the weakest, so strong that utterly it never faileth, it never perisheth altogether, no not in them who think it extinguished in themselves. There are for whose sakes I dare not deal slightly in this cause, sparing that labor which must be bestowed to make it plain. Men in like agonies unto this of the Prophet Habakkuk’s are through extremity of grief many times in judgment so confounded that they find not themselves in themselves. For that which dwelleth in their hearts they seek, they make diligent search and enquiry. It abideth, it worketh in them, yet still they ask, where? Still they lament as for a thing which is past finding; they mourn as Rachel and refuse to be comforted, as if that were not, which indeed is; and as if that which is not, were; as if they did not believe when they do, & as if they did despair when they do not. Which in some, I grant, is but a melancholy passion, proceeding only from that dejection of mind the cause whereof is in the body, and by bodily means can be taken away. But where there is no such bodily cause, the mind is not lightly in this mood but by some of these three occasions. One, that judging by comparison, either with other men or with themselves at some other time more strong, they think imperfection to be a plain deprivation, weakness to be utter want of faith. Another cause is, they often mistake one thing for another. Saint Paul, wishing well to the church of Rome, prayeth for them after this sort, The God of hope fill you with all joy of believing. Hence an error groweth when men in heaviness of spirit suppose they lack faith because they find not the sugared joy and delight, which indeed doth accompany faith, but so as a separable accident, as a thing that may be removed from it. Yea, there is a cause why it should be removed. The light would never be so acceptable were it not for that usual intercourse of darkness. Too much honey doth turn to gall, and too much joy, even spiritually, would make us wantons. Happier a great deal is that man’s case whose soul by inward desolation is humbled than he whose heart is through abundance of spiritual delight lifted up and exalted above measure. Better it is sometimes to go down into the pit with him, who beholding darkness and bewailing the loss of inward joy & consolation, 548



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crieth from the bottom of the lowest hell, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? than continually to walk arm in arm with angels, to sit as it were in Abraham’s bosom, and to have no thought, no cogitation but, I thank my God it is not with me as it is with other men. No, God will have them that shall walk in light to feel now and then what it is to sit in the shadow of death. A grieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless mind. A third occasion of men’s misjudging themselves, as if they were faithless when they are not, is they fasten their cogitations upon the distrustful suggestions of the flesh, whereof finding great abundance in themselves, they gather thereby, surely unbelief hath full dominion, it hath taken plenary possession of me; if I were faithful, it could not be thus—­not marking the motions of the Spirit and of faith because they lie buried and overwhelmed with the contrary. When notwithstanding, as the blessed Apostle doth acknowledge that the Spirit groaneth and that God heareth when we do not, so there is no doubt but that our faith may have and hath her privy operations, secret to us in whom, yet known to him by whom they are. Tell this to a man that hath a mind deceived by too hard an opinion of himself, and it doth but augment his grief; he hath his answer ready: will you make me think otherwise than I find, than I feel in myself? I have thoroughly considered and exquisitely sifted all the corners of my heart, and I see what there is; never seek to persuade me against my knowledge. I do not, I know I do not believe. Well, to favor them a little in their weakness, let that be granted which they do imagine: be it that they are faithless and without belief. But are they not grieved for their unbelief? They are. Do they not wish it might and also strive that it may be otherwise? We know they do. Whence cometh this but from a secret love and liking which they have of those things that are believed? No man can love things which in his own opinion are not. And if they think those things to be, which they show that they love when they desire to believe them, then must it needs be that, by desiring to believe, they prove themselves true believers. For without faith no man thinketh that things believed are. Which argument all the subtlety of infernal powers will never be able to dissolve. The faith therefore of true believers, though it have many and grievous downfalls, yet doth it still continue invincible; it conquereth and recovereth itself in the end. The dangerous conflicts whereunto it is subject are not able to prevail against it. The Prophet Habakkuk remained faithful in weakness, though weak in faith. It is true, such is our weak and wavering nature, that we have no sooner received grace, but we are ready to fall from it; we have no sooner given our assent to the Law that it cannot fail, but the next conceit which we are ready to embrace is that it may and that it doth fail. Though we find in ourselves a most willing heart to cleave unseparably unto God, even so far as to think unfeignedly with Peter, Lord I am ready to go with thee into prison and to death, yet how soon and how easily, upon how small occasions are we changed, if we be but a while let alone and left unto ourselves? . . . Again, the desire of our ghostly enemy is so uncredible and his means so forcible to overthrow our faith, that whom the blessed Apostle knew betrothed and made handfast unto Christ, to them he could not write but with great trembling: I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I have prepared you to one husband to present you a pure virgin unto Christ; but I fear lest as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ. The simplicity of faith which is in Christ taketh the naked promise of God, his bare word, and on that it resteth. This simplicity the serpent laboreth continually to pervert, corrupting 549



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the mind with many imaginations of repugnancy and contrariety between the promise of God and those things which sense or experience or some other foreconceived persuasion hath imprinted. The word of the promise of God unto his people is, I will not leave thee nor forsake thee. Upon this, the simplicity of faith resteth, and it is not afraid of famine. But mark how the subtlety of Satan did corrupt the minds of that rebellious generation, whose spirits were not faithful unto God. They beheld the desolate state of the desert in which they were, and by the wisdom of their sense concluded the promise of God to be but folly: Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? . . . The word of the promise of God by Moses and the prophets made the Savior of the world so apparent unto Philip that his simplicity could conceive no other Messias than Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. But to stay Nathaniel lest, being invited to come and see, he should also believe and so be saved, the subtlety of Satan casteth a mist before his eyes, putteth in his head against this the common conceived persuasion of all men concerning Nazareth: Is it possible that a good thing should come from thence? This stratagem he doth use with so great dexterity, the minds of all men are so strangely ensorceled {i.e., bewitched} with it, that it bereaveth them for the time of all perceivance of that which should relieve them and be their comfort; yea, it taketh all remembrance from them even of things wherewith they are most familiarly acquainted. The people of Israel could not be ignorant that he which led them through the sea was able to feed them in the desert; but this was obliterated and put out by the sense of their present want. Feeling the hand of God against them in their food, they remembered not his hand in the day that he delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. . . . Had Nathaniel never noted how God doth choose the base things of this world to disgrace them that are most honorably esteemed? The Prophet Habakkuk knew that the promises of grace, protection, and favor which God in the Law doth make unto his people do not grant them any such immunity as can free and exempt them from all chastisements; he knew that as God said, I will continue my mercy forever towards them, so he likewise said, their transgressions I will punish with a rod; he knew that it cannot stand with any reason we should set the measure of our own punishments and prescribe unto God how great or how long our sufferings shall be; he knew that we were blind and altogether ignorant what is best for us, that we sue for many things very unwisely against ourselves, thinking we ask fish when indeed we crave a serpent; he knew that when the thing we ask is good, and yet God seemeth slow to grant it, he doth not deny but defer our petitions, to the end we might learn to desire great things greatly: all this he knew. But beholding the land which God had severed for his own people, and seeing it abandoned unto heathen nations; viewing how reproachfully they did tread it down and wholly make havoc of it at their pleasure; beholding the Lord’s own royal seat made an heap of stones, his Temple defiled, the carcasses of his servants cast out for the fowls of the air to devour, and the flesh of his meek ones for the beasts of the field to feed upon; being conscious to himself how long and how earnestly he had cried, Succor us, ô God of our welfare, for the glory of thine own name; and feeling that their sore was still increased: the conceit of repugnancy between this which was object to his eyes, and that which faith upon promise of the Law did look for, made so deep an impression and so strong, that he disputeth not the matter, but without any further enquiry or search inferreth as we see, The Law doth fail. Of us, who is here which cannot very soberly advise his brother, Sir you must learn to strengthen your faith by that experience which heretofore you have had of God’s great 550



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goodness towards you; per ea quae agnoscas praestita, discas sperare promissa; By those things which you have known performed, learn to hope for those things which are promised. Do you acknowledge to have received much? Let that make you certain to receive more. Habenti dabitur; To him that hath more shall be given. When you doubt what you shall have, search what you have had at God’s hands. Make this reckoning, that the benefits which he hath bestowed are bills obligatory & sufficient sureties that he will bestow further. His present mercy is still a warrant of his future love, because whom he loveth, he loveth unto the end. Is it not thus? Yet if we could reckon up as many evident, clear, undoubted signs of God’s reconciled love towards us as there are years, yea days, yea hours passed over our heads, all these set together have not such force to confirm our faith as the loss, and sometimes the only fear of losing a little transitory goods, credit, honor, or favor of men—­a small calamity, a matter of nothing—­to breed a conceit, and such a conceit as is not easily again removed, that we are clean crossed out of God’s book, that he regards us not, that he looketh upon others but passeth by us like a stranger to whom we are not known. Then we think, looking upon others and comparing them with ourselves: their tables are furnished day by day; earth and ashes are our bread. They sing to the lute and they see their children dance before them; our hearts are heavy in our bodies as lead, our sighs beat as thick as a swift pulse, our tears do wash the beds wherein we lie. The sun shineth fair upon their foreheads; we are hanged up like bottles in the smoke, cast into corners like the shards of a broken pot. Tell not us of the promises of God’s favor; tell such as do reap the fruit of them; they belong not to us; they are made to others; the Lord be merciful to our weakness, but thus it is. Well, let the frailty of our nature, the subtlety of Satan, the force of our deceivable imaginations be, as we cannot deny but they are, things that threaten every moment the utter subversion of our faith; faith notwithstanding is not hazarded by these things. That which one sometimes told the Senators of Rome, Ego sic existimabam, P.C., uti patrem saepe meum praedicantem audiveram, qui vestram amicitiam diligenter colerent, eos multum laborem suscipere, caeterùm ex omnibus maximè tutos esse; As I have often heard my father acknowledge, so I myself did ever think, that the friends & favorers of this state charged themselves with great labor, but no man’s condition so safe as theirs.3 The same we may say a great deal more justly in this case: our fathers and prophets, our Lord and Master hath full often spoken; by long experience we have found it true: as many as have entered their names in the mystical book of life, eos maximum laborem suscipere, they have taken upon them a laborsome, a toilsome, a painful profession, sed omnium maximè tutos esse, but no man’s security like to theirs. Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat. Here is our toil. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.4 This is our safety. No man’s condition so sure as ours: the prayer of Christ is more than sufficient both to strengthen us, be we never so weak, and to overthrow all adversary power, be it never so strong and potent. His prayer must not exclude our labor: their thoughts are vain who think that their watching can preserve the city which God himself is not willing to keep; and are not theirs as vain who think that God will keep the city for which they themselves are not careful 3 4

[Sallust, Jugurth c. 14] {Luke 22:31-­32}

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to watch? The husbandman may not therefore burn his plow nor the merchant forsake his trade because God hath promised, I will not forsake thee. . . . To our own safety, our own sedulity is required. And then blessed for ever and ever be that mother’s child whose faith hath made him the child of God. The earth may shake, the pillars of the world may tremble under us; the countenance of the heaven may be appalled, the sun may lose his light, the moon her beauty, the stars their glory: but concerning the man that trusteth in God, if the fire have proclaimed itself unable as much as to singe a hair of his head; if lions, beasts ravenous by nature and keen with hunger, being set to devour, have as it were religiously adored the very flesh of the faithful man, what is there in the world that shall change his heart, overthrow his faith, alter his affection towards God, or the affection of God to him? If I be of this note, who shall make a separation between me and my God? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No. I am persuaded that neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, nor death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall ever prevail so far over me.5 I know in whom I have believed; I am not ignorant whose precious blood hath been shed for me; I have a Shepherd full of kindness, full of care, and full of power; unto him I commit myself; his own finger hath engraven this sentence in the tables of my heart: Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat, but I have prayed that thy faith fail not. Therefore the assurance of my hope I will labor to keep as a jewel unto the end, and by labor, through the gracious mediation of his prayer, I shall keep it. [\ T ext: Richard Hooker, A learned and comfortable sermon of the certaintie and perpetuitie of faith in the elect; especially of the Prophet Habakkuks faith (Oxford, 1612) (NSTC 13707).

5

{Paraphrased from Rom 8:35-­39}

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ARTHUR DENT (1552/3–­1603)

The plain man’s pathway to heaven

Dent, who came from a prosperous Leicestershire family, matriculated in 1571 at Christ’s College, Cambridge, which throughout the decade served as a breeding ground for godly ministers: George Gifford (of whom more shall be said shortly) was there until 1573; Perkins entered in 1577. Dent received his BA in 1576, his MA in 1579. He had been ordained priest in 1578, about the time he left Cambridge to serve as curate in Danbury, Essex, less than five miles from Maldon, where Gifford was curate. Within the next two years, both men found themselves cited before the archdeacon of Essex for minor nonconformity, but in 1579 the bishop of London (Aylmer) licensed Dent to preach throughout his diocese and in 1580 instituted him to the rectory of South Shoebury, Essex, a small, rural parish on the southern coast. Gifford stayed on at Maldon, where in 1581 he published A briefe discourse of certaine points of the religion which is among the common sort of Christians, which may bee termed the countrie divinitie, the work that two decades later Dent would transform into A plain man’s pathway (PMP). In Whitgift’s 1583–­1584 campaign to enforce conformity, Dent and Gifford were among the seven preachers Aylmer interviewed as to their intentions; they were also both among the twenty-­seven Essex ministers who, faced with suspension, petitioned the Privy Council to intervene on their behalf. Both ministers were part of the presbyterian underground during the 1580s, and neither conformed. Dent, however, managed to avoid trouble, whereas Gifford was suspended from 1586 to 1589. (It was during those years that he served as chaplain to Essex’ army in the Low Countries and there ministered to the dying Sir Philip Sidney.) After the collapse of the presbyterian underground (or classis movement) in the early 1590s, Dent, like many puritan clergy, “abandoned political for pastoral courses” (ODNB). He had already published a popular work of practical divinity, A sermon on repentance (1582). The plain man’s pathway of 1601 “enjoyed unparalleled success” (ODNB). A four-­ way dialogue in which “the central themes of late Elizabethan puritanism were laid bare with compelling force,” PMP ran through twenty-­five editions by 1640. Like Perkins’ A 553



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golden chain , the work embodies the experimental predestinarianism of Elizabethan Cambridge’s moderate puritans; but its principal model was Gifford’s 1581 Brief discourse (better known as The country divinity). Some of the most memorable exchanges between Asunetus and Theologus have been lifted almost verbatim from Gifford, who had died a year before Dent published his version.1 [\

The narrative unfolding of PMP exemplifies the classic puritan ordo salutis, where the preaching of the Law produces opposite effects in the reprobate and the elect, hardening the one, leading the other to repentance and the Gospel.2 The preaching of the Law that converts Asunetus involves his point by point examination on the Ten Commandments, precipitating his horrified discovery that he has failed of the perfect righteousness they demand and thus deserves to be punished eternally. Here the Law functions as the mirror showing the sinner his own deformity and thereby driving him to seek the alien righteousness of Christ. However, the preceding section on the signs of condemnation—­ a discussion that takes up nearly half the entire dialogue—­illustrates a second function of the Law in Reformed theology: to provide a body of rules for the godly discipline of personal conduct and the social order. Understood in this second sense, the Law does not demand an impossible holiness but the reformation of manners. In recent scholarship, PMP comes to have an additional two-­fold significance. First, archival sources bear out Dent’s portrayal of Asunetus and Antilegon strongly enough to warrant taking their views as typical of a large number of flesh-­and-­blood Elizabethans (see Haigh [2000], 572–­73; [2007], 12). That is, despite Dent’s ferocious ideological prejudices, he somehow managed to create characters who do not simply reflect a godly minister’s view of his country parishioners but also hold a mirror up to the otherwise largely invisible view such parishioners had of their godly ministers. Second, PMP (together with The country divinity) plays a central role in the revisionist historiography of the late twentieth century: above all, in Christopher Haigh’s challenge to the then-­dominant picture of the Elizabethan Church as squarely in the Reformed camp, puritans being simply the devout wing of a broad Calvinist consensus.3 Haigh argued that if this picture were accurate—­if, that is, Dent represented the authentic voice of the English Reformation—­ then one must conclude that the Reformation had failed: its clergy may have been Protestant, but its people were not. Asunetus finally succumbs to his minister’s terror tactics (fulfilling Sir John Harington’s definition of puritans as “protestants scared out of their wits”), yet his counterpart in Gifford resists to the end, as does Dent’s Antilegon. And even Asunetus holds out for 375 pages. 1 The two men clearly knew each other, and it is conceivable that Dent collaborated with Gifford in 1581 or that Gifford later encouraged Dent to bring his inconclusive debate between a godly minister and wary parishioner to a successful conversion). 2 On the significance of placing repentance before faith—­thus reversing Calvin’s ordo—­see Kendall, 27–­28, 37–­41. 3 This position—­splendidly argued by Patrick Collinson, Nicholas Tyacke, and Peter Lake—­supplanted a puritans-­versus-­A nglicans model.

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Haigh’s early essays saw Asunetus and his ilk as “bumpkins,” whose “residual religion” was “an essentially negative phenomenon,” resulting from the clergy’s inability “to ‘sell’ the reformed Gospel to the unlearned and illiterate.” His more recent work, however, proposes that Asunetus’ “parish anglicanism” (Haigh’s wonderful label), no less than Theologus’ aggressive Calvinism, represented “a valid and active strand of piety within the Established Church” and at all social levels.4 If this is so, moreover, then Asunetus’ resistance to Theologus, rather than betray the grassroots’ failure of the English Reformation, stages a debate between two very different visions of post-­Reformation English Christianity. This is not, of course, how Theologus understands his position vis-­à-­vis that of Asunetus; for him the debate is not between varieties of Christianity but rather between mere civil honesty and true godliness. His insistence that the former has no bearing on salvation seems proof positive of James Simpson’s claim that Protestantism broke the connection between church and marketplace, religious inwardness and social ethics (361–­ 63, 368). Theologus’ revisions of the “signs of assurance,” which step by step replace the virtues of the initial list (industry, compassion, humility) with subjective states (“assured faith in the promises,” “inward peace”), point in the same direction . Some connection remains, since Theologus includes the faithful service for the common good among the signs of regeneration and fiercely denounces oppression of the poor . Yet although PMP devotes over half its pages to the nine “signs of condemnation,” oppression is the only sign that is principally a sin against one’s neighbor. Moreover, oppression, as Theologus defines it, concerns the exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful.5 It is not a sin Asunetus could commit, nor, one suspects, any of Dent’s South Shoebury parishioners—­nor, indeed, most of his readers. None of Dent’s “signs of condemnation,” that is to say, really concerns wronging other people—­and this despite the fact that his signs are by and large a reworking of the medieval deadly sins. Five correspond to one or another deadly sin (pride, covetousness, whoredom, idleness, and drunkenness).6 Envy and wrath, however, have no counterpart in Dent. Their omission is startling, both having traditionally been considered grave wrongs. These are, moreover, the sins that matter most to Asunetus. When describing his own understanding of the pathway to heaven, he repeatedly stresses that a good Christian will “say no body harm nor do no body harm” . Asunetus requires “a good faith in God” as well, but Dent’s text makes the not-­committing sins of aversion central to the plain man’s divinity and conspicuously peripheral to that of Theologus. Their divergence traces a major fault line fissuring post-­Reformation Christendom: the split between what John Bossy calls the “moral tradition,” where being a Christian means “love{ing} your neighbor, and in particular your enemy”—­which equates sin with doing somebody harm, and peacemaking with the core mission of the Church—­and the rather more “hard-­edged . . . Christian disciplina” championed by the Reformed godly but also by prominent Catholic reformers like Charles Borromeo, who showed a distinctly Haigh [1993], 283; Walsham, 630–­32. See also Shuger, “Protesting”; Maltby. Dent, The plain mans path-way (London, 1607), 182–­83. 6 Of Dent’s four additional signs, swearing and contempt of the Gospel are offenses against God alone, while lying offends against both God and one’s fellow man; oppression is principally a wronging of others, but qua inferior rather than qua neighbor. 4 5

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puritan hostility towards the various customs and institutions (e.g., church ales, carnival) “with which traditional Catholicism had sought to create a Christian sociability” (Peace, 2–­3, 12). Asunetus stands on the side of Bossy’s moral tradition, as do Haigh’s “parish anglicans,” with their stress on the “communal values of village harmony” and public worship ([1993], 291). Haigh tends to regard this as an undemanding piety, to which Bossy responds by calling attention to George Herbert’s “conviction that neighborhood, charity, community entail hard work” and to the traditional conviction that love of one’s enemy was the supreme Christian virtue in part because this was “hardest of all” (Peace, 81; see Christianity in the West, 36). It is to Dent’s credit that he allows his plain men to ask hard questions. They often prove to be questions for which Theologus has no good answer, although the power of Dent’s rhetoric often propels the reader over the holes in the logic. At crucial junctures, Theologus simply contradicts an assertion he has just made, the opposed statements in such close proximity that Dent must have seen the problem. Thus in answer to his friend Philagathon’s query whether the elect ever experience doubt, Theologus replies that they sometimes feel “little grudgings,” which “the children of God . . . easily overcome”; barely a page further on, however, he declares that “God’s children . . . may fall into fits and pangs of despair,” and are sometimes “brought very low, even unto death’s door” with “burning fits of temptation” . This exchange in fact begins with Theologus affirming the experimental Calvinist position regarding assurance—­that “we must fetch the warrant of our salvation from within ourselves: even from the work of God within us”—­a position that, when the discussion then veers to the problem of doubt, he rejects in favor of the opposite view that we must not look “downward to ourselves” for assurance, but only “upward to Christ” . In the end, it is not the minister’s evangelical and Scriptural arguments that convert Asunetus, but a bloodcurdling, thirty-­page (in the 1607 edition) set-­piece on the Last Judgment in full dies irae mode.7 [\ Sources: Bossy, Christianity in the West; Bossy, Peace; Patrick Collinson, English puritanism (London, 1983); Collinson, Godly people; Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: religion, politics, and society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993); Haigh, “The taming of Reformation: preachers, pastors and parishioners in Elizabethan and early Stuart England,” History 85 (2000): 572–­88; Haigh, Pathways to heaven (Oxford, 2007); Peter Lake, “Calvinism and the English Church 1570–­1635,” Past and Present 114 (1987): 32–­76; Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and people in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998); ODNB; Shuger, “Protesting”; James Simpson, Reformation and cultural revolution: 1350–­1547, The Oxford English Literary History, vol. 2 (Oxford, 2002); Alexandra Walsham, “The Parochial Roots of Laudianism Revisited: Catholics, Anti-­Calvinists and ‘Parish Anglicans’ in Early Stuart England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49 (1998): 620–­51.

On the medievalism of Dent’s fiery, vivid, and alliterative preaching, see Maurice Hussey, “Arthur Dent’s ‘Plaine mans path-­way to heaven,’” Modern Language Review 44, no. 1 (1949): 26–­34. 7

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ARTHUR DENT

The plain man’s pathway to heaven1

1601

The contents of this dialogue: First, it showeth man’s misery in nature, with the means of recovery. Secondly, it sharply inveigheth against the iniquity of the time and common corruption of the world. Thirdly, it showeth the marks of the children of God, and of the reprobates, with the apparent signs of salvation and damnation. Fourthly, it declareth how hard a thing it is to enter into life, and how few shall enter. Fifthly, it layeth open the ignorance of the world, with the objections of the same. Last of all, it publisheth and proclaimeth the sweet promises of the Gospel, with the abundant mercies of God, to all that repent, believe, and truly turn unto him.

The epistle to the reader . . . One thing, dear Christian, I pray thee let me beg of thee: to wit, that thou wouldest not read two or three leaves of this book, and so cast it from thee; but that thou wouldest read it throughout even to the end. For I do assure thee, if there be any thing in it worth the reading, it is bestowed in the latter part thereof, and most of all towards the conclusion. . . . For this dialogue hath in it not the nature of a tragedy, which is begun with joy and ended with sorrow, but of a comedy, which is begun with sorrow and ended with joy. This book meddleth not at all with any controversies in the Church, or anything in the state ecclesiastical, but only entereth into a controversy with Satan and sin. . . . The Author of all blessing give a blessing unto it. The God of peace, which brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make us perfect in all good works, sanctify us

{In what follows we have changed all the references to “king” in our 1607 base text to the 1601 reading of “queen.”} 1

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throughout, amend all our imperfections, and keep us blameless until the day of his most glorious appearing, Amen. Thine in the Lord, A. D.

The plain man’s pathway to heaven Interlocutors:

Theologus, a divine Philagathus, an honest man2 Asunetus, an ignorant man Antilegon, a caviller

Philagathus: Well met, good Master Theologus. Theologus: What mine old friend, Philagathus! I am glad to see you in good health. Philag: Are you walking, Sir, here all alone in this pleasant meadow? Theol: Yea, for I take some pleasure at this time of the year to walk abroad in the fields for my recreation, both to take the fresh air and to hear the sweet singing of birds. Phila: Indeed, Sir, it is very comfortable, especially now in this pleasant month of May; and thanks be to God, hitherto we have had a very forward spring and as kindly a season as came this seven years. Theol: God doth abound towards us in mercies. O that we could abound towards him in thanksgiving. Philag: I pray you Sir, what a clock hold you it? Theol: I take it to be a little past one, for I came but even now from dinner. Philag: But behold, yonder cometh two men towards us. What be they I pray you? Theol: They be a couple of neighbors of the next parish: the one of them is called Asunetus, who in very deed is a very ignorant man in God’s matters; and the other is called Antilegon, a notable atheist and caviler against all goodness. Philag: If they be such, it were good for us to take some occasion to speak of matters of religion; it may be we shall do them some good. Theol: You have made a good motion. I like it well. If therefore you will minister some matter and move some questions, I will be ready to answer in the best sort I can. Philag: But stay, sir; lo here they come upon us. Theol: Welcome neighbors, welcome. How do you Asunetus, and you Antilegon? Asunetus: Well, God be thanked; and we are glad to see your mastership in good health. Theol: What make both of you here at this time of the day? There is some occasion I am sure draweth you this way. Asun: Indeed sir, we have some little business; for we came to talk with one of your parish about a cow we should buy of him. Theol: Hath my neighbor a cow to sell? Antilegon: We are told he hath a very good one to sell; but I am afraid at this time of the year, we shall find dear ware of her. Theol: How dear? What do you think a very good cow may be worth? 2

{“Honest” here means moral virtue, broadly construed, as in the Latin honestas.}

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Antileg: A good cow indeed, at this time of the year, is worth very near four pound, which is a great price. Theol: It is a very great price indeed. Philag: I pray you M. Theologus, leave off this talking of kine {i.e., cows} and worldly matters; and let us enter into some speech of matters of religion, whereby we may do good and take good, one of another. Theol: You say well, but it may be these men’s business requireth haste, so as they cannot stay. Asun: No sir, we are in no great haste; we can stay two or three hours, for the days are long; if we dispatch our business by night, it will serve our turn well enough. Theol: Then if it will please you to walk to yonder oak tree, there is a goodly arbor and handsome seats, where we may all sit in the shadow and confer of heavenly matters. . . . Asun: This is a goodly arbor indeed, and here be handsome seats. Theol: Sit you all down, I pray you. Now friend Philagathus, if you have any questions to move of matters of religion, we are all ready to hear you. Philag: It may be these men are somewhat ignorant of the very principles of religion; and therefore I think it not amiss to begin there, and so to make way for further matters. Theol: I pray you do so then. Philag: First, then I demand of you, in what state all men are born by nature? Theol: In the state of condemnation, as appeareth, Eph. 2:3. We are by nature the children of wrath as well as others. And again it is written: Behold I was born in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me. . . . . . . Philag: But forasmuch as some have dreamed that Adam by his fall hurt himself only and not his posterity, and that we have his corruption derived unto us by imitation and not by propagation, therefore I pray you show this more plainly. Theol: Even as great personages, by committing of treason, do not only hurt themselves but also stain their blood and disgrace their posterity; for the children of such nobles are disinherited, whose blood is attainted, till they be restored again by act of Parliament. Even so, our blood being attainted by Adam’s transgression, we can inherit nothing of right, till we be restored by Christ.3 Philag: Doth this hereditary infection and contagion overspread our whole nature? Theol: Yes truly, it is universal, extending itself throughout the whole man, both soul and body, both reason, understanding, will, and affections: for the Scriptures avouch that we are dead in sins and trespasses. . . . 3 {On attaint of blood in English treason law, see Blackstone, Commentaries, 4.29. The understanding of Adam’s sin as treason against God goes back to Anselm’s twelfth-­century Cur Deus homo. For a succinct restatement, see John Milton, Paradise Lost, 3.203 –­12.}

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. . . Philag: Can a man please God in anything which he doth, so long as he continueth in the state of nature? Theol: No, not in any thing. For till we be in the state of grace, even our best actions are sinful: as preaching, prayer, alms deeds, &c. . . .4 Philag: This is a very harsh and hard saying; I pray you, for my further instruction, make it more plain. Theol: Men in the state of nature may do those things which of themselves are good, but they do utterly fail in the manner of doing them; they do them not as they should be done: that is, in faith, love, zeal, conscience of obedience, &c., neither yet with any cheerfulness, delight, or feeling, but even as it were forcing themselves to do the outward actions. Thus did Cain sacrifice, the Pharisees pray, Ananias and Sapphira give alms, and the Jews offer up their oblations and burnt offerings. . . . Philag: Do you not think that all men, being merely natural, are under the curse of the Law? Theol: Yea, certainly; and not only so, but also under the very tyranny and dominion of Satan, though they know it not, see it not, feel it not, or perceive it not; for all that are not in Christ are under the curse of the Law and the power of darkness and the devil. . . . . . . Theol: True indeed, for few will believe the Scriptures. Few will believe this, because few feel it; where it is not felt, it can hardly be believed. Only the elect do feel it, and therefore only the elect do believe it. As for all others, they are the very prentices and bond-­slaves of the devil, which is a thousand times worse than to be a galley-­ slave. . . . . . . Theol: You must know this, that as there is a natural birth of the whole man; so there is also a spiritual birth of the whole man. Philag: How is that? Theol: When as the natural faculties of the soul—­as reason, understanding, will, and affections—­and the members of the body also, are so sanctified, purged, and rectified by grace that we understand, will, and desire that which is good. Philag: Can not a man will and desire that which is good before he be born again? Theol: No more than a dead man can desire the good things of this life. For man’s will is not free to consent unto good till it be enlarged by grace; and an unregenerate man 4

{See article 13 of the Thirty-nine articles .}

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doth sin necessarily, though not by constraint. For man’s will is free from constraint (for it sinneth of itself ), but not from thralldom unto sin. Philag: You speak as if a man could do no other thing but sin till the new work be wrought in him. Theol: That is mine opinion indeed. For a man & his flesh are all one, till he be regenerate; they agree together like man & wife; they join together in all evil. . . . ‡ Philag: It is a common opinion that if a man hold the truth in judgment, be no papist or heretic, but leadeth an honest civil life, then he must of necessity be saved. Theol: That followeth not; for many come so far, which yet notwithstanding have not the inward touch. Philag: That seemeth strange. For many will say, as long as they be neither whore nor thief, nor spotted with such like gross sins, they trust in God they shall be saved. Theol: They err, not knowing the Scriptures. For many thousands are in great danger of losing their souls forever which are free from such notorious and horrible vices. Nay, many which in the world are counted good honest men, good true dealers, good neighbors, and good townsmen. Asun: I pray you Sir, give me leave a little. I have heard all your speech hitherto, and I like reasonably well of it, but now I can forbear no longer; my conscience urgeth me to speak. . . . You say many such men are in danger of losing their souls, but I will never believe it while I live. For if such men be not saved, I cannot tell who shall. Theol: But you must learn to know out of the Scriptures that all outward honesty and righteousness, without the true knowledge and inward feeling of God, availeth not to eternal life. As our Savior Christ saith, Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. . . . Therefore you see that this outward honesty & civility, without the inward regeneration of the Spirit, availeth not to eternal life; and then consequently, all your honest worldly men are in great danger of losing their souls forever. Asun: What sound reason can you yield why such honest men should be condemned? Theol: Because many such are utterly void of all true knowledge of God and of his word. . . . Asun: You go too far; you judge too hardly of them. Theol: Not a whit. For all experience showeth that they mind, dream, and dote of nothing else, day and night, but this world, this world: lands and leases, grounds and livings, kine and sheep, and how to wax rich. All their thoughts, words, and works are of these and such like things. . . . Philag: I marvel much that such men should live so honestly to the world-­ward. Theol: No marvel at all; for many bad men, whose hearts are worm-­eaten within, yet for some outward and carnal respects do abstain from the gross act of sin: as some for credit, some for shame, some for fear of law, some for fear of punishment; but none for love of God, for zeal, or conscience of obedience. For it is a sure thing that the wicked may have that spirit which doth repress, but not that which doth renew. 561



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Philag: It seemeth then by your speeches that some which are not regenerate do in some things excel the children of God. Theol: Most certain it is that some of them in outward gifts and the outward carriage of themselves do go beyond some of the elect. Philag: Show me, I pray you, in what gifts. Theol: In learning, discretion, justice, temperance, prudence, patience, liberality, affability, kindness, courtesy, good nature, & such like. Philag: Me thinketh it should not be possible. Theol: Yes, truly. For some of God’s dear children, in whom no doubt the inward work is truly and soundly wrought, yet are so troubled & encumbered with a crabbed and crooked nature, and so clogged with some master sin—­as some with anger, some with pride, some with covetousness, some with lusts, some one way, and some another—­all which breaking out in them, do so blemish them and their profession that they cannot so shine forth unto men, as otherwise no doubt they would; and this is their wound, their grief, and their heart-­smart, and that which costeth them many a tear and many a prayer; and yet can they not get the full victory over them, but still they are left in them as the prick in the flesh to humble them. . . . Philag: . . . I pray you let us now proceed: and first of all tell me by what means the new birth is wrought. Theol: By the preaching of the word, as the outward means; and the secret work of the Spirit, as the inward means. Philag: Many hear the word preached and are nothing the better, but rather the worse. What, I pray you, is the cause of that? Theol: Men’s own incredulity and hardness of heart, because God in his wrath leaveth them to themselves and depriveth them of his Spirit, without the which all preaching is in vain. For except the Spirit do follow the word into our hearts, we can find no joy, taste, nor comfort therein. . . . Asun: Why may not a man have as good a faith to God-­ward that heareth no sermons, as he that heareth all the sermons in the world? Theol: Why may not he which eateth no meat be as fat and as well liking as he that eateth all the meat in the world? For is not the preaching of the word, the food of our souls? . . . Antileg: I marvel what good men do get by gadding to sermons and poring so much in the Scriptures; or what are they better than others? There are none more full of envy and malice then they. They will do their neighbor a shrewd turn as soon as anybody; and therefore in mine opinion, they be but a company of hypocrites and precise fools. 562



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Theol: You judge uncharitably. Full little do you know what they feel or what good God’s people get by hearing of his word. For the work of the Spirit in the hearts of the elect is very secret, and altogether hid from the world, as it is written. . . . The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Asun: Tush, tush; what needs all this ado? If a man say his Lord’s Prayer, his Ten Commandments, and his Belief,5 and keep them, and say no body no harm nor do no body no harm, and do as he would be done to, have a good faith to God-­ward, and be a man of God’s belief, no doubt he shall be saved, without all this running to sermons and prattling of the Scripture. Theol: Now you pour it out indeed. You think you have spoken wisely. But, alas, you have bewrayed your great ignorance. For you imagine a man may be saved without the word, which is a gross error. Asun: It is no matter, say you what you will, and all the preachers in the world besides. As long as I serve God, and say my prayers duly and truly, morning and evening, and have a good faith in God, and put my whole trust in him, and do my true intent, and have a good mind to God-­ward and a good meaning, although I am not learned, yet I hope it will serve the turn for my soul’s health. For that God which made me must save me. It is not you that can save me, for all your learning and all your Scriptures. Theol: You may very fitly be compared to a sick man, who having his brain distempered with heat, raveth and speaketh idly he cannot tell what. For the Holy Ghost saith . . . He that despiseth the word, he shall be destroyed. So long therefore as you despise God’s word and turn away your ear from hearing his Gospel preached, all your prayers, your fantastical serving God, your good meanings, and your good intents are to no purpose, but most loathsome and odious in the sight of God. . . . Asun: I grant indeed for them that are idle and have little to do it is not amiss now and then to hear a sermon and read the Scriptures, but we have no leisure; we must follow our business. We cannot live by the Scriptures; they are not for plain folk; they are too high for us; we will not meddle with them. They belong to preachers and ministers. Theol: Christ saith, My sheep hear my voice, and I give unto them eternal life. If therefore you refuse to hear the voice of Christ, you are none of his sheep, neither can you have eternal life. . . . {S. Paul} would have all sorts of people that have souls to save to be well-­acquainted with the Scriptures. . . . Asun: Well, I cannot read and therefore I cannot tell what Christ or what S. Paul may say, but this I am sure of, that God is a good man (worshipped might he be), he is merciful, and that we must be saved by our good prayers and good serving of God. . . . Theol: . . . But you are blind and know not what is within you, but dimly imagine you shall be saved, and hope you know not what of eternal life. . . . And sometimes, no 5

{The Apostles’ Creed}

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doubt, you have pricks, gripes, terrors, and inward accusations of conscience, for all your bold and resolute speeches. Asun: Truly, I never heard so much before. Theol: That is because you shut your eyes and stop your ears against God and all goodness. . . . Asun: Well then, if it be so, I would be glad now to learn, if you would teach me. And as you have showed me the means whereby the new birth is wrought, so now show me the certain signs and tokens thereof, whereby all men may certainly know that they are sanctified, regenerate, and shall be saved. Theol: There be eight infallible notes and tokens of a regenerate mind, which may well be termed the eight signs of salvation: and they are these: A love to the children of God. A delight in his word. Often and fervent prayer. Zeal of God’s glory. Denial of our selves. Patient bearing of the cross, with profit and comfort. Faithfulness in our calling. Honest, just, and conscionable dealing in all our actions amongst men. Philag: Now that you have showed us the evident signs of man’s salvation, show us also the signs of condemnation. Theol: The contraries unto these are manifest signs of damnation. . . . Philag: . . . But are there not yet more evident and apparent signs of condemnation than these? Theol: Yes verily. There be nine very clear and manifest signs of a man’s condemnation. Philag: I pray you, let me hear what they be. Theol: Pride. Whoredom. Covetousness. Contempt of the Gospel. Swearing. Lying. Drunkenness. Idleness. Oppression. Philag: These be gross things indeed. Theol: They may not unfitly be termed the nine Beelzebubs of the world: and he that hath these signs upon him, is in a most woeful case. ‡ Philag: I pray you, let us proceed to speak of the outward and gross pride of the world; and first of all, tell me what you think of pride in apparel. Theol: I think it to be a vanity of all vanities and a folly of all follies. For to be proud of apparel is as if a thief should be proud of his halter, a beggar of his clouts, a child of his gay,6 or a fool of his bauble. Philag: Yet we see how proud many (especially women) be of such baubles. For when they have spent a good part of the day in tricking and trimming, pricking and pinning, pranking and pouncing, girding and lacing and braving up themselves in most exquisite manner, then out they come into the streets with their peddler’s shop upon their back and carry their crests very high, taking themselves to be little angels, or at least somewhat more than other women. Whereupon they do so exceedingly swell with pride that it is to be feared they will burst with it as they walk in the streets. . . . 6

{I.e., some sort of bright and shiny toy}

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. . . Asun: It was never good world, since starching and steeling, busks and whale-­bones . . . painting and dyeing . . . came to be in use. For since these came in, covetousness, oppression, and deceit have increased. For how else should pride be maintained? . . .  Theol: This I say: that you and I and all the Lord’s people have great and just cause of mourning, weeping, and lamentation because such abomination is committed in Israel. . . . It is God’s marvelous patience that the devil doth not carry them away quick and rid the earth of them, or that fire & brimstone doth not come down from heaven & consume them. Antileg: You are too hot in these matters of attire; you make more of them than there is cause. Asun: I con him thank; God’s blessing on his heart. I shall love him the better while I know him because he is so earnest against such shameful and detestable pride. Is it not a shame that women professing true religion should make themselves such pictures, puppets, and peacocks as they do? And yet I hear few preachers in the pulpit speak against it. . . . ‡ Philag: . . . Now proceed to the fourth sign of a man’s damnation, which is the contempt of the Gospel, and lay open both the greatness of the sin and the danger of it. Theol: This sin is of another nature than the former. It is a sin against the first Table. It toucheth the person of God himself. For to contemn the Gospel is to contemn God himself, whose Gospel it is. If to contemn the ministers of the Gospel be to contemn God and Christ, as our Lord Jesus avoucheth [Luke 10:16], how much more then to contemn the Gospel itself? Therefore it is dangerous meddling in this sin. It is to meddle with edged tools, to meddle with princes’ matters, to touch the Ark, to come near the holy mountain, which all were things full of great peril and danger. Yea, it is to spill the sacrament. . . . It is to spit God in the face. It is high treason against the King of glory. Therefore this sin, of all other, can never be endured, and may at no hand be borne withal. For can a mortal king endure the contempt of his laws? Can he put up the contempt of his own person? Can he abide any to spit at his scepter or to throw a stone at it? No, surely he will not. . . . Philag: You have spoken most truly, and also showed it out of the Scriptures that the contempt of the Gospel is a most heinous sin; yet for all that, it is most lamentable to consider how little men esteem it and how light they make of it. . . . While the Gospel is preached in their churches, many are at cards and tables in ale-­houses. Many upon the Sabbaths sleep upon their beds all the sermon while in the afternoon. Many will hear a sermon in the forenoon, and they take that to be as much 565



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as God can require at their hand, and that he is somewhat beholden unto them for it; but as for the afternoon, they will hear none; then they will to bowls or tables.7 These men serve God in the forenoon and the devil in the afternoon; some run after whores and harlots on the Sabbaths; some run to dancing and bear-­baitings; some sit upon their stalls; some sit in their shops; some by the fire side. . . . Assuredly their damnation sleepeth not. A thousand deaths wait for them; they lie open on all sides to the wrath of God. And we may wonder at his marvelous patience, that he doth not throw down balls of wild-­fire from heaven to consume and burn up both them, their shops, and houses, and even make them spectacles of his vengeance, for so notorious contempt of such sacred, holy, and high things. Theol: You have spoken very truly, zealously, and religiously; and I do greatly commend you for it. And I must needs affirm the same things. For they cannot be denied. And for mine own part, I think the Gospel was never so openly contemned in any age (of a people living under the profession of it, and under a godly and Christian prince) as it is in this age. For howsoever some make a show of religion, yet they have denied the power thereof. . . . This age is full of such carnal Protestants. . . . Philag: The great contempt of the ministers of the Gospel in this age doth strongly argue the contempt of the Gospel itself. For a man cannot love the Gospel and hate the faithful ministers thereof. But we see by lamentable experience that the most grave, godly and learned ministers are had in derision of very base and vile persons. . . . . . . We may justly fear some great judgment of God to be near us; yea even to hang over our heads. For the Lord will never leave the contempt of his Gospel and his ministry unpunished. Theol: You have spoken a truth. And we have heard before how the old world was plagued for it. And we read how grievously the Jews were afflicted by the Romans for this sin,8 as our Lord Jesus did plainly foretell. . . . So likewise undoubtedly God will severely punish all injuries, wrongs, & contempts done to his faithful ambassadors; as appeareth, Apocal. 11:5, where it is set down that if any would hurt the two witnesses with their two olives and two candlesticks (whereby is signified the faithful preachers of the Gospel, with all their spiritual treasures and heavenly light), fire should proceed out of their mouths and devour their adversaries. . . . For remember, I pray you, what he saith in Deut.: If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold of judgment, I will execute vengeance on mine enemies, and I will reward them that hate me; I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall eat the flesh of mine adversaries. ‡ 7 8

{“Contempt of the Gospel” would thus seem to be Dent’s term for opposition to strict Sabbatarianism.} {The reference is to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.}

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Asun: Do you count it so great a matter for a man to swear by his faith or his troth? Theol: Yes indeed do I. For our faith and our troth are the most precious jewels we have. Shall we then lay them to gage for every word we speak? It showeth we are of small credit, nay, very bankrupts. For who but a bankrupt will lay the best jewel in his house to pledge for every small trifle? Asun: I know a man that will never swear but by cock or pie9 or mouse-­foot. I hope you will not say they be oaths. For he is as honest a man as ever brake bread. You shall not hear an oath come out of his mouth. Theol: I do not think he is so honest a man as you make him. For it is no small sin to swear by creatures. The Lord saith by his Prophet Jeremy, They have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods. So then to swear by creatures is to forsake God. And I trow you will not say he is an honest man which forsaketh God. Asun: I do not believe that to swear by small things is a forsaking of God. Theol: You, and such as you are, will believe no more of the word of God than will stand with your fantasy. But whatsoever you believe or believe not, the word of God standeth sure, and no iota of it shall ever be proved false. But this I will say unto you, because you think it so small a matter to swear by creatures, that the more base and vile the thing is which you sware by, the greater is the oath; because you ascribe that unto a base creature which is only proper to God: namely to know our hearts and to be a discerner of secret things. For whatsoever a man sweareth by, he calleth it as a witness unto his conscience that he speaketh the truth and lieth not, which thing only belongeth unto God. And therefore in swearing by creatures, we do rob God of his honor. . . . ‡ Antileg: What, I pray you? do you make it so great a matter if a man be a little overtaken with drink now and then? There is no man but he hath his faults, and the best of us all may be amended. If neighbors meet together now and then at the ale house and play a game at maw10 for a pot of ale, meaning no hurt, I take it to be good fellowship and a good means to increase love amongst neighbors, and not so heinous a thing as you make it. Theol: I see you would fain make fair weather of it and smooth over the matter with sweet words, as though there were no such great evil in it. But howsoever you mince it and blanch it over, yet the Apostle saith flatly, That drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God. I think this one sentence is enough to amaze and strike thorough the hearts of all drunkards in the world. For it is as much in effect as if the Apostle had said, all drunkards are notorious reprobates and hell-­hounds, branded of Satan and devoted to perpetual destruction and damnation. But you say, you mean no hurt. I answer, whatsoever you mean, your actions are naught and your fellowship as bad. For what good meaning can you have? or what good fellowship call you it, for poor laboring men, artificers, and such like to sit idly all the day long in taverns and ale-­houses, misspending their time and their money 9

{I.e., magpie} {A card game}

10

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in gaming, rioting, swearing, staring, swilling, bezzeling, bibbing, brawling, and brabbling . . . while their poor wives and children sit crying at home for bread, being ready to starve, to beg, or to steal. I pray you speak your conscience, what good fellowship is there in this? Antileg: Yet for all that, there be some which abstain from ale-­houses and yet are as bad as any other. For they will back-­bite and slander their neighbors; they will do them a shrewd turn as soon as any other; they are envious; they censure us and disdain our company. Yet we think ourselves as good as they, for all their shows of holiness. Theol: You speak more then you know or can justify against some better than yourself. But if it were so, you should but justify one sin by another, a lesser by a greater—­ which is to no purpose. Antileg: Will you then condemn all good fellowship? Theol: No, no. I do greatly allow godly and Christian fellowship, and acknowledge it to be one of the chiefest comforts we have in the world. I know we are commanded to love brotherly fellowship. But as for your pot companionship, I hate it and abhor it. For it is written, He that followeth the idle shall be filled with poverty. . . . ‡ Philag: I do plainly see that this sin of idleness is a very gross evil and the root of many vices; yet for all that, there be a great number which think they were born to live idly: as many young gentlemen and such like, which imagine they came into the world for no other purpose but to hunt and hawk, card and dice, riot and revel, and to spend their days in pleasure and vanity. . . . Many rich citizens, especially women, do ordinarily lie in bed till nine of the clock, and then forsooth rise and make themselves ready to go to dinner. And after they have well dined, they spend the rest of the day, and a good part of the night also, in playing, prattling, babbling, cackling, prating, and gossiping. Fie of this idle life. . . . . . . Theol: God doth allow none to live idly; but all, great and small, are to be employed one way or other: either for the benefit of the Church or commonwealth, or for the good government of their own households, or for the good of towns and parishes and those amongst whom they do converse, or for the succor and relief of the poor, or for the furtherance of the Gospel and the maintaining of the ministry, or for one good use or other. To these ends, our wits, our learning, our reading, our skill, our policy, our wealth, our health, our wisdom and authority are to be referred, knowing this: that one day we shall come to give an account of our bailiwick, and to be reckoned withal for the employment of our talents. . . . . . . For it is an excellent thing for any to be a good man in his place. . . . So likewise, it is a notable thing for a minister to be a good man in his place: to be studious in the law of God, diligent and painful in preaching—­and that of a love to God, a zeal 568



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of his glory, deep pity and compassion toward the souls of the people, seeking by all means possible to win them unto God; carrying himself in all his actions amongst them wisely, religiously, unblameably, and inoffensively. So again, it is a worthy thing to be a good rich man which doth much good with this riches, which keepeth a good house, relieveth the poor, ministreth to the necessity of the saints, and giveth cheerfully and with discretion where need is. So also it is a commendable thing to be a good neighbor or a good townsman, by whom a man may live quietly, peaceably, joyfully, and comfortably. And lastly, to be a good poor man: that is, humble, lowly, dutiful, painful, ready to help, and ready to please. Oh, I say, this is a most excellent and glorious thing, when every man keepeth his standing, his range, and his rank; when all men with care and conscience perform the duties of their places. . . . Antileg: You have said well in some things. But yet I do not see but that rich men and women may live idly sith they have enough where withal to maintain it. For may not a man do with his own what he list? Theol: No verily. For you may not take your own knife and cut your own throat with it; neither may you take your own axe and kill your own child with it. Therefore that reason is naught. Albeit therefore wealthy men & women have great plenty of all things, so as they need not to labor, yet let them be profitably employed some other way. . . . If they can find nothing to do, let them give themselves much to private prayers and reading of the Scriptures, that they may be able to instruct and exhort others. Or else let ladies and gentlewomen do as that good woman Dorcas did: . . . make shirts, smocks, coats, and garments, and give them to the poor when they have so done. . . . ‡ Philag: One thing I do greatly lament: that there be either none at all or very slender censures, either by the civil or ecclesiastical authority, for divers of these fore-­named vices: as pride, covetousness, oppression, lying, idleness, swearing, &c. Theol: It is a thing to be lamented indeed. . . . ‡ Theol: The Prophet Micah telleth us what is good for us and what is our best course and what the Lord requireth at our hands: namely these four things: To do justly, to love mercy, to humble ourselves, and to walk with our God [Mic. 6:8]. . . . The sum of all is this that if we do truly repent and turn unto him with all our hearts (studying to obey him and walk in his ways) then he will grant us any favor that we will require at his hands. For even as woolpacks and other soft matter beateth back and dampeth the force of all shot, so penitent, melting, and soft hearts do beat back the shot of God’s wrath and turn away his vengeance from us. Moreover, we may observe in all experience that when potentates are offended or any great man hath conceived a displeasure against a poor man, that then he must run and ride, send presents, use his friends, break his sleeps, and never be quiet till he have pacified him. Even so must we deal with our God, seeing he hath taken a displeasure against us. O therefore that we would 569



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speedily use all possible means to pacify his wrath! . . . Yea, as the Prophet saith, we should eat the good things of the land, spending our days in much comfort, peace and tranquility; and leave great blessings unto our children and posterity. . . . ‡ Philag: Now, therefore, I would grow to some conclusion of that which you touched by the way and made some mention of: namely, the signs of salvation and damnation. And declare unto us plainly whether the state of a man’s soul before God may not by certain signs and tokens be certainly discerned even in this life. Theol: Besides those which before have been mentioned, we may add these nine following: Reverence of God’s name. Keeping of his Sabbaths. Truth. Sobriety. Industry. Compassion. Humility. Chastity. Contentation. Philag: These indeed, I grant, are very good signs, but yet all of them are not certain. For some of them may be in the reprobates. Theol: What say you then to Saint Peter’s signs, which are set down in the first chapter of his second Epistle: which are these eight? Faith. Virtue. Knowledge. Temperance. Patience. Godliness. Brotherly kindness. Love. Saint Peter saith, If these be in us and abound, they will make us neither idle nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Which is as much as if he had said, they will make us sound and sincere professors of the Gospel. Philag: All these, I grant, are exceeding good signs and evidences of a man’s salvation, but yet some of them may deceive, and an hole may be picked in some of these evidences. I would therefore hear of some such demonstrative and infallible evidences as no lawyer can find fault with. For I hold that good divines can as perfectly judge of the assurances and evidences of men’s salvation as the best lawyer can judge of the assurances and evidences whereby men hold their lands and livings. Theol: You have spoken truly in that. And would to God all the Lord’s people would bring forth the evidences of their salvation that we might discern of them. 570



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Philag: Set down then which be the most certain and infallible evidences of a man’s salvation, against the which no exception can be taken. Theol: I judge these to be most sound and infallible:

Assured faith in the promises. Sincerity of heart. The spirit of adoption. Sound regeneration and sanctification. Inward peace. Groundedness in the truth. Continuance to the end.

Philag: Now you come near the quick indeed. For, in my judgment, none of these can be found truly in any reprobate. Therefore I think no divine can take exception against any of these. Theol: No, I assure you, no more than a lawyer can find fault with the tenure of men’s lands and fee-­simples when as both the title is good & strong by the law, and the evidences thereof are sealed, subscribed, delivered, conveyed, and sufficient witness upon the same, and all other signs and ceremonies (in the delivering and taking possession thereof ) according to strict law observed. . . . Philag: Now you have very fully satisfied me touching this point. And one thing more I do gather out of all your speech: to wit, that you do think a man may be assured of his salvation, even in this life. Theol: I do think so indeed. For he that knoweth not in this life that he shall be saved, shall never be saved after this life. . . . . . . Asun: Yet for all that a man cannot be certain.11 Theol: Yes, S. John telleth us we may be certain. For he saith, Hereby we know we dwell in him, and he in us; because he hath given us of his Spirit [1 John 4:13]. He saith not, we hope, but we know certainly. For he that hath the Spirit of God knoweth certainly he hath it; and he that hath faith knoweth that he hath faith; & he that shall be saved knoweth he shall be saved. For God doth not work so darkly in men’s hearts by his Spirit but that they may easily know whether it be of him or no, if they would make a due trial. Again, the same apostle saith, He that believeth in the Son of God hath the witness in himself [1 John 5:10]. That is, he hath certain testimonies in his own conscience that he shall be saved.12 For we must fetch the warrant of our salvation from within ourselves: even from the work of God within us. For look, how much a man feeleth in himself the increase of knowledge, obedience, & godliness, so much the more sure he is that he shall be saved. . . . {See on this question, Hooker’s sermon “Of the certainty” .} {Calvin’s response to the question of how he, or anyone, could have personal assurance of salvation was: “I answer that Christ is more than a thousand testimonies to me” (Concerning the eternal predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid [Cambridge, 1961], 8.7); see Kendall, 28 et passim.} 11

12

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. . . Philag: I pray you, let us come to the ground-­work of this certainty of salvation and speak somewhat of that. Theol: The ground-­work of our salvation is laid in God’s eternal election, and in respect thereof it standeth fast and unmovable. . . . And a thousand infirmities (nay, all the sins in the world, nor all the devils in hell) cannot overthrow God’s election. . . . Philag: But are there not some doubts, at some times, even in the very elect and in those which are grown to the greatest persuasion? Theol: Yes verily. For he that never doubted, never believed. For whosoever believeth in truth, feeleth sometimes doubtings and waverings. Even as the sound body feeleth many grudgings of diseases, which if he hath not health, he could not feel, so the sound soul feeleth some doubtings, which if it were not sound, it could not so easily feel. For we feel not corruption by corruption, but we feel corruption by grace. And the more grace we have, the more quick are we in the feeling of corruption. . . . So then it is certain, that although the children of God feel some doubtings at some times, yet the same do no whit impeach the certainty of their salvation, but rather argue a perfect soundness and health of their souls. For when such little grudgings are felt in the soul, the children of God oppose against them the certainty of God’s truth and promises, and so do easily overcome them. For the Lord’s people need no more to fear them than he that rideth thorough the streets upon a lusty gelding with his sword by his side needs to fear the barking and bawling of a few little curs and whappets.13 Philag: Show yet more plainly, how, or in what respects, the child of God may both have doubtings and yet be fully assured. Theol: Even as a man set in the top of the highest steeple in the world, and so fast bound unto it that he cannot fall though he would; yet when he looketh downward, he feareth, because man’s nature is not acquainted nor accustomed to mount so high in the air and to behold the earth so far beneath. . . . Even so when we look downward to ourselves, we have doubts and fears; but when we look upward to Christ and the truth of his promises, we feel ourselves cock-­sure, and cease to doubt any more. Philag: Declare unto us what is the original of these doubts and fears, and from whence they spring in the children of God. Theol: They spring from the imperfection of our regeneration, and from that strife which is in the very mind of the elect between faith and infidelity. . . . By reason whereof, sometimes it cometh to pass, through the prevailing of unbelief, that the most excellent servants of God may fall into fits and pangs of despair, as Job and David in their temptations did. And even in these days also, some of God’s children at some times are shrewdly handled this way and brought very low, even unto death’s door; but yet the Lord in great mercy doth recover them, both from total and final despair. Only they are humbled and tried by these sharp fits for a time, and that for their great good. For, as we use to say that an ague in a young man is a sign of health, so these burning fits of temptations in the elect, for the most part, are signs 13

{A small yappy dog}

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of God’s grace and favor. For if they were not of God, the devil would never be so busy with them. Philag: Is it not mere presumption and an overmuch trusting to ourselves to be persuaded of our salvation? Theol: Nothing less. For the ground of this persuasion is not laid in ourselves or anything within us or without us, but only in the righteousness of Christ and the merciful promises of God. . . . ‡ Theol: But how know you that you have faith? or how shall a man know his faith? Antileg: I know it by this: that I have always had as good a meaning and as good a faith to Godward as any man of my calling and that {i.e., who} is not book-­learned. I have always feared God with all my heart and served him with my prayers. Theol: Tush. Now you go about the bush and hover in the air. Answer me to the point. How do you know certainly and assuredly that Christ died for you particularly & by name? Antileg: You would make a man mad. You put me out of my faith; you drive me from Christ. But if you go about to drive me from Christ, I will never believe you. For I know we must be saved only by him. Theol: I go not about to drive you from Christ, but to drive you to Christ. For how can I drive you from Christ, seeing you never came near him? How can I drive you out of Christ, seeing you were never in him? . . .  Antileg: I can answer you no otherwise than I have answered you. And I think I have answered you sufficiently. Theol: No, no, you falter in your speech; your answer is not worth a button; you speak you wot not what; you are altogether befogged and benighted in this question. But, if there were in your heart the true knowledge & lively feeling of God, then I am sure you would have yielded another and a better answer. Then you would have spoken something from the sense and feeling of your own heart & from the work of God’s grace within you. . . . . . . Asun: If none can be saved by Christ but only those which are so qualified as you speak of, then Lord have mercy upon us; then the way to heaven is very strait indeed, and few at all shall be saved. For there be few such in the world. Theol: You are no whit therein deceived. For when all comes to all, it is most certain that few shall be saved. . . . . . . Asun: Now let us hear your reasons. Theol: If we come to reason, we may rather wonder that any should be saved than so few shall be saved. For we have all the lets and hindrances that may be, both within 573



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us and without us. We have (as they say) the sun, moon, and seven stars against us. We have all the devils in hell against us, with all their horns, heads, marvelous strength, infinite wiles, cunning devices, deep sleights, and methodical temptations. Here runs a sore stream against us. Then have we this present evil world against us, with her innumerable baits, snares, nets, gins, and grins to catch us, fetter us, and entangle us. Here have we profits and pleasures, riches and honor, wealth and preferment, ambition and covetousness. Here comes in a camp royal of spiritual and invisible enemies. Lastly, we have our flesh, that is, our corrupted nature against us: we have ourselves against our selves. For we ourselves are as great enemies to our salvation as either the world or the devil. For our understanding, reason, will, and affections are altogether against us. Our natural wisdom is an enemy unto us. Our concupiscences & lusts do minister strength to Satan’s temptations. They are all in league with Satan against us. They take part with him in everything against us and our salvation. They fight all under his standard, and receive their pay of him. This then goeth hard on our side, that the devil hath an inward party against us, and we carry always within us our greatest enemy, which is ever ready, night and day, to betray us into the hands of Satan; yea to unbolt the door and let him in to cut our throats. . . . But yet further, I will show by another very manifest and apparent reason that the number of God’s elect upon the face of the earth are very few in comparison, which may thus be considered. First, let there be taken away from amongst us all papists, atheists, and heretics. Secondly, let there be shoaled out all vicious and notorious evil livers, as swearers, drunkards, whoremongers, worldlings, deceivers, cozeners, proud men, rioters, gamesters, and all the profane multitude. Thirdly, let there be refused and sorted out all hypocrites, carnal Protestants, vain professors, backsliders, decliners, and cold Christians. Let all these, I say, be separated, and then tell me how many sound, sincere, faithful, and zealous worshippers of God will be found among us. I suppose we should not need the art of arithmetic to number them. For I think there would be very few in every village, town, and city. I doubt {suspect} they would walk very thinly in the streets, so as a man might easily tell them as they go. . . . . . . Asun: God is merciful, and therefore I hope he will save the greatest part, for his mercy sake. Theol: The greatest part shall perish, but all that shall be saved, shall be saved by his mercy. . . . Antileg: Can you tell who shall be saved and who shall be damned? Do you know God’s secrets? When were you in heaven? When spake you with God? I am of the mind that all men shall be saved. For God’s mercy is above all his works. Say you what you will and what you can, God did not make us to condemn us. Theol: You are very peremptory indeed; you are more bold then wise; for Christ saith few shall be saved; you say all shall be saved. Whether then shall we believe Christ or you? Antileg: If there should come two souls, one from heaven and another from hell, and bring us certain news how the case stood, then I would believe it indeed. 574



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Theol: Put case, two souls of the dead should come, the one from heaven, the other from hell: I can tell you aforehand certainly what they would say and what news they would bring. Antileg: What I pray you? Theol: . . . Heaven is empty and hell is full. ‡ Antileg: Sir, in mine opinion, you have uttered some very dangerous things and such as were enough to drive a man to despair. Theol: What be they, I pray you? Antileg: There be divers things. But one thing doth most of all stick in my stomach, and that is the small number that shall be saved, as you say. But I can hardly be persuaded that God made so many thousands to cast them away when he hath done. Do you think that God hath made us to condemn us? Will you make him to be the author of condemnation? Theol: Nothing less. For God is not the cause of men’s condemnation, but themselves. . . . Then it followeth that the cause and end why the wicked were created neither was nor is the only destruction of his creature, but his own praise and glory, that that only might appear and shine forth in all his works. Yet certain it is that God, for just causes (albeit unknown and hid to us) hath rejected a great part of men. The causes, I say, of reprobation are hid in the eternal counsel of God and known to his godly wisdom only. . . . Antileg: What reason, justice, or equity is there that sentence of death should be passed upon men before they be born and before they have done good or evil? Theol: I told you before, that we can never comprehend the reason of God’s proceeding in this behalf; yet we must know that his will is the rule of righteousness, and must be unto us instead of a thousand reasons. For whatsoever God willeth, inasmuch as he willeth it, is to be holden just. . . . This one thing I must say unto you, that whatsoever God decreeth, yet doth he execute no man till he have ten thousand times deserved it. For betwixt the decree and the execution thereof cometh sin in us and most just causes of condemnation. Antileg: If God have decreed men’s destruction what can they do withal? Who can resist his will? Why then is he angry with us? For all things must needs come to pass according to his decree and determination. Theol: First, I answer you with the Apostle: O man, who art thou which pleadest against God! Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power of the clay, to make of the same lump one vessel to honor, and another to dishonor? . . . . . . Antileg: I think the preaching and publishing of this doctrine of predestination hath done much hurt, and it had been good it had never been known to the people, but 575



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utterly concealed. For some it driveth to despair, and others it maketh more secure and careless. Theol: You are in a great error. For this doctrine is a part of God’s revealed Truth, which he would have known to his people. And, in good sooth, it is of very great and comfortable use to the children of God against all the assaults of the devil and temptations of desperation whatsoever. For when a man hath once in truth felt, by the effects, that God hath chosen him to life, then though the devil lie sore at him and the conscience of sin and his own frailties most vehemently assault him, yet he knoweth certainly that the eternal purpose and counsel of God is immutable; and that because his salvation is not grounded upon himself or his own strength but upon the unchangeable decree of God . . . therefore do the devil and sin what they can, yet he shall be upheld in righteousness & truth, & even (as it were) borne up in the arms of God, even to the end. For whom God loveth, to the end he loveth them . . . . ‡ Asun: As hard as it is, yet I hope by the grace of God I shall be one of them that shall enter in. For so long as I do as I would be done to, and say no body no harm nor do no body no harm, God will have mercy on my soul. And I doubt not but my good deeds shall weigh against my evil deeds, and that I shall make even with God at my latter end. For I thank God for it, I have always lived in his fear & served him with a true intent. Therefore I know that so long as I keep his commandments and live as my neighbors do and as a Christian man ought to do, he will not damn my soul. Theol: Can you then keep God’s commandments? Asun: As near as God will give me grace. Theol: Nay, but I ask you whether you keep them or no? Asun: I do {as}say to keep them as near as I can; I do my true intent. Though I keep them not all, yet I am sure I keep some of them. Theol: Because you say you keep some of them, I pray you let me be so bold with you as to examine you in the particulars. You know the first Commandment is this: Thou shalt have none other gods in my sight. How say you, do you keep this? Asun: I am out of all fear of it. For I never worshipped any God but one. I am fully persuaded there is but one God. Theol: What say you to the second Commandment: Thou shalt make to thy self no graven image? &c. Asun: I never worshipped any images in my life. I defy them. I know they cannot help me, for they be but stocks and stones. Theol: What say you to the third Commandment, which is this: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain? &c. Asun: Nay certainly, I was never counted a swearer in my life, but I have feared God always of a child, and have had a good faith in him ever since I could remember. I would be sorry else. Theol: What say you then to the fourth Commandment: Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day? &c. 576



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Asun: Nay, for that matter, I keep my church as well as any man in the parish where I dwell, and mind my prayers as well, when I am there. I thank God for it (though I say it myself ), I have been always well given and have loved God’s word with all my heart; and it doth me good to hear the Epistles and Gospels read every Sunday by our vicar. . . . . . . Theol: Now I perceive, you are a wonderful man; you can keep all the Commandments. . . . You are whole, you need not the physician, you feel no misery; and therefore you care not for mercy. For where misery is not felt, there mercy is not regarded; but I see you need no Savior. Asun: You say not well in that. I need a Savior; and it is my Lord Jesus that must save me, for he made me. Theol: What need you a Savior, sith you are no sinner? Asun: Yes believe me, I am a sinner. We are all sinners; there is no man but he sinneth. Theol: How can you be a sinner, sith you keep all the Commandments? Asun: Yes, I am a sinner, for all that. Theol: Can you both be a sinner and be without sin too? for he that keepeth the Commandments is without sin. . . . I pray you therefore, let me lead you thorough the Commandments again and deal with you in particulars, that I may bring you to the sight of your sins. How say you therefore, do you upon your knees, every morning and evening, give God thanks for his particular mercies & manifold favors towards you? And do you call much upon him privately, and much also with your family? Answer me plainly and simply. Asun: I cannot say so. Theol: Then you have broken the first Commandment, which chargeth us to give God his due worship, whereof prayer and thanksgiving are a part. So then here at the very entrance you are found guilty. Further, I demand of you whether you never had any by-­thoughts in your prayers, and your heart hath not been upon other matters, even then while you were in prayer? Asun: I cannot deny that. For it is a very hard matter to pray without by-­thoughts. Theol: Then (by your own confession) you have broken the second Commandment, which doth command the right manner of God’s worship: that is, that as we must worship God, so we must do it in faith, love, zeal, and pure affections. . . . . . . Theol: . . . Further, I demand of you whether you did never travel to fairs on the Sabbath day or make bargains on that day or take journeys or talk of worldly matters, neglecting holy duties? Asun: Yes, God forgive me, I have. Theol: Then are you guilty of the breach of the fourth Commandment, which chargeth us on pain of death to spend the Sabbath day in holy & religious duties, both publicly and privately. . . . 577



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. . . Theol: Further, I ask you whether you did never look upon a woman with a lust in your heart? Asun: Yes. For I think there is no man free from thoughts that way. I had thought thoughts had been free. Theol: No, thoughts are not free before God. For God knoweth our thoughts & will punish us, arraign us, & condemn us for thoughts. Men know not thoughts and therefore can make no laws against thoughts; but because God is privy to all our most secret thoughts, therefore he hath made laws against them, and will condemn them. Therefore I conclude that if you have nourished adulterous thoughts in your heart, you are guilty of the breach of the seventh Commandment, which forbiddeth all secret thoughts and provocations whatsoever to adultery. . . . ‡ Philag: Well sir, as you have showed us the terror and suddenness of Christ’s coming, so show us the purpose and end of his coming. Theol: The principal end of his coming shall be to keep a general audit, to call all men to an account, to have a reckoning of every man’s particular actions, & to reward them according to their deeds; as it is written: The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then shall he give to every man according to his deeds. . . . Here we do plainly see that the end of Christ’s coming shall be to judge every man according to his works: that is, as his works shall declare him and testify of him and of his faith. . . . Philag: Now as you have showed us the terror and end of Christ’s coming, so also declare the manner of it. Theol: The manner of it is this; that the whole world shall be cited to appear personally at the general Assizes, before the great Judge. No man shall be admitted to appear by his attorney, but all must appear personally. None shall be suffered to put in sureties, but all must come in their own persons, without bail or mainprize; as it is written, We must all appear [2 Cor. 5:10], high and low, rich and poor, king and beggar, one and other; as it is plainly set down in the 20th chapter of the Revelation, where the Spirit saith, I saw the dead both great and small stand before God: and the sea gave up the dead which were in her, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. . . . Now then when all flesh is come together to make their personal appearance, then shall the Son of God ascend unto his tribunal seat with great majesty and glory. For a fiery stream shall issue and come forth before him; thousand thousand angels shall accompany him and minister unto him; and ten thousand thousand shall stand before him; the judgment shall be set and the books opened [Dan. 7:10]. All the saints also, and true worshippers of God shall attend him and accompany him unto his judgment seat. And not only so, but they shall sit upon the bench and throne with him; as it is written: The saints shall judge the world; they shall judge the angels (that is, the devils, the angels of darkness) [1 Cor. 6:2] . . . Thus then we see how Christ shall be accompanied to his throne, and with what glory and majesty he shall ascend 578



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unto it. Experience teacheth that when mortal judges hold their sessions and general assizes, they are brought unto the bench & judgment seat with pomp and terror. For the sheriff of the shire and halberd-­men, with many justices of peace and trains of others, do accompany them unto the bench. Then with how much more glory and majesty shall the Son of God be brought unto his royal throne! Thus then, Christ being set upon his judgment seat, all the ungodly shall be convented before him, and he shall stand over them with a naked sword in his hand. The devil shall stand by them on the one side to accuse them; and their own conscience, on the other side; and the gaping gulf of hell underneath them, ready to devour them. Then shall the books be opened: not any books of paper and parchment, but the books of men’s consciences. For every man’s sins are written and recorded in his conscience, as it were in a register book. Then will God bring every work to judgment, with every secret thought, and set them in order before all the reprobates. Then will God lighten the things that are hid in darkness and make the counsels of the heart manifest [1 Cor. 4:5]. Then shall all the ungodly be arraigned, convicted, and hold up their hands at the bar of Christ’s tribunal seat, and shall cry guilty. Then shall that most dreadful sentence of death & condemnation be pronounced against them by the most righteous Judge, Go ye cursed into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.14. . . . . . Asun: The laying open of these doctrines of hell fire and the judgment to come maketh me quake and tremble. I am thereby much perplexed. I feel great terror in my conscience. I am afraid I shall be damned. Antileg: Damned, man! What speak you of damning? I am ashamed to hear you say so. For it is well known that you are an honest man, a quiet liver, a good neighbor, and as good a townsman as any is in the parish where you dwell. . . . Asun: I regard not your flatteries. I believe God. I believe his word. I believe those things which M. Theologus hath alleged out of the holy Scriptures. . . . Now I do clearly see by the glass of God’s Law that my state is wretched and miserable. For I have lived in sin and ignorance all the days of my life, being utterly void of all religion and true knowledge of God. I am not the man indeed that you and others take me for. For though outwardly I have lived honestly to the world-­ward, yet inwardly I have not lived religiously to God-­ward. . . . Antileg: Nay, if you be of that mind, I have done with you. . . . Theol: Let us now turn our speech to Asunetus, for I see he is heavy-­hearted and troubled in his mind. How do you Asunetus? How do you feel yourself? Me thinketh you are very sad.

14

{Another ten pages describing the torments of hell follow.}

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Asun: I am the better for you, Sir, I thank God. I never knew what sin meant till this day. It hath pleased God now to give me some sight and feeling thereof. I am greatly distressed in my conscience to think what I have been. The remembrance of my former sins doth strike an horror into me. . . . I do plainly see that if I had died in that state wherein I have lived all my life, I should certainly have been condemned, and should have perished forever in my sin and ignorance. Theol: I am very glad that God hath opened your eyes and given you the sight and feeling of your misery, which indeed is the very first step to eternal life. It is a great favor and special mercy of God towards you that he hath so touched your heart; you can never be thankful enough for it. It is more than if you had a million of gold given you. It is the only rare privilege of God’s elect, to have the eyes of their souls opened that they may see into heavenly and spiritual things. As for the world, it is just with God to leave them in their blindness. Asun: I do feel the burden of my sins. I am greatly grieved for them. I am weary of them. I am sorry that ever I sinned against God or that I should be such a wretch as to incur his displeasure and provoke his Majesty against me. But I pray you, good M. Theologus, sith you are a spiritual physician, and I am sick of sin, that you would minister unto me out of God’s word some spiritual physic and comfort. Theol: Truly, I must needs think that the promises of mercy and forgiveness of sin made in the Gospel do belong unto you, and that Jesus Christ is yours; you are truly interested15 in him and have a proper right unto him. For he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. You do now feel yourself to be a sinner, you are grieved for your sins, you are weary of them; therefore Jesus Christ is for you. . . . . . . For he taketh pity of all such as mourn for their sins, as you do. . . . Christ is altogether for such as you are. . . . He is only for the penitent sinner & such as mourn for their sins. He is a pillow of down to all aching heads & aching consciences. Be of good comfort therefore; fear nothing. For assuredly Christ and all his righteousness is yours. He will clothe you with it. He will never impute your sins unto you or lay any of them to your charge, though they be never so many so or so great. . . . Asun: I am greatly comforted and cheered up with your words. Your preaching of the Gospel and laying open of God’s abundant mercy in Christ and of the promises do exceedingly revive me, and even as it were put new life into me; they are as sack and sugar unto my soul. . . . I do now begin to see what misery is in man, and what mercy is in God. And I know by woeful experience, that where misery is not felt, there mercy is not regarded; but now it hath pleased God to give me some feeling of mine own wretchedness and misery, and yet with good comfort in his mercy. For, I thank God for it, I begin now to grow to some persuasion that the promises do belong unto me, my sins are forgiven, and that I am one of them that shall be saved. Theol: I do greatly rejoice that God hath, according to his rich mercy, wrought this good work in you. I do from the bottom of my heart give him the praise and glory of it. . . . Antileg: The sun draweth low, Asunetus; it is time for you and me to be going. 15

{Invest with a share in or title to something, esp. a spiritual privilege (OED)}

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Philag: Indeed the night will approach by and by, and therefore we must of necessity break off. Theol: Sith it is so, we will here surcease and go no further. Asun: Sir, I will now take my leave of you. . . . I do therefore praise God for you and for your counsel and for this day, which I hope shall be the first day of my repentance and true conversion unto God. Theol: The Lord for his infinite mercy’s sake grant it. And I most humbly beseech the Almighty God to establish you with his free spirit, that you may proceed and go forward in a Christian course unto the end. . . . [\ T ext: Arthur Dent, The plaine mans path-­way to heauen Wherein euery man may cleerely see, whether he shall be saued or damned. Set forth dialogue-­wise, for the better vnderstanding of the simple, 9th impression (London, 1607).

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IX

PROTESTANTISM AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

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JOHN NORTHBROOKE (fl. 1570–­1577)

Spiritus est vicarious Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dancing, vain plays or interludes with other idle pastimes [et]c. commonly used on the Sabbath day are reproved

We do not know when Northbrooke was born or died, only that he spent most of Elizabeth’s reign as minister in a series of parish churches in and around Gloucestershire, including nearly a decade at St. Mary Redcliffe, the largest church in Bristol. He was typical of conforming puritans during this period in that he attempted to modify the Church of England from within while studiously obeying the law. For instance, while he subscribed to the Thirty-­nine articles as required by law after 1571, he nonetheless wrote a tract that same year urging Calvin’s spiritual, rather than the traditional and literal, reading of article 3 (itself taken directly from the Apostles’ Creed), which held that Christ “went down into hell” after his crucifixion. [\

The text excerpted here, against dicing, dancing, and stage plays, was one of the very first of a flood of puritan anti-­theatrical texts that appeared in response to the opening of a purpose-­built theater outside London in 1576. While the author was undoubtedly a puritan, there is nothing particularly puritan about his arguments. Indeed, in the first section excerpted, where Northbrooke defends lawful recreations in some circumstances, he actually attacks so-­called “precisians” (a contemporary synonym for puritans) who wanted to ban all light pastimes. So this is not a particularly outrageous nor partisan text, and we have no reason to believe that it was out of the mainstream of religious opinion in the period. This makes all the more remarkable Northbrooke’s arguments, backed by quotations from classical and patristic authorities, that watching the bodies of performers cannot help but engender lust that leads to sins like rape and murder, and that cultivating the “custom of pleasure” converts us away from Christ to Satan. We see here something of the dilemma of the reformers, who simultaneously worked to make their version of true Christianity the normal religion of the world, while also insisting that rigorous denial of the world was the essence of true Christianity. This predicament may also be reflected in

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the irony that this early example of English anti-­theatrical writing was itself written in the form of a fictional dialogue. [\ Sources: ODNB;.Jonas Barrish, The anti-­theatrical prejudice (Berkeley, 1981); Joseph Lenz, “Base trade: theater as prostitution,” English Literary History 60, no. 4 (1993): 833–­55; Michael O’Connell, “The idolatrous eye: iconoclasm, anti-­t heatricalism, and the image of the Elizabethan theater,” English Literary History 52, no. 2 (1985): 279–­310.

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Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dancing, vain plays or interludes with other idle pastimes [et]c. commonly used on the Sabbath day are reproved

1577

. . . YOUTH. Will you have no leisure times granted unto man? Is it not a true saying: Quies laboris remedium; rest is the medicine of labors and weariness? Therefore breathings and refreshings from continual labors must be had, because it driveth away irksomeness gotten by serious toil, and doth repair again bodies and minds to labor. Even as too much bending breaketh a bow, so to be addicted perpetually to labors and never to refresh the mind with pastimes must needs cause the mind not long to endure in earnest studies, and therefore it is said festival days in old time were invented for recreation. AGE. Yes, truly, I do allow of honest, moderate, and good, lawful, active exercises for recreation and quickening of our dull minds. And where you say that holidays (as they are termed) were invented in old time for pastimes, I think you say truth. For the pope appointed them (and not God in his word), and that only to train up the people in ignorance and idleness, whereby half of the year and more was overpassed (by their idle holidays) in loitering and vain pastimes, etc., in restraining men from their handy labors and occupations. Saint Augustine, speaking of the abuse of the Sabbath day, saith: It is better to dig and go to plow on the Sabbath day than to be drunk and live idly. How much more may we say so of these festival days, never appointed nor commanded by God? YOUTH. If you do allow of exercises and recreations, why then do you so bitterly inveigh and speak against plays and pastimes? AGE. As far as good exercises and honest pastimes and plays do benefit the health of man and recreate his wits, so far I speak not against it, but the excessive and immeasurable use thereof taketh away the right institution thereof, and bringeth abuse and misuse, and thereby is an hindrance of man’s obedience to God’s word (as it is seen in you this present day); and therefore they are rather changed into faults and 587



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transgressions than honest exercises for man’s recreation. Therefore we must in all our pastimes remember what Cicero sayeth . . . We are not made and brought forth into this world by nature to the intent that we might appear and seem to be created to the maintenance of gaming and pastimes, but we are born to more weighty matters, and graver studies. Therefore Saint Paul saith: Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. YOUTH. It seemeth to me you are so precise, as if you would make us Stoics, that will thus exclude pastimes and plays from us, as we now use them. AGE. Have you so quickly forgotten what I said even now: that I did allow of all honest, good, and lawful pastimes, for those ends and purposes whereunto they were appointed, for man’s recreation and comfort? Cicero says in his book Of offices to this effect and purpose . . . Honest games and pastimes are allowable, but we ought to use them as we do sleep and other eases of the body, and to be taken after such time as we have labored enough in weighty matters and serious affairs. . . . YOUTH. I am very glad that you grant some kind of pastime and plays, although you tie it to times, matters, and persons. AGE. Very good reason it be so granted, as I have said. For as Cicero sayeth: Ludendi est quidem modus retinendus; A measure ought to be kept in all our pastimes. . . . I pray you what measure or mean keep you and your companions nowadays, that play when you should sleep, and sleep when you should labor? The Lord biddeth you watch and pray, and you watch and play all night long, whereby you are not able to do your duty in hearing of God’s word, receiving of his sacraments, praying with the congregation, nor yet able to use your vocation and calling. Whereby you provoke and heap God’s heavy displeasure and wrath upon you; therefore you have great cause to be heartily sorry and to repent. YOUTH. Why sir, by my sleep I hurt no man, for therein I thought no evil; and therefore I have not offended, that I need to repent me for it. AGE. My son, in many things we offend all {Jm. 3:2}, both in thoughts, words, deeds, and dreams, through corruption of our nature; therefore have we need to say with David: Who can understand his faults? Cleanse me from secret faults, ô Lord. And whereas you say, by sleeping you hurt no man, that is not sufficient to hurt no man, but you must do good also. David saith: Eschew evil and do good, seek peace, and ensue it. What good (I pray you) hath your sleep and idle pastimes done to you, which hath hindered you from all good and godly exercises? No good at all, but rather great hurt, for that you abused and did not use your sleep in due time and order, by reason of your idle nightwatching plays and idle wanton pastimes to satisfy the pleasures and desires of the flesh; and therefore you need repentance. . . . YOUTH. Do not you remember that Solomon sayeth: That there is nothing better than that a man should be merry and rejoice in his affairs, because that is his portion. Wherefore then shall not we in our youthful days play and pastime? AGE. Solomon speaketh not there of vain, wanton, and idle plays, but declareth that man by his reason can comprehend nothing better in this life than to use the gifts of God soberly and comfortably. Also he speaketh against the greedy carefulness of the covetous rich men that use to become slaves and bondmen to their muck and riches. . . . Augustine saith . . . He is not only a covetous man that taketh away another man’s goods, but also he is a covetous man that greedily and niggardly keepeth his own 588



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goods (from helping the poor), so that it is a manifest token of God’s plague when a rich man has not a liberal heart to use his riches. . . . YOUTH. Why do you speak so much to me of this covetousness? I am not rich, and therefore not covetous. AGE. You are herein deceived. For Christ in his law saith: Thou shalt not covet nor lust. Whereby he doth declare that a greedy-­minded man (although he have no riches) may be and is a covetous man. So that riches (which is the gift of God) is not cause of covetousness, but the filthy desire and insatiable mind and heart of man, and also his greedy desire to have. Therefore Paul saith: The desire of money—­he says not simply money but the desire—­is the root of all evil. . . . Non enim (saith Theophilact) divitiae nocent, sed solicitudines earum; Riches hurt not, but the carefulness of them. Chrysostom also sayeth . . . He is not a poor man, I say, that has nothing, but he is a poor man that covets and lusts. . . . Seneca says: Dives est, non qui magis habet, sed qui minus cupit; He is rich, not that has much, but that covets least. Therefore Saint Paul sayeth: Godliness is great gain, if a man be content with that he has, etc. Whereby you see proved that you and such others are covetous men. YOUTH. Well, let this pass and let us come again unto our former talk. Is it lawful for Christians to play at all, or not? AGE. I have said to you my mind herein already; what need you to urge me so often to tell you? YOUTH. I will show you the reason why that I do ask you again. AGE. What reason is there that so moveth you to reiterate this so often? Declare it. YOUTH. I have often times heard and affirmed at the mouth of certain grave, learned divines that it is not lawful for any Christian man (professing the faith and true religion of Christ Jesus) to play at any game or pastime at all. AGE. Although in this point I am not altogether of their judgment, yet no doubt they seem to give reasons for it; but yet I must needs confess, these reasons of theirs are sifted very deep, and very hard, and marvelous precise. YOUTH. I pray you let me hear what their reasons are, that they seem to persuade by. AGE. Their reasons are these. Seeing (say they) that we must yield account to God of the whole course of our life and of each particular deed thereof, they ask what account we are able to yield to God of the time that we leese {i.e., lose} in play? And seeing (say they) that we must forbear every idle word that God rebuketh us for, yea, though it be neither oath nor blaspheming of the name of God, but only because it is idle and spoken to no purpose, how then (say they) can we excuse ourselves of all the idle time that we spend in playing? We must do all (say they) that we do, be we great or small, rich or poor, to the glory of God. And when we play, can we say that therein we glorify God? Paul (say they) wills us to redeem the time, which we have lost in fond {i.e., foolish} and evil things when we were idolaters. Shall we think that it is lawful for us to leese and spend the same in play, now when we are called to the glory of God? . . . There are so many duties (say they) that God by his word requireth of us, so many means and holy exercises and occupations to bestow ourselves either to the glory of God or the profit of our neighbors, at all hours both day and night, yea, though they were longer, and that every day had eight and forty hours. But instead of bestowing ourselves in holy exercises and better businesses, we 589



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spend away our time in playing. Therefore it is intolerable and by no means lawful for any man that calls himself a Christian to play. There is the reading of the word of God and other good books; there is comforting the sick, visiting prisoners, relieving the needy, and also the occupations that each man hath in his estate and particular calling. . . . Certainly all these things well considered, we cannot perceive (say they) how it should be seemly or lawful for a Christian to lose any time, be it never so little, in play. Saint Ambrose (say they) doth generally condemn all kinds of play. As also Saint Chrysostom. YOUTH. I promise you, they go very near. AGE. Although they do, yet for my part I will not be so straight or scrupulous. For I say with Saint Augustine that it is the part of a wise man sometimes to recreate himself and rejoice the mind that he may the better away with, longer continue, and more cheerfully return to his ordinary labor and vocation. Saint Ambrose says . . . Honest pastimes are sometimes lawful. YOUTH. I would very gladly hear your answers to their reasons which they have made. AGE. My answer is this: We must make distinction between the ordinary things that a Christian is bound of necessity to do and those things which are permitted and granted him by God for the refreshing and helping of his infirmity, as to ease him when he is weary, to sleep after labor, and to play after long pain. Ovid says: Quid caret alterna requie, durabile non est; The thing cannot endure that lacks rest. And therefore the holy Scriptures (which are the rule of good and evil) maketh mention of playing, and alloweth Christians so to do. Zachary saith: And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets thereof. Also when Saint Paul saith: Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever else ye do, do all to the glory of God. We may by this word (whatsoever ye do) understand all honest recreations, which certainly is as lawful and permitted to us, by reason of our infirmity, as is either eating, drinking, or sleeping, when we have need thereof. And as our Lord Jesus Christ saith, that man is made for the glory of God, and therefore the Sabbath serveth for man and not man for the Sabbath, so honest recreation is invented for man and for his health, which maketh us the better and more devout to serve God. Then to play at honest games and pastimes is a thing both indifferent and lawful and such as are left to Christian liberty, as Paul saith: Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not your liberty as occasion unto the flesh, but by love serve one another, which thing must be observed in any way. Nevertheless, I confess we ought not to abuse (through too great pleasure which we take in them), no more than to abuse any other thing of the like kind. In very deed it should seem too great a cruelty to restrain wearied natures, over-­toiled bodies, that they neither might or durst take some recreation. For although we ought to apply all and every our doings to the glory of God and edifying and helping of our neighbors, nevertheless, when we take our honest recreation to maintain and preserve our vigor and health, or to recover our strength, or to refresh up our spirits that we may afterward the more cheerfully and freshly go about that business that God hath called us unto and do it the better, the same in the end redoundeth to the glory of God, whom we shall by this means be more able and ready to serve, and also to seek our neighbors’ furtherance and profit. I do not, then, forbid or condemn all play, neither mislike that a faithful Christian do sometimes play and sport 590



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himself, so that such play and pastime be in lawful and honest things, and also done with moderation. ‡ YOUTH. Do you speak against those places also which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theater and Curtain is, and other such like places besides?1 AGE. Yea, truly. For I am persuaded that Satan hath not a more speedy way and fitter school to work and teach his desire to bring men and women into his snare of concupiscence and filthy lusts of wicked whoredom than those places and plays and theaters are: and therefore necessary that those places and players should be forbidden and dissolved and put down by authority, as the brothel houses and stews are. How did the Benjamites overcome and take away the daughters of Israel but in watching them in a special open place where they were accustomed upon the festival days to sport and dance most idly and wantonly {Judg 21:21}? Dr. Peter Martyr (that famous learned man) upon this place saith: Hereby we may perceive that the virgins gave themselves to plays and dances, which was to abuse the feast day. . . . For the feast days were to this end instituted, that the people should assemble together to hear, not plays, but the word of God. . . . Wherefore it is no marvel if these maidens were so stolen away, resorting to such open place, etc. . . . In consideration of this and the like, Scipio Nasica (that worthy Roman) obtained in the Senate that all theaters and stage plays should be abolished, for that it was so hurtful unto public and civil manners. Also S.C.2 destroyed utterly that theater place which was so gorgeously built and gave commandment that no such places should be built again in the city of Rome, and that they should not make any seats or benches to sit upon (for to behold such plays in such places) neither in the city, nor yet within a mile compass thereof, etc. I would to God our magistrates would follow those good and wholesome examples. YOUTH. I have heard many both men and women say that they can resort to such plays and behold them without any hurt to themselves or to others, and that no lust nor concupiscence is inflamed or stirred up in them in the beholding of any person or of the plays themselves. How say you, may it be so? AGE. Saint Chrysostom shall answer them, who wrote only of such as you speak of that resorted to such playing places. Some curious, dainty, and nice persons (saith he), hearing this, will say (to excuse their sins and follies) we, that do resort to behold and consider the beauty and fairness of women at theaters and stage plays, are nothing hurt thereby. David (saith he) was sore hurt (in beholding Bathsheba) and think thou to escape? He did not behold a harlot but on the top of his house . . . Thou beholdest them in an open theater, a place where the soul of the wise is snared and condemned; in those places (saith he) thou seest not only res infaustas, unlawful 1 {The Theatre (opened 1576) and The Curtain (opened 1577) were among the first purpose-­built theaters in England, part of the great flowering of Elizabethan drama.} 2 {An abbreviation for senatus consultum, a decree of the senate. The reference is to St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 1.30.}

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things, but also hear spurciloquia, filthy speeches, whereof is (saith he) incessu meretricis, the beginning of whoredom and the habit of all evilness and mischief; where thou shalt by hearing devilish and filthy songs hurt thy chaste ears; and also shalt see that which shall be grievous unto thine eyes, for our eyes are as windows of the mind. . . . Art thou wiser, stronger, and holier than David? A little sparkle of fire cast into straw begins quickly to kindle and flame; our flesh is straw and will burn quickly; and for that cause the Holy Ghost setteth David for an example to us, that we should beware of such contagiousness. . . . YOUTH. I perceive by your communication that none ought to haunt and frequent those theaters and places where interludes are, and especially women and maids. AGE. You have collected the meaning of my sayings (nay, rather of the Fathers’ sayings). Truly you may see daily what multitudes are gathered together at those plays, of all sorts, to the great displeasure of almighty God and danger of their souls, etc., for that they learn nothing thereby but that which is fleshly and carnal. . . . Therefore let the people, and especially women, give ear to pagan Ovid, if not to Christian precepts, {who} speaking of those common resortings unto plays, saith: They come to see and eke for to be seen, Full much chastity quailed thereby has been. Juvenal the Poet saith also: That no wives or maidens that list to content and please sad {i.e., grave} and honest men will be found and seen at common plays, dances, or other great resort of people. For these plays be the instruments and armor of Venus and Cupid. And to say good sooth, what safeguard of chastity can there be where the woman is desired with so many eyes, where so many faces look upon her, and again she upon so many? She must needs fire some, and herself also fired again, and {i.e., if } she be not a stone. For what mind can be pure and whole among such a rabblement and not spotted with any lust? [\ T ext: John Northbrooke, Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine playes or enterluds with other idle pastimes [et]c. commonly vsed on the Sabboth day, are reproued by the authoritie of the word of God and auntient writers (London, [1577]) (NSTC 18670).

592

RICHARD GREENHAM

1

A godly exhortation, and fruitful admonition to virtuous parents and modest matrons . . .

1584

The entirety of Greenham’s first published book, whose running title is An exhortation for household discipline, is reproduced here. The text, so typical of puritan writing, attempts to take the most quotidian of things—­family life, the lawful sexuality between husbands and wives, the difficulties of parenting, the petty rebellions of youth—­and make them theaters in the great war between God and Satan, the spirit and the flesh. In this sense, puritans took what has previously been a monastic ideal of godly vigilance, and brought it out into the world, where it became an imperative not just for a small number of clergy but for all Christians. The result, quite intentionally, was to depict proper Christian living as a Sisyphean task. While never denying that parents ought to have special love for their children, Greenham emphasizes that this special love should be for their immortal souls rather than their worldly persons. He thus offers the extraordinary image of the dead children of profane or inattentive parents, spewing curses at their fathers and mothers from hell and calling them murderers of their souls. Technically and theologically speaking, there was nothing about this language to which any good Protestant might have objected, but nonetheless in practice it was extremely divisive. This was the sort of language that would have instantly affected those predisposed to view the world through such a stark spiritual lens, and would just as instantly have offended the rest of the population, who toiled to raise their children as best they could without interference from self-­righteous busybodies. It is perhaps worth mentioning that, although married, Greenham had no children. [\ Sources: Eric Carlson, “Practical divinity: Richard Greenham’s ministry in Elizabethan England,” in Eric Carlson (ed.), Religion and the English people, 1500–­1640 (Kirksville, 1998); Leif Dixon, “Richard Greenham and the Calvinist construction of God,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 4 (2010): 729–­45; ODNB; Kenneth Parker and Eric Carlson, Practical divinity: the works and life of Revd Richard Greenham (Aldershot, 1998). 1

Greenham biography can be found prefacing his Paramythion

593

RICHARD GREENHAM

A godly exhortation and fruitful admonition to virtuous parents and modest matrons . . .

1584

The Holy Ghost, speaking in the Scriptures of foolish sons—­as that he that begetteth such a one getteth himself sorrow, and that the father of a fool hath no joy, Proverbs 17:21—­meaneth it not so much of natural idiots and such as are destitute of common reason (although it is true, that is a lamentable judgment of God and a heaviness to the parents of such a child) as of wicked children: such as either are ignorant in the word nor knowing how to order one right step to the kingdom of God; or else, having some knowledge, abuse it to maintain their carnal lusts and appetite. For this cause, as it would grieve parents to have natural fools to their children . . . so much more should it grieve them to have such children as, either for want of knowledge and heavenly wisdom, cannot walk in the fear of God, or, abusing the knowledge given them, prostitute themselves to all sin and wickedness. It is marvelous how greatly parents can bewail the want of one natural gift proceeding of some imperfection, and how easily they can pass over without any grief the want of all spiritual graces springing from corrupt education. In like manner is it strange that men can take the matter so heavily when their children break into such offences as either have open shame or civil punishment following them, and yet can make no bones, but pass over such sins as are against the majesty of God, accompanied with everlasting confusion and unspeakable torments; wherein what doth the most part of men betray but their great hypocrisy, in that neither their joy nor their grief is sound to their children, and that they love themselves more in their children than either their salvation or the glory of God. . . . Let us learn, therefore, to correct our affections to our children, and be grieved for their ignorance, impiety, and sins, whereof either our carnal copulation, the not lamenting of our natural corruption, the want of prayer and holy seed, or profane education, armed with the wrath of God, may be a most just occasion. Can a man hope for a holy posterity? Or do we marvel if the Lord cross us in the children of our bodies, when we make as bold and brutish an entrance into that holy ordinance of the Lord as is the meeting of the neighing horse with his mare; when being joined in that honorable estate of matrimony, either as mere natural men without all knowledge of God 594



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we beget our children; or as too carnal men, without the fear and reverence of the Lord—­ neither bewailing our corruptions which we received of our ancestry, nor praying against the infirmities which may descend to our posterity—­we abuse the marriage bed? Lastly, when having received the fruit of the womb, we have no care, by virtuous education, to offer it to the Lord, that our child by carnal generation may be the child of God by spiritual regeneration? Surely no, and yet men . . . without all bethinking themselves of their corrupt generation from which their children are descended, without all looking back into their wicked and godless bringing of them up, will fret against their sins, fume against their children; yea, often they will correct them, and that to serve their own corruptions, not so much grieved for that they have sinned against God as that they have offended them. Christians, therefore, must know that when men and women raging with boiling lust meet together as brute beasts, having no other respects than to satisfy their own carnal concupiscence; when they make no conscience to sanctify the marriage bed with prayer; when they have no care to increase the Church of Christ and the number of the elect, it is the just judgment of God to send them either monsters or natural fools, or else such as, having good gifts of the mind and well-­proportioned bodies, are most wicked, graceless, and profane persons. Again, on the contrary, we shall find in the word of God that noble and notable men, commended unto us for rare examples of virtue and godliness, were children asked and obtained of God by prayer. Our first parents Adam and Eve, being humbled after the birth of their wicked son Cain, obtained a righteous Abel, of whom, when by his bloody brother they were bereft, they received that holy man Seth. . . . Look what sins we have received naturally, without God his great blessing, without prayer and humbling of ourselves, we shall convey them to posterity; and although the Lord granteth sometimes civil gifts unto the children of natural and carnal men, yet for the most part they receive their natural sins. But if the children of God by regeneration do see in themselves and lament their sins of generation, praying that their natural corruptions may be prevented in their posterities, they shall see great mercies of God in some measure freeing their children from the same.1 Now, when thou shalt see such sins to be in thy children, enter into thy own heart; examine thyself, whether they are not come from thee; consider how justly the hand of God may be upon thee. And when thou wouldst be angry against thy child, have an holy anger with thyself, and use this and such like meditation with thy own soul: Lord, shall I thus punish mine own sin, and that in my own child? . . . Nay, I see, ô Lord, and prove that thou art displeased with me for the too carnal conception of my child. I lay then in some sin; I asked it not of thee by prayer; be merciful unto me, ô Lord, and in thy good time show some pity upon my child. Thus thinking thou goest about to correct nature in thy child, which he could not help . . . thou shalt be so affected as desirous to draw thy child out of sin, yet with the mildest means and least rigor. And one thing is most wonderful: that some will teach their children to speak corruptly and do wickedly whilst they are young, and yet beat them for it when they are old. 1 {There is an implicit suggestion here that election and reprobation run in families. This is a tension that runs through predestinarian theology, since, of course, God has determined before all time whether those children would be saved, without reference to their own works much less the works of their parents. Greenham might have responded that God ordinarily chooses to work his will through godly upbringing, preaching, and other standard means as expressed in Scripture.}

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Again, some will embolden their little ones to practice iniquity towards others, which, when by the just judgment of God they afterward exercise towards the parents themselves, they are corrected for it. And yet, deal with these and suchlike men for the evil education of their children, and they will answer: do not we as much as is of us required? We send our children to the church to be instructed of the pastor, and to the school to be taught of the master. If they learn, it will be the better for them; if not, they have the more to answer for. What can we do more? But remember, ô man, consider, ô woman, whosoever thus speaketh, for that sin’s sake, and the want of prayer, there may be a plague upon the pastor’s pains and a curse upon the teacher’s travail. If parents would have their children blessed at the church and at the school, let them beware they give their children no corrupt example at home by any carelessness, profaneness, or ungodliness; otherwise parents will do them more harm at home than both pastor and schoolmaster can do good abroad, for the corrupt example of the one fighteth with the good doctrine of the other, which is by so much the more dangerous because that corrupt walking is armed with nature, and therefore more forcibly inclineth the affections of children to that side. And further, experience teacheth us that children like or mislike more by countenance, gesture, and behavior than by any rule, doctrine, or precept whatsoever. Some there be that will not have their children taught until they be ten or twelve years old, because, as they say, at that age they have but an apish imitation. To whom I answer that, although they cannot then deeply discern nor profoundly conceive things, yet how many things, before these years, will they both receive and remember? And I demand, if children be apish in imitating that, whilst they be young, which they will have the habit of when they be old, may they not much better do apishly good whilst they are young, which they may do carefully when they are old?2 Besides, let them go so untaught, and they will grow so headstrong that they will sooner be broken than bended; and sure it is that one stripe or two words will do more good to a child in time than a hundred stripes afterward. And here let parents be admonished of their undiscrete correction, who do their children more harm in showing a merry countenance after their discipline used than they do good by their chastisement of them whilst they do correct them. Neither do I purpose to take away natural affections and a Christian kind of compassion in all our censures, for it is my great complaint of the brutish unmercifulness of many parents herein. . . . Neither am I so stoical as to deny a more mild and affable kind of speech to be both lawfully and conveniently used to children, and yet I wish it to be void of all unseemly lenity. . . . To be brief, how needful household government towards our children is, it may appear by the slender thriving and small profiting either of religion or virtue, either in the Church or commonwealth. Speak men of discipline never so much, complain they of the want of Church government never so loud, preach they, teach they never so much abroad, unless they will begin discipline in reforming their houses, and give religion some room at home, they shall travail much and profit little. And surely, if men be careful to reform themselves first, and then their families . . . it were the best way to move the Lord to bestow reformation and discipline on his Church among us. And of all means that now may be hoped 2 {Here we see that puritans were perfectly capable of using the Aristotelian category of habitus, the notion that outward conduct affects our inward state—­despite the usual association of habitus with the anti-­ puritan argument for ceremonial observance as a path to inward piety.}

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for, this seemeth best: for of particular persons come families; of families, towns; of towns, provinces; of provinces, realms, so that conveying discipline thus from one to another, in time, and that shortly, it would come into the Church. . . . Wilt thou have thy children as the blessed seed of Abraham? Teach them, with Abraham, the judgments of the Lord. Pray for them, with Abraham, that they may live in the light of the Lord. Be ready to offer them with Abraham, that they may be a holy sacrifice unto the Lord. It is thou, ô man, ô woman, that mayst do thy child the greatest good, and the greatest harm. . . . And seeing the Lord hath promised that he will be thy God and bless thy seed, if thou beest faithful, thou mayst both hope that thou art of the faithful if thou hast a blessed seed, and fear that thou hast not as yet the blessing of the covenant when thy seed is accursed. But had not Jacob wicked children, and David godless sons? And doth not daily experience teach us that wicked men have godly children? Yes: for besides the secret counsel of the Lord herein, we must know that neither the promise of the Lord is so universal that every particular child of a faithful man should be within the covenant; for if, of many, there be but one blessed, the promise is performed. Yea, which more is, though the faithful man have never a good child, yet, if unto the thousand generation there be but one good, the covenant is not broken. Neither must we tie the Lord his work so much to man that a good man may not have an evil son; seeing, though the Lord visit not his sins, yet he may visit the sins of some of the forefathers, to the third and fourth generation going before. . . . Wherefore (not speaking of election or reprobation, which we leave only to the Lord), to make good or bad I exhort parents to use the ordinary means to bring up their children, so as they, either by some good tokens may see them the children of God and heirs of the covenant, or at least be comforted in their own conscience if their children for some cause unknown refuse it, in that to their ability they have used all good means to bring them up well and offered them to God. . . . And surely, as it is a blessed thing in the hour of death, with Simeon to depart in peace, leaving our wife, children, and servants members of Christ—­spouses to Christ, children to God, and servants to the Lord; so in death no one thing will be more grievous unto a man than, the Lord having given him the charge of so many souls to be furthered to salvation, that his own tormented conscience shall press him how, in as much as he could, he hath helped them forward to their damnation; and so, which is more fearful, he shall have them spewing and foaming out on his face continual curses in hell, accusing him forever to be a murderer of their souls and a cutthroat of their salvation. Howbeit, in all this I do not exempt children from all blame, so charging the parents as though the children were free from all guiltiness herein. For I am not ignorant that, as in the time of Ezekiel, so in our days, youth is ready enough to take up this proverb: the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But I affirm that, though the occasion be offered of such wicked parents, yet the cause of destruction is still in the children themselves. And besides that, it is sure that the soul which hath sinned shall die the death. Seeing there be some young men who, notwithstanding the great profaneness of the most, the manifold corruptions offered abroad, the ungodly examples abounding at home, are so mightily preserved by the seed of grace that they escape safely in an holy course of life . . . the rest, who please themselves and hope to shelter their sins under their parents’ defaults, are plainly left without excuse, and are justly guilty of the blood of their own sins. Labor, therefore, ye young men, to wipe away the tears of grief 597



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from your fathers’ eyes and stay the sorrowful spirits of your tender mothers. . . . The end of all this briefly is thus much: that parents having fools, children not walking either in knowledge or in a good conscience, must make some use of so just a cause of grief, examining themselves, and accusing their own souls before the Lord . . . And children here also must learn that it is one special property of a liberal and ingenious {i.e., discerning} nature to be careful so to live that in time they may be a glory to their fathers and a joy to their mothers: which the Lord grant to us all, for his own glory and our everlasting comfort, through Jesus Christ our Lord and only Savior. Amen. [\ T ext: Richard Greenham, A godlie exhortation, and fruitfull admonition to vertuous parents and modest matrons Describing the holie vse, and blessed institution of that most honorable state of matrimonie, and the encrease of godlie and happy children, in training them vp in godly education, and houshold discipline. R.G. (London, 1584) (NSTC 11503).

598

THOMAS BEARD (c. 1568–­1632)

The theater of God’s judgments

We know nothing about Beard’s family, but he must have grown up in modest circumstances, since he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1584 as a sizar. He received his BA four years later, his MA in 1591, the DD not until 1614. Shortly after his ordination in 1595, he became rector of a wealthy Cambridgeshire parish, and then in 1597, while still in his twenties, published the work for which he is remembered: The theater of God’s judgments, an augmented translation of the 1581 De grands et redoutables judemens et punitions de Dieu by the Calvinist minister, Jean Chassanion, who had himself drawn heavily on a 1568 Lutheran compendium of providential-­punishment tales. This material, having been translated into Latin in 1575 and retitled Theatrum historicum, went through over thirty editions by 1687. Beard’s version was reprinted in 1612, 1631, and 1648, each time with fresh material describing recent manifestations of divine justice.1 Beard’s later career was that of a prosperous conforming divine with godly Calvinist leanings: a wholly unremarkable combination during Abbot’s tenure as archbishop of Canterbury (1611–­1633). He held the livings of several parishes, a prebend’s stall in Lincoln Cathedral, and a royal chaplaincy, in addition to serving as headmaster of Huntingdon’s grammar school from 1604 to 1625. Oliver Cromwell was among his students, and Beard became close to the Cromwell family. In 1630, Beard and the future lord protector ended up on different sides of a local dispute, but despite this later falling-­out, Cromwell’s world view owed much to that of his teacher and family friend. The nature of that worldview is suggested by the fact that, except for the Theater, all Beard’s publications are anti-­Catholic tracts. His sole act of canonical disobedience seems to have been similarly motivated. An English divine, William Alabaster, who converted to Rome and then in 1611 returned to the English Church, had preached the Spital sermons for Easter week, 1617; Beard, appointed to preach the Low Sunday sermon, should by tradition have begun by summarizing Alabaster’s three sermons from the previous week. 1

Edmund Rudierd published an abridged edition in 1618 called The thunderbolt of God’s wrath.

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However, he found them popish and decided to refute rather than précis their teaching; moreover, he went ahead with the planned attack despite having been forbidden to do so by his own diocesan, Richard Neile, who apparently gave Beard a stern dressing-­down afterwards. When the Commons was investigating Neile for doctrinal impropriety in 1628, Cromwell recounted the incident—­his first Parliamentary speech—­as evidence of Neile’s Arminianism. [\

Until recently, the accepted view regarding Beard and the providentialism of his Theater was that both were quintessentially puritan, although some disagreement remained as to the kind of puritan. Christopher Hill found chapter four of the first book potentially radical (37–­40); by contrast, social historians tended to read the Theater as reflecting the ideology of a godly elite—­the poor being unlikely to find its “link between sin and adversity” compelling (Walsham, 31). In a 1972 article, however, G. F. Waller argued that Beard’s Theater should be read as a classic expression of popular puritanism: a crude, flattened version of Calvin’s theology, that reduced God to “an omnipotent force of cosmic vengeance,” whose primary relation to humankind was as punisher of sin (180–­82, 187). In 1999, Alexandra Walsham’s important study Providence in early modern England, offered a more complex picture. In part, her findings proved to be consistent with earlier scholarship: Calvinist theology, which made God “the final cause of every occurrence without exception, earth-­shattering or inconsequential,” was providentialist to the core (10). In godly families Beard’s “graphic accounts of the draconian penalties which befell those who violated divine law” were a perennial favorite (67–­69). However, Walsham’s research also revealed that his “grisly stories of supernatural justice” had a longer pedigree and wider social reach (65). Ballads and broadsides—­the demotic genres of cheap print—­ catered to a hot market in “providential journalism”: printers had writers on call so that within forty-­eight hours of any strange accident or ghastly crime, “‘doleful ditties’ and ‘true and wonderful’ reports would be rolling off the production line” (44). Moreover, the same sorts of narratives circulated orally, and it may be that the post-­Reformation tales of providential payback articulate “folkloric consciousness” as well as Protestant teaching (72). Reports of an atheist struck by lightning or Sabbath breakers killed by a toppling church spire “ran rife in close-­k nit rural communities,” circulating outward via peddlers, letters, and ballad-­mongers. Oral communications and broadsides dealt mostly with recent happenings. The seventeenth-­century editions of Beard draw heavily on this material. But most of the 1597 edition comes either from Foxe’s appendix to Acts and monuments (1563) recounting the horrible ends of those who persecuted God’s flock or from Chassanion’s 1581 French encyclopedia of providential punishments. Both Foxe and Chassanion were, of course, Reformed divines. However, as Walsham points out, they took many of their narratives, and the genre itself, from pre-­Reformation sources: sometimes from Lactantius’ fourth-­century De mortibus persecutorum, but more often from a collection of medieval preaching exempla, the compilations of memorable cautionary tales that medieval friars (like Chaucer’s Pardoner) used to enliven their vernacular preaching. Beard’s unwitting debt to this medieval Catholic material helps explain why his understanding of divine 600



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justice closely resembles the strict-­payback model central to Allen’s defense of purgatory , as it helps explain why Beard’s “theater”—­the providential dramas God stages for our instruction—­seems so medieval, its antic demons and Deus ex machina dénouements untouched by the Elizabethan “reorientation of the dramaturgical axis from the vertical . . . to the horizontal plane, upon which human characters interact within an imagined social space” (Montrose, 93). As their medieval lineage would suggest, Beard-­style narratives, rather than being a puritan creation, show up across the Reformation divide, as well as across the boundaries of class, literacy, and zeal.2 It does not, however, follow that most people prior to the Enlightenment believed that these narratives described how divine justice actually worked. In his Defense of poesy, Sir Philip Sidney observes, as if making a point so obvious as to be beyond dispute, that “the historian in his bare was hath many times that which we call fortune to overrule the best wisdom. . . . For see we not valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? . . . The cruel Severus live prosperously?”3 As Milton’s angel tells the fallen Adam at the close of Paradise Lost: . . . so shall the World go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning till the day Appear of respiration to the just . . .

(12.537–­540)4

Whatever “most people” did or did not believe, to read Beard as attempting to describe wie es eigentlich gewesen would be a category mistake. Beard’s primary goal, a goal he shared with medieval preaching friars, was to awaken the “drowsy consciences of God’s children.”5 One might, as a thought experiment, take “children” literally. Prior to the late eighteenth century there was no Sunday school, and parents, whose duty it was to teach their offspring the fear of the Lord, as likewise preachers facing pews full of nine-­year-­olds, must have found Beard and his precursors invaluable. It seems inconceivable that nine-­year-­olds (especially nine-­year-­old boys) did not love stories about chopping up baptized toads, bad guys getting whipped by monkeys, and poop coming out of people’s noses. [\ Sources: ODNB; Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York, 1970); Louis Montrose, The purpose of playing: Shakespeare and the cultural politics of the Elizabethan theatre (Chicago, 1996); G. F. Waller, “The popularization of Calvinism: Thomas Beard’s The theater of God’s judgements, Theology 75 (1972): 176–­87; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in early modern England (Oxford, 1999).

Walsham, 65–­66, 73, 96–­96, 115. The defense of poesy, ed. Albert Cook (Boston, 1890), 20–­21. 4 See also Luther, Lectures on Romans: glosses and scholia, vol 25 of Luther’s works, 55 vols. (St Louis, 1972) 177. 5 Beard, Theater, A3r. 2 3

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THOMAS BEARD

The theatre of God’s judgments

1597

THE PREFACE6 If to avoid and eschew vice (according to the saying of the poet) be a chief virtue and, as it were, the first degree of wisdom, then it is a necessary point to know what vice and virtue is, and to discern the evil and good which either of them bring forth, to the end to beware lest we dash ourselves unawares against vice instead of virtue, and be caught with the deceitful baits thereof. . . . And for this cause also God himself, our sovereign and perfect Lawgiver, that he might fashion and fit us to the mold of true and solid virtue, useth oftener negative prohibitions than affirmative commandments in his Law—­to the end above all things to distract and turn us from evil, whereunto we are of ourselves too too much inclined. And as by this mean sin is discovered and made known unto us, so is the punishment also of sin set before our eyes by those threatenings and curses which are there denounced—­to the end that whom the promises of life and salvation could not allure and persuade to do well, them the fear of punishment (which followeth sin as a shadow doth the body) might bridle and restrain from giving them over to impiety. Now then, if the very threatenings ought to serve for such good use, shall not the execution and performance of them serve much more? . . . And in this regard history is accounted a very necessary and profitable thing, for that in recalling to mind the truth of things past, which otherwise would be buried in silence, it setteth before us such effects (as warnings and admonitions touching good and evil) and layeth virtue and vice so naked before our eyes, with the punishments or rewards inflicted or bestowed upon the followers of each of them, that it may rightly be called an easy and profitable apprenticeship or school for every man to learn to get wisdom at another man’s cost. . . . Wherefore they deserve great praise and commendation that have taken pains to enroll and put in writing the memorable acts and occurrents of their times to communicate the same to their posterity, for here the high and wonderful works of God do most clearly and, as it were, to the view present themselves . . . in such sort that nothing in 6

{The 1648 edition adds the epigraph, God hath woolen feet, but iron hands. Aug.}

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the world cometh to pass by chance or adventure, but only & always by the prescription of his will—­according to the which he ordereth and disposeth by a straight and direct motion as well the general as the particular, and that after a strange and admirable order. And this a man may perceive, if he would but mark and consider the whole body, but especially the end & issue of things. . . . It is he also which erecteth principalities and which maintaineth commonwealths, kingdoms, and empires, until by the sum and weight of their iniquities they sink themselves into ruin and destruction. And herein is he glorified by the execution of his most just and righteous judgments. . . . . . . Beside, here is ample matter and argument to stop the mouths of all epicures and atheists of our age, and to leave them confounded in their errors, seeing that such and so many occurrents and punishments are manifest proofs that there is a God above that guideth the stern of the world and that taketh care of human matters & that is just in punishing the unjust and malicious. . . . ‡

{Book I} CHAP. IIII How the justice of God is more evidently declared upon the mighty ones of this world than upon any other, and the cause why.

Seeing then that these {great} men are more guilty and culpable of sin than any other, they deserve so much a more grievous punishment by how much their misdeeds are more grievous: for doubtless, There is a God that judgeth the earth (as the Psalmist saith), who, as he is benign and merciful towards those that fear and obey him, so he will not suffer iniquity to go unpunished . . . for if it be the duty of an earthly prince to exercise not only clemency and gentleness but also sharpness and severity, thereby punishing & chastising malefactors to suppress all disorders in the commonwealth, then it is very necessary that the justice of our great God . . . should either manifest itself in this world or in the world to come—­& chiefly towards them which are in the highest places of account, who being more hardened and bold to sin, do as boldly exempt themselves from all corrections and punishments due unto them, being altogether unwilling to be subject to any order of justice or law whatsoever; and therefore, by how much the more they cannot be punished by man and that human laws can lay no hold upon them, so much the rather God himself becometh executioner of his own justice upon their pates—­and in such sort that every man may perceive his hand to be on them. . . . Therefore, when these men are overtaken and surprised with any great evil . . . in this we must acknowledge an especial hand of God, who can entangle and pull down the proudest and arrogantest he that lives, and those whom the world feareth to meddle withal. . . . Who dare stand up to accuse them? Who dare sit down to judge them? Nay who dare take knowledge of them? And lastly, who dare assay to punish them? Seeing then in this case that our worldly justice hath her hands bound behind her from executing that which is right, it must needs be that the sovereign monarch of heaven and earth should mount up into his throne of judgment . . . to deliver up the most guilty and heinous sinners to those pains and torments which they 603



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have deserved, and that after a strange and extraordinary manner, which may serve for an example to all others. ‡ CHAP. XVI Other examples of the same subject7

. . .

. . . The chancellor of Prat, he that in the parliaments of France put up the first bill against the faithful and gave out the first commissions to put them to death, died swearing and blaspheming the name of God, his stomach being most strangely gnawn in pieces and consumed with worms.8. . . Sir Thomas More, l{ord} chancellor of England, a sworn enemy to the Gospel and a professed persecutor by fire and sword of all the faithful, as if thereby he would grow famous and get renown, caused to be erected a sumptuous sepulcher, and thereby (to eternize the memory of his profane cruelty) to be engraven the commendation of his worthy deeds: amongst which the principal was that he had persecuted with all his might the Lutherans (that is, the faithful); but it fell out contrary to his hope, for being accused, convicted, and condemned of high treason, his head was taken from him, and his body found no other sepulcher to lie in but the gibbet.9 Cardinal Crescentius, the Pope’s ambassador to the Council of Trent, in the year of our Lord 1552, being very busy in writing to his master the Pope and having labored all one night about his letters: behold, as he raised himself in his chair to stir up his wit and memory over-­dulled with watching, a huge black dog with great flaming eyes and long ears dangling to the ground appeared unto him; which, coming into his chamber and making right towards him, even under the table where he sat, vanished out of his sight; whereat he, amazed & a while senseless, recovering himself, called for a candle; & when he saw the dog could not be found, he fell presently sick with a strong conceit, which never left him till his death; ever crying that they would drive away the black dog which seemed to climb up on his bed; and in that humor he died. . . . But let us come to our home-­bred English stories and consider the judgments of God upon the persecutors of Christ’s gospel in Queen Mary’s time. And first to begin with Stephen Gardiner, who was one of the grand butchers in this land, what a miserable end came he unto?10 Even the same day that Bishop Ridley and Master Latimer were burned at Oxford, he hearing news thereof, rejoiced greatly, and being at dinner, eat his meat merrily; but ere he had eaten many bits, the sudden stroke of God’s terrible hand fell upon him in such sort that immediately he was taken from the board and brought to his 7

45).}

{The subject being “those that in our age have persecuted the Gospel in the person of the faithful” (Beard

8 {This is a standard form of death for persecutors going back to the report of Herod’s death in Acts 12:23.} 9 {The source is Calvin’s commentary on Isa 22.} 10 {The Gardiner and Morgan accounts come from Foxe’s Acts and monuments.}

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bed, where he continued fifteen days in intolerable anguish by reason he could not expel his urine; so that his body, being miserably inflamed within (who had inflamed so many godly martyrs), was brought to a wretched end, with his tongue all black and swollen, hanging out of his mouth most horribly: a spectacle worthy to be beholden of all such bloody burning persecutors. . . . Morgan, Bishop of S. David’s, sitting upon the condemnation of the blessed martyr Bishop Farrar, whose room he unjustly usurped, was not long after stricken by God’s hand after such a strange sort that his meat would not go down, but rise and pick up again, sometime at his mouth, sometime blown out of his nose, most horrible to behold, and so continued unto his death. Where note moreover, that when Master Leyson (being then sheriff at Bishop Farrar’s burning) had fetcht away the cattle of the said Bishop from his servant’s house into his own custody, divers of them would never eat meat, but lay bellowing and roaring, and so died. ‡ CHAP. XXIII Of Conjurers and Enchanters

If God by his first Commandment hath enjoined every one of us to love, serve, and to cleave unto him alone, in the conjunction and unity of a true faith and hope unremovable, there is no doubt but he forbiddeth on the other side that which is contrary to this foresaid duty, and herein especially that accursed familiarity which divers miserable wretches have with that lying spirit, the father of error, by whose delusions and subtlety they busy themselves in the study of sorceries and enchantments; whereupon it is forbidden the Israelites in the nineteenth of Leviticus to turn after familiar spirits or to seek to soothsayers to be defiled by them. . . . so in the twenth two of Exodus, the Law of God saith, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live . . . Yet nevertheless, many of this age give themselves over to this filthy sin, without either fear of God or respect of law: some through a foolish and dangerous curiosity, others through the overruling of their own vile and wicked affections, and a third sort, troubled with the terrors of an evil conscience, desire to know what shall befall and happen unto them in the end. Thus Saul, the first king of Israel, being troubled in himself, & terrified with the army of the Philistines that came against him, would needs foreknow his own fortune and the issue of this doubtful war. . . . He went therefore to a witch to seek counsel, who caused a devil to appear and speak unto him in the shape of Samuel, and foretell him of (God’s just judgment upon his wickedness) his utter and final ruin and destruction. . . . [An example not much unlike unto this in the event, but most like in practice, we find recorded of Natholicus, the one and thirtieth king of the Scots,11 who, after he had unjustly usurped the crown and scepter, and installed himself by much bloodshed into the throne of the kingdom by open intrusion and no apparent show of right, sought by the same means to confirm and establish the kingdom unto him. And therefore (as wickedness is always accompanied with suspicion and fear) he sent one of his trustiest friends to a [Buchan. rerum. Scot. lib. 4 {also called “Nathalocus,” a 3rd century monarch with remarkable similarities to Macbeth}.] 11

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witch to enquire of things to come, both what success he should have in his kingdom and also how long he should live. The witch answered that he should not live long, but should shortly be murdered, not by his enemy but by his familiar friend; when the messenger urged instantly of whom, she answered, of him. He, detesting her at first and abhorring the thought of any such villainy, yet at length considering that it was not safe to disclose the witch’s answer and, on the other side, that it could not be concealed, resolved for his most security rather to kill the tyrant, with the favor of many, than to save him alive, with the hazard of his own head. Therefore as soon as he was returned home, being in secret alone with the King to declare unto him the witch’s answer, he slew him suddenly, and gave him his just desert, both for his horrible cruelty and wicked sorcery. Let all them that make no conscience of running to witches either for their lost goods or for recovery of their own or friend’s health remember this example, either for their instruction to amend or for their terror if they continue that devilish practice.]12 . . . It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the devil snatched up in dinner while13 and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried on this manner, Help, help, my friends, so that the whole town stood amazed thereat; yea, and the remembrance of this strange accident sticketh at this day fast in the minds of all the inhabitants of this country, and they say that this wretch, having given himself to the devil, provided store of holy bread (as they call it) which he always carried about with him, thinking thereby to keep himself from his claws; but it served him to small stead, as his end declared. . . . In our own memory the Earl of Aspremont and his brother Lord of Orne were made famous and in every man’s mouth for their strange and prodigious feats, wherein they were so unreasonably dissolute and vainglorious that sometime they made it their sport and pastime to break down all the windows about the Castle Aspremont . . . and threw them piecemeal into a deep well to hear them cry plump. But this vain excess presaged a ruin and destruction to come, as well upon their house, which at this present lieth desolate and ruinous in many respects, as upon themselves, that finished their days in misery, one after another—­a s we shall now understand of the one, the Lord of Orne. . . . Now it chanced that as the Lord of Orne was of most wicked and cruel conditions, so he had an evil-­favored look answerable to his inclination, and name to be a conjurer. The report that went of his cruelty was this: that upon a time he put the baker (one of his servants, whose wife he used secretly to entertain) into a tun, which he caused to be rolled from the top of a hill into the bottom, bouncing sometimes as high as a pike as the place gave occasion; but by the great mercy of God, notwithstanding all this, this poor man saved his life. . . . It happened one day that a certain lord being departed from his {the Lord of Orne’s} house, one of his men, having left something behind, returned to the castle &, entering suddenly into the hall where they dined a little before, he espied a monkey beating the master of the house that had feasted them of late, very sore. And there be others that say that he hath been seen through the chink of 12 13

{The bracketed passage appears in the 1648 edition, but not in the 1597.} {I.e., at dinner time}

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a door lying on a table upon his belly all at length, and a monkey scourging him very strangely; to whom he should say, Let me alone, let me alone, wilt thou always torment me thus? And thus he continued a long time; but at length, after he had made away all his substance, he was brought to such extremity that, being destitute of maintenance and forsaken of all men, he was fain (for want of a better refuge) to betake himself to the Hospital of Paris, which was his last mansion house, wherein he died. See here to how pitiful and miserable an end this man fell, that having been esteemed amongst the mighties of this world, for making no more account of God and for following the illusions of Satan (the common enemy of mankind) became so poor and wretched as to die in an hospital among cripples and beggars. . . . In the reign of the same King {Charles VII}, 1457, there was a certain curate of a village near to Soissons who, to revenge himself of a farmer that retained from him the tenths which were appointed to the Knights of the Rhodes, went to a witch, of whom he received in gift a fat toad in an earthen pot, which she had a long while fed and brought up, which she commanded him to baptize; as he also did, and called it by the name of John—­a lbeit I tremble to recite so monstrous & vile a fact, yet that every man might see how deadly besotted those sort of people are that give themselves over to Satan and with what power of error he overwhelmeth them, and beside, how full of malice this unclean spirit is that, as it were in despite of God, would profane the holy sacrament of baptism. This good holy curate, after he had consecrated the holy ghost {sic; host?}, gave it also to the toad to eat, and afterward restored it to the witch again, who killing the toad and cutting it in pieces, with other such-­like sorceries, caused a young wench to carry it secretly into the farmer’s house and to put it under the table as they were at dinner; whereupon immediately the farmer and his children that were at the table fell suddenly sick, & three days after died. The witch herself, being detected, was burned; but the curate suffered only a little imprisonment in the bishop of Paris’ house, and that not long, for what with friendship & money he was soon delivered. . . . ‡ CHAP. XXXII Of those that by cursing and denying God give themselves to the devil

As concerning those that are addicted to much cursing and, as if their throats were hell itself, to despitings and reviling against God (that is blessed forever), and are so mad as to renounce him and give themselves to the devil, truly they worthily deserve to be forsaken of God and given over to the devil indeed, to go with him into everlasting perdition: which hath been visibly experienced in our time upon certain wretched persons, which have been carried away by that wicked spirit to whom they gave themselves. There was upon a time in Germany a certain naughty-­pack of a most wicked life, & so evil brought up that at every word he spake almost, the devil was at the one end.14 If walking he chanced to tread awry or to stumble, presently the devil was in his mouth. Whereof, albeit he was many times reproved by his neighbors and exhorted to correct and 14

[Luther upon the 15 chap. of the 1 Ep. to the Corinth.]

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amend so vile and detestable a vice, yet all was in vain; continuing therefore this evil and damnable custom, it happened that as he was upon a time passing over a bridge he fell down, & in his fall gave these speeches, Hoist up with an hundred devils:15 which he had no sooner spoken but the devil whom he called for so oft was at his elbow to strangle him & carry him away with him. A certain soldier, travelling through Marchia, a country of Almaigne, and finding himself evil at ease in his journey, abode in an inn till he might recover his health, and committed to the hostess’ custody certain money which he had about him. Now a while after, being recovered of his sickness, he required his money again; but she, having consulted with her husband, denied the receit and therefore the return thereof, and accused him of wrong in demanding that which she never received. The soldier, on the other side, fretted amain and accused her of cozenage. Which stir when the goodman of the house understood (though privy to all before), yet dissemblingly took his wife’s part and thrust the soldier out of doors; who being thoroughly chafed with that indignity, drew his sword & ran at the door with the point hereof; whereat the host began to cry, Thieves, thieves, saying that he would have entered his house by force; so that the poor soldier was taken & cast into prison, and by process of law ready to be condemned to death. But the very day wherein this hard sentence was to be pronounced & executed, the devil entered into the prison & told the soldier that he was condemned to die; howbeit nevertheless, if he would give himself body & soul unto him, he would promise to deliver him out of their hands. The prisoner answering, said that he had rather die being innocent & without cause than to be delivered by that means. Again the devil replied, & propounded to him the great danger wherein he was; yea, & used all cunning means possible to persuade him; but seeing that he lost his labor, he at length left his suit, and promised him both help & revenge upon his enemies, & that for nothing; advising him moreover when he came to judgment to plead not guilty, & to declare his innocency and their wrong, & to entreat the judge to grant him one in a blue cap that stood by to be his advocate (now this one in a blue cap was the devil himself). The soldier accepting his offer, being called to the bar and indicted there of felony, presently desired to have his attorney, who was there present, to plead his cause; then began the fine & crafty doctor of the laws to plead and defend his client very cunningly, affirming him to be falsely accused & consequently unjustly condemned, & that his host did withhold his money & had offered him violence; & to prove his assertion he reckoned up every circumstance in the action, yea the very place were they had hidden the money. The host on the other side stood in denial very impudently, wishing the devil might take him if he had it. Then the subtle lawyer in the blue cap, looking for no other vantage, left pleading & fell to lay hold of the host, and carrying him out of the sessions house, hoisted him into the air so high that he was never after seen nor heard of. And thus was the soldier delivered from the execution of the law most strangely, to the astonishment of all the beholders that were eye witnesses of that which happened to the forsworn & cursing host. . . . CHAP. XXXIII More examples of God’s judgments upon cursers

{The OED gives several examples of “hoist” (or “hoist up” or “hoist away”) “to the devil,” so this must be proverbial.} 15

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But before we go to the next Commandment, we will adjoin a few more examples of this devilish cursing. . . . Theodorus Beza reporteth unto us two notable histories of his own knowledge of the severity of God’s judgment upon a curser and a perjurer, the tenor whereof is this: I knew (saith he) in France a man of good parts, well instructed in religion and a master of a family, who in his anger cursing, and bidding the devil take one of his children, had presently his wish, for the child was possessed immediately with a spirit—­from which, though by the fervent & continual prayers of the Church he was at length released, yet ere he had fully recovered his health he died. The like we read to have happened to a woman whom her husband in anger devoted {i.e., consigned} with bitter curses to the devil; for Satan assaulted her presently and robbed her of her wits, so that she could never be recovered. . . . . . . But above all, this is most strange which happened in a town of Misina, in the year of our Lord God 1552, the eleventh of September,16 where a choleric father, seeing his son slack about his business, wished he might never stir from that place—­for it was no sooner said but done; his son stuck fast in the place, neither by any means possible could be removed, no not so much as to sit or bend his body, till by the prayers of the faithful his pains were somewhat mitigated, though not remitted. Three years he continued standing, with a post at his back for his ease, and four years sitting, at the end whereof he died, nothing weakened in his understanding, but professing the faith and not doubting of his salvation in Christ Jesus. When he was demanded at any time how he did, he answered most usually that he was fastened of God, and that it was not in man but in God’s mercy for him to be released. John Peter, son-­in-­law to Alexander, that cruel keeper of Newgate, being a most horrible swearer and blasphemer, used commonly to say, If it be not true, I pray God I may rot ere I die: and not in vain, for he rotted away indeed, & so died most miserably. Hither we may add a notable example of a certain young gallant that was a monstrous swearer, who, riding in the company of divers gentlemen, began to swear and most horribly blaspheme the name of God; unto whom one in the company with gentle words said, he should one day answer for that. The yonker taking snuff thereat, why (said he) takest thou thought for me? Take thought for thy winding sheet. Well (quoth the other) amend, for death giveth no warning; as soon cometh a lamb’s skin to the market as an old sheep’s. God’s wounds (said he), care not thou for me, raging still on this manner worse and worse; till at length passing on their journey, they came riding over a great bridge, upon which this gentleman swearer spurred his horse in such sort that he sprang clean over with the man on his back, who as he was going cried, Horse and man and all to the devil. This terrible story Bishop Ridley preached and uttered at Paul’s Cross; and one Haines, a minister of Cornwall (the reprehender of this man), was the reporter of it to Master Foxe, out of whom I have drawn it. Refrain then (wretches that you are) your devilish tongues; leave off to provoke the wrath of God any longer against you; 16 [Theatr. hist. Let not the strangeness of this example discredit the truth thereof, seeing we read how Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, Gen. 19; and Corah with his company swallowed of the earth, Numb. 16, which are stranger than this. Acts and monuments, pag. 2101.]

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forbear all wicked and cursed speeches, and acquaint yourselves as well in word as deed to praise and glorify God. ‡

{Book II} CHAP. XVII Of such as exercise too much rigor and severity

Furthermore, we must understand that God doth not only forbid murder and bloodshed but also all tyranny and oppression, therein providing for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, and bond slaves against their masters: to the end that none might be trod under foot and oppressed of others, under pain of his indignation. . . . . . . As every nation hath his proper virtue and vice ascribed to it, so the Spaniards for their part are noted famous for cruelty towards their subjects and vassals . . . for which cause they have borne the mark of God’s justice for their rigorous & barbarous handling of the poor West Indians, whom they have brought to that extremity by putting them to such excessive travails in digging their mines of gold (as namely in the island Hispagnola) that the most part by sighs and tears wish by death to end their miseries. Many, first killing their children, have desperately hung themselves on high trees; some have thrown themselves headlong from steep mountains, and others cast themselves into the sea to be rid of their troubles. But the tyrants have never escaped scot-­free, but came always to some miserable end or other: for some of them were destroyed by the inhabitants; others slew one another with their own hands, provoked by insatiable avarice; some have been drowned in the sea, and others starved in the desert. In fine, few escaped unpunished. . . . In the year of our Lord 1541, the eighth day of September, there chanced in the city Suatimala, which lieth in the way from Nicaragna westward, a strange and admirable judgment. After the death of Avarado, who subdued this province and founded the city, and was but a little before slain in fight, it rained so strangely and vehemently all this whole day and night, that of a sudden so huge a deluge and flood of waters overflowed the earth, streaming from the bottom of the mountains into the lower grounds with such violence that stones of incredible bigness were carried with it, which tumbling strongly downwards, bruised and burst in pieces whatsoever was in their way. In the meanwhile there was heard in the air fearful cries and voices; and a black cow was seen running up & down in the midst of the water. . . . The morrow after the waters were surceased, one might see the poor Spaniards lie along the fields, some maimed in their bodies, other with broken arms or legs, or otherwise miserably wounded. And thus did God revenge the monstrous Spanish cruelties exercised upon those poor people, whom instead of enticing by fair and gentle means to the knowledge of the true God & his Son Christ, they terrified by extraordinary tyranny (for such is the Spanish nature), making them think that Christians were the cruelest and most wicked men of the earth. 610



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‡ CHAP. XL Of usurers and their theft17

If open larcenies and violent robberies and extortions are forbidden by the law of God, as we have seen they are, then it is no doubt but that all deceit and unjust dealings and bargains used to the damage of others are also condemned by the same law: and namely usury, when a man exacteth such unmeasurable gain for either his money or other thing which he lendeth that the poor borrower is so greatly indamaged that instead of benefitting and providing for his affairs, which he aimed at, he hitteth his further loss and final overthrow. . . . . . . And to speak truly, these rich and gallant usurers do more rob the common people and purloin from them than all the public thieves that are made public examples of justice in the world. It is to be wished that some would examine usurers’ books and make a bond-­fire of their obligations {i.e., debt receipts}, as that Lacedemonian did, when Agesilaus reported that he never saw a clearer fire. . . .18 In the bishopric of Colne, a notable famous usurer, lying upon his death-­bed ready to die, moved up and down his chops and his lips as if he had been eating something in his mouth; and being demanded what he eat, he answered his money, and that the devil thrust it into his mouth perforce, so that he could neither will nor choose but devour it; in which miserable temptation he died without any show of repentance. . . . Usury consisteth not only in lending and borrowing, but in buying and selling also, and all unjust and crafty bargaining; yea, and it is a kind of usury to detain through too much covetousness those commodities from the people which concern the public good, and to hoard them up for their private gain till some scarcity or want arise; and this also hath evermore been most sharply punished, as by these examples may appear. About the year 1543, at what time a great famine and dearth of bread afflicted the world, there was in Saxony a country peasant, that having carried his corn to the market and sold it cheaper than he looked for, as he returned homewards he fell into most heavy dumps and dolors of mind, with grief that the price of grain was abated; and when his servants sang merrily for joy of that blessed cheapness, he rebuked them most sharply and cruelly; yea, and was so much the more tormented and troubled in mind by how much the more he saw any poor soul thankful unto God for it. But mark how God gave him over to a reprobate and desperate sense. Whilst his servants rode before, he hung himself at the cart tail, being past recovery of life ere any man looked back or perceived him. A notable example for our English cormorants who join barn to barn and heap to heap, and will not sell nor give a handful of their superfluity to the poor when it beareth a low price, but preserve it till scarcity and want come, and then they sell it at their own rate. Let them fear by this, lest the Lord deal so or worse with them. Another covetous wretch, when he could not sell his corn so dear as he desired, said the mice should eat it rather than he would lessen one jot of the price thereof. Which 17 18

{The 1648 edition retains only the beginning and end of this chapter.} {The story comes from Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaus.}

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words were no sooner spoken but vengeance took them; for all the mice in the country flocked to his barns and fields, so that they left him neither standing nor lying corn, but devoured all. . . . Another in Misina in the year 1559 having great store of corn horded up, refused to succor the necessity of his poor and half-­famished neighbors; for which cause the Lord punished him with a strange and unusual judgment: for the corn which he so much cherished assumed life and became feathered souls, flying out of his barns in such abundance that the world was astonished thereat, and his barns left empty of all provision in most wonderful and miraculous manner. . . . ‡ CHAP. LI How the afflictions of the godly and punishments of the wicked differ

. . .

If you be mighty, puissant, and fearful {i.e., fearsome}, know that the Lord is greater than you, for he is almighty, all-­terrible, and all-­fearful. In what place soever you are, he is always above you, ready to hurl you down and overturn you; to break, quash, & crush you in pieces as pots of earth. He is armed with thunder, fire, and a bloody sword to destroy, consume, and cut you in pieces. Heaven threateneth from above; and the earth which you trample on, from below, shaking under your feet. . . . Forsake therefore, if you tender the good, honor, and repose of yourselves and yours, the evil and corrupt fashions of the world, and submit yourselves in obedience under the scepter of God’s law and gospel, fearing the just retribution of vengeance upon all them that do the contrary: for it is a horrible thing to fall into the hands of the Lord. . . . Amen. [\ T ext: Thomas Beard, The theatre of God’s judgments: or, a collection of histories out of sacred, ecclesiastical, and profane authors concerning the admirable judgments of God upon the transgressors of his commandments. Translated out of French and augmented by more than three hundred examples by Th. Beard (London, 1597) (NSTC 1659). Checked against The theatre of Gods judgments: wherein is represented the admirable justice of God against all notorious sinners, great and small, specially against the most eminent persons in the world whose exorbitant power had broke through the barres of divine and humane law. . . 4th ed., with additions (London, 1642) (Wing B1565A).

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WILLIAM PERKINS (1558–­1602)1

A treatise of the vocations, or callings of men

Perkins has been called, by the twentieth century’s greatest historian of Tudor religion, the “prince of puritan theologians and the most eagerly read” (Collinson, 125). He was a professional academic rather than a churchman or politician, spending his whole career at Cambridge, first as a fellow of Christ’s College and then, for the last seventeen years of his life, as a lecturer at the church of St. Andrew. In those capacities, he exercised an enormous influence on two generations of students and scholars, encouraging a style of puritanism that focused heavily on theological doctrine and personal piety rather than on the sort of practical objections to the Elizabethan Settlement of the Church that had so bedeviled puritans over the previous decades. Perkins’ influence transcended the university, however: he wrote over forty books, many of them (like his Treatise of the vocations) based upon his lectures in Cambridge and published posthumously. Perkins was famous for many different interventions in English religion. He contributed to the doctrine of absolute double predestination, the controversial position that God willed the damnation of the reprobate before the beginning of time (rather than just willing the salvation of the elect and therefore passively allowing the reprobate to be damned) and therefore that Christ’s death atoned only for the sins of the elect.2 He helped to develop the growing puritan preoccupation with conscience, teaching techniques of self-­examination and self-­control, and the proper ordering of daily life, according to religious principles. And, in this famous treatise, he helped to clarify the doctrine of the “calling”: the notion that each person is called by God to a particular form of action in the world, and that the vigorous pursuit of that calling according to religious principles is the most proper way to fulfill God’s purpose. In the medieval Catholic world, a minority of men and women had had “callings” to the priesthood, monastery, or convent. Protestants like Perkins radically expanded this vision, so that every person had a calling, all equally

1 2

The overview of Perkins’ life will be found in the introduction to his A golden chain . See his A golden chain .

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religious, to pursue godliness in their own daily activities. This was, in other words, a theology of professional life and work in all its forms. The theology of the “calling” is known to modern readers primarily through the arguments of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–­1920). Weber’s massively influential The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism argued (to simplify enormously) that Protestants, in the process of defining all professional callings as equal to the calling of the priesthood, unwittingly created a society in which capitalism could flourish because the pursuit of worldly success became a religious imperative. Readers of Perkins’s influential theology of the “calling” will find much here to support that view, but also much that fits with it awkwardly or not at all. [\ Sources: ODNB; Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement; Max Weber, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1958).

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A treatise of the vocations, or callings of men

1590s (pub. 1605)

. . .

. . . A vocation or calling is a certain kind of life, ordained and imposed on man by God, for the common good. First of all, I say, it is a certain condition or kind of life: that is, a certain manner of living our lives in this world. For example, the life of a king is to spend his time in the governing of his subjects, and that is his calling; and the life of a subject is to live in obedience to the magistrate, and that is his calling. The state and condition of a minister is to lead his life in preaching of the gospel and word of God, and that is his calling. A master of a family is to lead his life in the government of his family, and that is his calling. In a word, that particular and honest manner of conversation {i.e., dealing with others}, whereunto every man is called and set apart, that is (I say) his calling. Now in every calling we must consider two causes. First, the efficient {cause} and author thereof. Secondly, the final and proper end. The author of every calling is God himself, and therefore Paul saith, As God hath called every man, let him walk. . . . And for this cause the order and manner of living in the world is called a vocation, because every man is to live as he is called of God. For look as in the camp, the general appointeth to every man his place and standing . . . in which he is to abide against the enemy, and therein to live and die; even so it is in human societies. . . . And as in a camp, no soldier can depart his standing without the leave of the general, no more may a man leave his calling, except that he receive liberty from God.1 Again, in a clock made by the art and handiwork of man, there be many wheels, and every one hath his several motions; some turn this way, some that way, some go softly, some apace, and they are all ordered by the motion of the watch. Behold here a notable resemblance of God’s special providence over mankind,2 which is the watch of the great world, allotting to every man his motion and {The image comes from Cicero, De senectute 20.73.} {The clockmaker image, which would later become associated with a less interventionist view of divinity, is here used to defend God’s special providence for every human being.} 1 2

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calling, and in that calling his particular office and function. Therefore it is true that I say, that God himself is the author and beginning of callings. This overthroweth the heathenish opinion of men which think that the particular condition and state of men in this life comes by chance, or by the bare will and pleasure of man himself. Secondly, by this which hath been said, we learn that many, persuading themselves of their callings, have for all this no calling at all. As for example, such as live by usury, by carding and dicing . . . by plays, and such like. For God is the author of every lawful calling, but these and such miserable courses of living are either against the word of God, or else are not grounded thereupon. . . . . . . The final cause or end of every calling, I note in the last words of the description: for the common good. That is, for the benefit and good estate of mankind. In man’s body there be sundry parts and members, and every one hath his several use and office, which it performeth not for itself but for the good of the whole body. As the office of the eye is to see, of the ear to hear, and the foot to go. Now all societies of men are bodies: a family is a body, and so is every particular church a body, and the commonwealth also. And in these bodies there be several members, which are men walking in several callings and offices, the execution whereof must tend to the happy and good estate of the rest, yea, of all men everywhere, as much as possible is. The common good of men stands in this: not only that they live, but that they live well, in righteousness and holiness, and consequently in true happiness. And for the attainment hereunto, God hath ordained and disposed all callings, and in his providence designed {i.e., designated} the persons to bear them. Here then we must in general know that he abuseth his calling, whosoever he be, that against the end thereof employs himself, seeking wholly his own and not the common good. And that common saying, every man for himself and God for us all, is wicked, and is directed against the end of every calling or honest kind of life. . . . The second general rule which must be remembered is this: that every man must do the duties of his calling with diligence. And therefore Solomon saith, Eccl. 9:10, Whatsoever is in thine hand to do, do it with all thy power. . . . That which Christ saith of the work of our redemption, It is meat and drink for me to do my Father’s will [John 4:34], the same must every man say in like sort of his particular calling. Of this diligence there be two reasons. First of all, the end why God bestows his gifts upon us is that they may be employed in his service and to his glory, and that in this life. Therefore Paul saith, Redeem the time. . . . For we see tradesmen and travelers rise early to their business, lest night overtake them. Secondly, to them which employ their gifts, more is given, and from them which employ them not, is taken that which they have. And labor in a calling is as precious gold or silver. Hereupon he that maims a man and disables him to do the work of his calling, by God’s law is bound to give him the value of his labor, Exod. 21:19. And to like purpose our people have a common saying, that an occupation is as good as land, because land may be lost, but skill and labor in a good occupation is profitable to the end, because it will help at need, when land and all things fail. And on the other side, we must take heed of two damnable sins that are contrary to this diligence. The first is idleness, whereby the duties of our callings and the occasions of glorifying God are neglected or omitted. The second is slothfulness, whereby they are performed slackly and carelessly. . . . St. Paul gives this rule 616



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to the Thessalonians, He that will not labor, must not eat [2 Thes. 3:10]. . . . And by this he showeth that sloth and negligence in the duties of our callings are a disorder against that comely order which God hath set in the societies of mankind, both in Church and commonwealth. And indeed, idleness and sloth are the causes of many damnable sins. The idle body and the idle brain is the shop of the devil. The sea, if it moved not, could not but putrefy; and the body, if it be not stirred and moved, breedeth diseases. Now the idle and slothful person is a sea of corruption; and when he is most idle, Satan is least idle, for then he is most busy to draw him to manifold sins. . . . Thus much of the general calling common to all men as they are Christians. Now followeth the second kind of calling, and that is personal. A personal calling is the execution of some particular office, arising of that distinction which God makes between man and man in every society. First I say, it is the execution of some particular office, as for example: the calling of a magistrate is to execute the office of government over his subjects; the office of a minister is to execute the duty of teaching his people. . . . In a word, in every estate the practice and execution of that particular office, wherein any man is placed, is his personal calling. Secondly, I add that it ariseth from that distinction which God maketh between man and man in every society to show what is the foundation and ground of all personal callings. And it is a point to be considered of us, which I thus explain: God in his word hath ordained the society of man with man. . . . Now, for the maintaining of society, he hath ordained a certain bond to link men together, which Saint Paul calleth the bond of peace, and the bond of perfection, namely, love [Col. 3:14]. And howsoever he hath ordained societies, and the bond of them all, yet hath he appointed that there should still remain a distinction between man and man, not only in regard of person but also in other respects. For . . . howsoever in the body one part is linked to another, yet there is a distinction betwixt the members, whereby it cometh to pass that the hand is the hand, not the foot; and the foot the foot, not the hand nor the eye; so it is in societies. There is a distinction in the members thereof, and that in two respects. First, in regard of the inward gifts which God bestoweth on every man, giving to several men several gifts according to his good pleasure. . . . Now look as the inward gifts of men are severed, so are the persons distinguished in their societies accordingly. Secondly, persons are distinguished by order, whereby God hath appointed that in every society one person should be above or under another; not making all equal, as though the body should be all head and nothing else, but even in degree and order he hath set a distinction, that one should be above another. And by reason of this distinction of men, partly in respect of gifts, partly in respect of order, come personal callings. . . . And thus we see what is a personal calling. Now, before I come to entreat {i.e., treat} of the parts thereof, there be other general rules to be learned, which concern all personal callings whatsoever. I. Rule. Every person of every degree, state, sex, or condition, without exception, must have some personal and particular calling to walk in. This appeareth plainly by the whole word of God. Adam, as soon as he was created, even in his integrity, had a personal calling assigned to him by God, which was to dress and keep the garden. And after Adam’s fall, the Lord giveth a particular commandment to him and all his posterity, which bindeth all men to walk in some calling, either in the Church or commonwealth, saying, Gen. 3:19, In 617



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the sweat of thy brows shalt thou eat thy bread. Again, in the renewing of the Law in Mount Sinai, the fourth commandment doth not only permit labor on six days, but also enjoins the same (as I take it) to us all. For God’s example is there propounded for us to follow, that as he rested the seventh day, so must also we; and consequently, as he spent six days in the work of creation, so should we in our personal callings.3 And St. Paul giveth this rule, Eph. 4:28, Let him that stole, steal no more, but let him rather work with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. . . . Yea, the angels of God have their particular callings, in that they do his commandments in obeying the voice of his word [Psalm 103:20]. And therefore all that descend of Adam must needs have some calling to walk in, either public or private, whether it be in the Church or commonwealth or family. Hence we may learn sundry points of instruction. First of all, that it is a foul disorder in any commonwealth, that there should be suffered rogues, beggars, vagabonds; for such kind of persons commonly are of no civil society or corporation, nor of any particular church, and are as rotten legs and arms that drop from the body. . . . And therefore the statute made {by} the last Parliament for the restraining of beggars and rogues is an excellent statute, and being in substance the very law of God, is never to be repealed.4 . . . Thirdly, we learn by this that miserable and damnable is the state of those that, being enriched with great livings and revenues, do spend their days in eating and drinking, in sports and pastimes, not employing themselves in service for Church or commonwealth. It may be haply thought that such gentlemen have happy lives, but it is far otherwise: considering everyone, rich or poor, man or woman, is bound to have a personal calling in which they must perform some duties for the common good, according to the measure of the gifts that God hath bestowed on them. . . . To proceed. Personal callings be of two sorts. Of the first sort are all such as be of the essence and foundation of any society, without which the society cannot be. As in a family, the calling of a master and the calling of a servant, the calling of a husband and wife, of parents and children.5 And in the commonwealth, the calling of magistrates and subjects. And in the Church, the calling of the minister and of the people. Of the second sort are all such as serve only for the good, happy, and quiet estate of a society. And these be of sundry sorts, some of them serving for the preservation of the life of man, as the calling of an husbandman or a merchant, etc.; some serving for the preservation of health, as the calling of a physician and of the surgeon, etc.; some serving for the outward peace, as the calling of a soldier, of the lawyer, etc.; some serving for the clothing and attiring of the body, and they be almost so many as be the parts of the body; some also serving for building, as the calling of a carpenter and mason. In a word, look how many things be necessary for the good estate of any society, so many personal callings there be, which belong not to the essence and being of a society, but serve only for the good of the same. And to one of these two kinds, may all lawful personal callings be referred. Thus much of callings in general, and of the kinds thereof. {I.e., holy days, other than the Sabbath (e.g., Christmas, Whitsun), are forbidden.} {A reference to the Vagrancy Act (39 Eliz. C.4) of 1597} 5 {Aristotle, Politics 1252a} 3 4

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. . . . . . The works of our callings must be qualified by three notes: first, they must be the proper works of our callings; secondly, they must be profitable; and thirdly, necessary. The first is St. Paul’s rule, 1 Thes. 4:11, Live in peace, saith he. But how shall that be done? He answereth, By doing his own business. . . . The husbandman must attend on husbandry, and the minister on preaching, etc. By this one point, sundry faults are opened that commonly fall out in the lives of men. . . . And this is the common fault of the world: men that lightly regard and slackly perform the duties of their own callings are nevertheless very ready to talk of and inquire into the state and lives of other men; and it is meat and drink unto them. Let a good report be given out of a man, it is not regarded, but evil reports are taken up at the first rebound; they run like wildfire, and all this ariseth from vain curiosity, which is here condemned as the bane of all societies. These busybodies are like to such as read books with intent only to spy out the faults thereof. . . . But men that fear God must learn to know their own business, and to suffer their talk and meditation to be employed that way. Again, here is condemned the curiosity of those that enter upon the duties of other men’s callings. It is a dangerous sin, as I showed heretofore by the example of Uzzah, who was slain for touching the ark, though his intent was only to keep it from falling: for he had no such calling {2 Sam. 6:3-­8}. . . . Thirdly, hereby is condemned the study and practice of figure-­casting and judicial astrology: for thereby many, and that upon false grounds, go about to search what shall befall other men, either in life or death: things that God will not have known before they come to pass. In a word, everyone that doth not the duties of his own calling diligently and with good conscience is hereby condemned. The second property is that the works of our callings be profitable, not only to the doers, but to the commonwealth. This the law of nature teacheth. By this second property sundry men are to be blamed. First, the tradesman that getteth his living by making foreign and fond fashions of attire which serve for no use but to be displayed—­flags and banners either of folly or pride or wantonness. For all such fashions are condemned by the word of God; yea, by the very light of nature . . . Secondly, here the alchemist is to be reproved. . . . And that which is said, or rather dreamed, of the philosopher’s stone, is but a conceit and nowhere to be found but in Utopia. And there is no question but one day an account must be made of the good time unprofitably spent in seeking for it. The third condition of our actions is that they must be necessary. . . . Now men must especially give themselves to practice the principal works of their callings. As, for example, the action of a minister in his calling is to read and to preach the word of God; now reading is a work less necessary, and preaching the most principal, and for this cause he must give himself especially to the practice thereof.6 On this manner we might go through the callings of all men and note many wants therein. Magistrates in towns and corporations carry and draw the sword for the maintenance of peace and civil order; it is well done, for it is a work of their calling, yet not the principal; and they do commonly fail in this, that they use not the sword for this end: to urge men to the keeping of the commandments of {This is a standard puritan polemic against ministers who merely read the authorized homilies rather than preaching sermons.} 6

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the first Table, to a practice of pure religion, and to the keeping of the Sabbath day. This is the main duty of the magistrate, who bears the sword specially for the good of men’s souls. A master of a family is to care not only for the bodies but also for the souls of his household, for this is the principal duty; and most householders are faulty therein, for commonly they betake themselves to the lesser duties, and leave the principal. They care for the bodies of their wives, children, and servants, neglecting the means of the salvation of their souls, clean contrary to the rule in hand, which enjoineth the practice of the principal duties in the first place. . . . This also showeth us the faults of many students, who, setting themselves apart for the work of the ministry, do first give themselves to study the Fathers and ancient writers, whereas their first principal duty is to be soundly instructed in the word of God, and to ground themselves in the main points of religion, that they may be able to know what is true, what is false; what is to be done, what is not to be done, in all matters, whether they concern faith or manners. And when this good foundation is laid, then the foresaid helps may with good success be adjoined. [\ T ext: William Perkins, A treatise of the vocations, or callings of men (1605) in The vvorkes of that famous and vvorthy minister of Christ in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, 3 vols. (London and Cambridge, 1612–­1613), I:747–­779 (NSTC 19650).

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WILLIAM CLAXTON (?) (1530–­1597)

Rites of Durham

Only a half-­century separates the early Henrician from the late Elizabethan Reformation, so that in 1593 an old man could remember the splendor of Durham Abbey cum Cathedral before the royal visitors came in 1538 and tore down the exquisite jeweled shrine of St. Cuthbert, before the Edwardian ones came and smashed the Corpus Christi tabernacle, before Dean Whittingham came with his pestiferous wife and turned the carved marble holy-water stoop into a vat for pickling fish.1 Rites of Durham, which preserves these memories of a lost world of sacred beauty and ceremonious magnificence, and so connects the end of this volume to its beginning, survives in a half-­dozen early manuscripts, none bearing an author’s name. The work remained anonymous until in 1997 A. I. Doyle made a persuasive case for William Claxton (1530–­1597), a landed gentleman from an old Durham family and a respected antiquarian—­a close friend of John Stow and in contact with William Camden. Doyle’s analysis revealed that Claxton had been copyist and compiler of a late sixteenth-­century manuscript of Durham’s monastic chronicles, and had probably himself composed the final entries, which continued the medieval chronicle up to the 1571 death of Thomas Sparke, the suffragan bishop who saved the Abbey’s bells , and that Claxton was likewise responsible for the earliest manuscript of Rites of Durham, the sixty-­seven foot Hogg Roll dated 1593, almost certainly the date of the work’s composition as well. Claxton would have been a child at the Dissolution, so the memories it records are not by and large his own. Yet even in 1593 he could have spoken with George Clyff, the last surviving monk from the Abbey, who from 1584 to his death in 1595 served as rector at a parish church barely three miles from Claxton’s estate at Wynyard. Up to 1592 he could have spoken with the pre-­Reformation registrar of the Durham consistory court, Christopher Chaytor—­and probably did, since Chaytor’s son Thomas was one of the two men to whom Claxton willed his books. And although by 1593 all but Clyff had died, other It must have been an old man who remembered, given that women were not allowed past a blue stone line at the top of the nave . 1

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former monks might well have crossed Claxton’s path, since many of them conformed to the new order and went on to serve for decades in Durham’s parishes, placed there by the county’s largely Catholic elite, who (prior to the 1580s when most took the path of recusancy) chose like-­minded clergy for their ministers. The descriptions of liturgy, ornaments, and monastic life in Rites of Durham must have come from such ex-­monks. Yet one detects the presence of other voices as well. One doubts that the monks, who outnumbered the Henrician visitors, would have been invited to witness the latter’s destruction of St. Cuthbert’s shrine, nor could Claxton have gotten his account from a workman, since his source understood spoken Latin; however, the one other surviving record of this event names Thomas Sparke, then monastic chamberlain, as one of four Abbey representatives in attendance, and since Rites mentions Sparke favorably at least twice, he seems a plausible candidate.2 A different voice seems to responsible for the comment at the opening of Rites’ fourth chapter that the base of the paschal candle must have included “4 crystal stones (as by the holes do appear)”; given that the parenthesis must refer to the candlestick’s current, post-­Reformation state, the observation could easily be Claxton’s own. Subsequent copyists continue to interleaf their voices. A manuscript from the 1620s contributes the detail about Dean Whittingham using the monks’ tombstones to build a laundry shed. A copy made in 1655 reports on the devastation wrought by the cold and starving Scottish troops imprisoned in the cathedral during the second Civil War, but it also adds, drawing on an unknown source, the description of the cover of St. Cuthbert’s shrine, which had (presumably) been destroyed nearly a century before. The copresence of different voices within the text is crucial for understanding its religious commitments. Several passages are unequivocally Roman Catholic—­the claim, for example, that the shrine “wrought” many miracles —­and prior to 1997 the Rites had always been viewed as Catholic nostalgia. However William Claxton, although nostalgic, was a conformist, and a conformist in an area where Roman Catholics of his class were typically recusants.3 Claxton’s religion was deeply traditionalist, but a good many others in the Elizabethan Church shared his outlook, including both his friend and fellow antiquarian John Stow and the Yorkshire minister Michael Sherbrook (1535–­1610), rector of Wickersley for over four decades, whose 1591 Fall of religious houses compares the spoliation of Roche Abbey to the Crucifixion. Indeed, few degrees of separation lie between the late medieval world evoked so vividly in Rites and the Anglican ceremonialism of the early Stuart decades. Sherbrook’s parish lay in the East Riding, whose archdeacon in the early seventeenth century was Marmaduke Blakiston. Like many in the family, his brother William was a recusant, but a recusant who married Claxton’s daughter. In 1626, moreover, Marmaduke’s own daughter married John Cosin, the eminent high churchman who in the 1620s began restoring the ancient ornaments and rites to Durham Cathedral—­and who, probably in the 1620s as well, annotated his own manuscript of Rites. In 1660, the year Cosin became bishop 2 Nicholas Harpsfield’s account of the shrine’s destruction is reprinted in C. Eyre, The history of St. Cuthbert (London, 1849), 184–­85. 3 In Newcastle, the Roman Catholic elite by and large conformed, although sheltering priests to say private Masses; their counterparts in County Durham tended to be recusants (Oates, 54).

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of Durham, one J. B. gave a second manuscript to Cosin’s son-­in-­law, for, “knowing your worship’s delight in church order and ornaments,” he thought the Rites would give him “much satisfaction” (Rites, xiii). Yet for all the work’s traditionalist nostalgia and for all its proto-­Laudian reveling in the beauty of holiness, it also lends an unintended intelligibility to the Reformation stripping of altars. The reverent detailing of gold and jewels, of tracery and carving, of bells, basins, candles, benches, and banners, of ceremonial splendor and liturgical form can, after a while, get oppressive—­at least it requires little effort to imagine that it might get oppressive; that one might, like a modernist in a Victorian parlor, feel an impulse to rubbish the lot. [\

Note on the Text: portions of the work were first published in 1672, but the only complete edition is the version edited by Canon Fowler in 1903 for the Surtees Society, which weaves together material from several manuscripts. Chapters 1–­14, and the bracketed material marked “Cos.” come from the early seventeenth-century manuscript in the Cosin Library; chapter 15 to the end follows the 1593 Hogg Roll, which lacks the opening chapters. The italicized portions are from Ms. Hunter 45, copied c. 1655. [\ Sources: ODNB;A. I. Doyle, “William Claxton and the Durham Chronicles,” in Books and collectors, 1200–­ 1700, ed. James Carley and Colin Tite (London, 1997), 335–­55; Eamon Duffy, “Bare ruined choirs: remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare’s England,” in Theatre and religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare, eds. Richard Dutton, et al. (Manchester, 2003), 40–­57; Rosamund Oates, “Catholicism, conformity and the community in the Elizabethan diocese of Durham,” Northern History 43, no. 1 (2006): 53–­76.

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1593

. . .

II In St. Cuthbert’s feretory1 Next to these 9 altars was the goodly monument of Saint Cuthbert, adjoining to the choir and the high altar on the west end, reaching towards the 9 altars on the east, and toward the north and south containing the breadth of the choir in quadrant form, in the midst whereof his sacred shrine was exalted with most curious workmanship of fine and costly marble, all limned and gilded with gold, having four seats or places convenient under the shrine for the pilgrims or laymen [lame or sick men], sitting on their knees,2 to lean and rest on in time of their devout offerings and fervent prayers to God and holy St. Cuthbert for his miraculous relief and succor, which, being never wanting, made the shrine to be so richly invested that it was estimated to be one of the most sumptuous monuments in all England—­so great were the offerings and jewels that were bestowed upon it, and no less the miracles that were done by it [wrought at it], even in these latter days, as is more patent in the history of the church at large. At the west end of this shrine of St. Cuthbert was a little altar adjoined to it for Mass to be said on only upon the great and holy feast of St. Cuthbert’s day in Lent, at which solemnity the holy covent {i.e., monastery} did keep open household in the Frater House {i.e., refectory} and did dine all together on that day—­a nd on no day else in the year. And at this feast and certain other festival days, in the time of divine service they were accustomed to draw the cover of St. Cuthbert’s shrine

1 [A portable shrine; or the shrine together with its substructure and the cover; or the entire enclosure where the shrine stood. Also “feriture.”] {These notes in square brackets are based on the notes and glossary of the 1903 edition.} 2 [A local expression for kneeling.]

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[being of wainscot3 whereunto was fastened unto every corner of the said cover, to a loop of iron, a strong cord; which cord was all fest together over the midst over the cover. And a strong rope was fest unto the loops or binding of the said cords, which run up and down in a pully . . . for the drawing up of the cover of the said shrine; and the said rope was fastened to a loop of iron in the north pillar of the feretory, having six silver bells fastened to the said rope; so as when the cover of the same was drawing up, the bells did make such a good sound that it did stir all the people’s hearts that was within the church to repair unto it and to make their prayers to God and holy St. Cuthb., and that the beholders might see the glorious ornaments thereof. Also the cover . . . was all gilded over, and of either side was painted four lively images, curious to the beholders; and on the east end was painted the picture of our Savior sitting on a rainbow to give Judgment, very lively to the beholders; and on the west end of it was the picture of our Lady, & our Savior on her knee. And on the top of the cover from end to end was most fine carved work, cut out, with dragons and other beasts most artificially wrought, and the inside was varnished with a fine sanguine color that it might be more perspicuous to the beholders, and at every corner of the cover was a lock to keep it close but at such times as was fit to show it.] that the beholders might see the glory and ornaments thereof. Also within the said feretory, both of the north side and the south, there was almeries4 of fine wainscot, being varnished and finely painted and gilded finely over with little images, very seemly and beautiful to behold, for the relics belonging to St. Cuthb to lie in; and within the said almeries did lie all the holy relics [& gifts] that was offered to that holy man St. Cuthb; and when his shrine was drawn, then the said almeries were opened that every man that came thither at that time might see the holy relics therein: so that for the costly relics and jewels that was in the same almeries, and other relics that hung about within, the said feretory upon the irons5 was accounted to be the most sumptuous and richest jewels in all this land, with the beautifulness of the fine little images that did stand in the french-­peir6 within the feretory, for great was the gifts and godly devotion of kings and queens and other estates at that time towards God and holy St. Cuthbert in that church. . . .

III The choir In the east end of the choir, joining upon St. Cuthbert’s feriture, stood the high altar, being the goodliest altar in all the church, and a very rich thing with many precious and costly ornaments appertaining to it, both for every principal day as also for every days. Betwixt the said high altar and St. Cuthbert’s feriture is all of french-­peir, very curiously wrought both of the inside and outside, with fair images of alabaster being most finely

{Oak panelling} [Aumbries, lockers] 5 [An iron railing round the raised platform of the feretory] 6 [A name for the Neville screen. . . . from franche peer, free-­stone, superior stone] 3 4

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gilded, being called in the ancient history the laordose 7—­the said curious workmanship of french-­peir (or laordose) reaching in height almost to the middle vault and containing the breath of the choir in length, in the midst whereof, right over the said high altar, were artificially placed, in very fine alabaster, the picture of our Lady standing in the midst, and the picture of St. Cuthbert on the one side, and the picture of St. Oswald on the other, being all richly gilded; and at either end of the said altar was a wand of iron fastened in the wall, whereon did hang curtains or hangings of white silk daily. The daily ornaments that were hung both before the altar and above were of red velvet, wrought with great flowers of gold in embroidered work, with many goodly pictures besides, being very finely gilded; but the ornaments for the principal feast, which was the Assumption of Our Lady, were all of white damask, all beset with pearl and precious stones, which made the ornaments more rich and gorgeous to behold. Within the said choir over the high altar did hang a rich and most sumptuous canopy for the blessed sacrament to hang within it, which had 2 irons fastened in the french-­peir, very finely gilt, which held the canopy over the midst of the said high altar (that the pix8 did hang in it that it could not move nor stir), whereon did stand a pelican9 all of silver upon the height of the said canopy, very finely gilded, giving her blood to her young ones in token that Christ did give his blood for the sins of the world, and it was goodly to behold for the blessed sacrament to hang in; and a marvelous fair pix that the holy blessed sacrament did hang in, which was of most pure fine gold, most curiously wrought of goldsmith work; and the white cloth that hung over the pix was of very fine lawn, all embroidered and wrought above with gold and red silk. And 4 great and round knobs of gold, marvelous and cunningly wrought, with great tassels of gold and red silk hanging at them and at the 4 corners of the white lawn cloth. And the crook {i.e., hook} that hung within the cloth, that the pix did hang on, was of gold, and the cords that did draw it up and down was made of fine white strong silk. . . . . . .

IV The choir—­the paschal10 Also there was a goodly monument pertaining to the church called the paschal—­which was wont to be set up in the choir and there to remain from the Thursday, called Maundy Thursday, before Easter, until Wednesday after the Ascension Day—­that did stand upon a four-­square thick plank of wood against the first grees or step, hard behind the 3 basons of silver that hung before the high altar. In the midst of the said grees is a nick wherein one of the corners of the said plank was placed, and at every corner of the plank was an iron ring whereunto the feet of the paschal were adjoined, representing the pictures of the four flying dragons, as also the pictures of the 4 evangelists above the tops of the dragons 7 {I.e., the reredos, a corruption of the French term l’arrière dos; the screen at the back of the high altar (OED).} 8 [Box for the reservation of the holy eucharist] 9 [There was a pelican . . . feeding her young ones with her own blood in the cathedral church in the 17th century.] 10 [The great candle consecrated on Easter Eve and lighted with the new fire. At Durham, the central candle of its massive seven-­branched candelabrum.]

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underneath the nethermost boss, all supporting the whole pascal; and [in] the 4 quarters have been four crystal stones; and in the 4 small dragons’ 4 heads, 4 crystal stones (as by the holes do appear); and on every side of the 4 dragons there is curious antic work—­as beasts and men upon horsebacks with bucklers, bows, and shafts . . . very finely wrought; all being of most fine and curious candlestick metal [or latten metal, glistering as the gold itself; having six candlesticks or flowers of candlestick metal (added by Dr. Hunter in the margin)]11 coming from it, three of every side, whereon did stand in every of the said flowers12 or candlestick, a taper of wax; and on the height of the said candlestick or pascal of latten was a fair large flower, being the principal flower, which was the 7th candlestick. The paschal in latitude did contain almost the breadth of the choir; in longitude, that did extend to the height of the vault,13 wherein did stand a long piece of wood,14 reaching within a man’s length to the uppermost vault roof of the church, whereon stood a great long square tap {i.e., taper} of wax called the paschal. A fine conveyance through the said roof of the church to light the tap withal. In conclusion the paschal was estimated to be one of the rarest monuments in all England.

V The choir—­the Passion Within the abbey church of Durham upon Good Friday [there was] marvelous solemn service, in the which service time, after the Passion was sung, two of the eldest monks did take a goodly large crucifix, all of gold, of the picture of our Savior Christ nailed upon the cross, lying upon a velvet cushion having St. Cuthbert’s arms upon it all embroidered with gold, bringing that betwixt them upon the said cushion to the lowest greeces in the choir; and there betwixt them did hold the said picture of our Savior, sitting of every side of that; and then one of the said monks did rise and went a pretty way from it, sitting down upon his knees with his shoes put off, very reverently did creep away upon his knees unto the said cross, and most reverently did kiss it; and after him, the other monk did so; likewise [all the other monks]; and then they did sit them down on every side of the said cross and holding it betwixt them; and after that the prior came forth of his stall and did sit him down of his knees with his shoes off, and in like sort did creep also unto the said cross; in the meantime, all the whole choir singing an hymn. The service being ended, the two monks did carry it to the sepulcher with great reverence—­which sepulcher was set up in the morning, on the north side of the choir, nigh to the high altar, before the service time; and there did lay it within the said sepulcher with great devotion, with another picture of our Savior Christ, in whose breast they did enclose with great reverence the most holy and blessed sacrament of the altar, censing and praying unto it upon their knees a great space, setting two tapers lighted before it, which tapers did burn unto Easter day in the morning {when} that it was taken forth. . . . {The reference is to Christopher Hunter’s 1733 edition of Rites, published under the title Durham Cathedral as it was before the dissolution of the monastry (Rites, 1903, xvii).} 12 [Branches of the Paschal candlestick, probably terminating in representations of flowers.] 13 [The candlestick according to this account must have been about 38 feet high, the candle another 30 feet.] 14 {The lower portion of the “candle,” i.e., was made of wood, perhaps for structural reasons.} 11

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VII The choir—­a lmeries—­lecterns—­basins . . . At the north end of the high altar there was a goodly fine lectern of brass where they sung the Epistle and the Gospel, with a gilt pelican on the height of it, finely gilded, pulling her blood out her breast to her young ones, and wings spread a-­broad, whereon did lie the book that they did sing the Epistle and the Gospel. It was thought to be the goodliest lectern of brass that was in all this country. . . . Also there was low down in the choir another lectern of brass (not so curiously wrought) standing in the midst against the stalls, a marvelous fair one, with an eagle on the height of it, and her wings spread a-­broad, whereon the monks did lay their books when they sung their legends15 at matins or at other times of service. [. . . Which same stood there16 until the year 1650, when the Scots were sent prisoners from Dunbar fight17 and put prisoners into the church, where they burned up all the woodwork in regard they had no coals allowed them. And there was a fellow, one Brewen, appointed to look to the Scots by Sir Arthur Haselrig, baronet, then governor of Newcastle & the four Northern Counties, which conveyed the said brass lectern & eagle away, & many other things appertaining to the church, & sold them for his own gain—­a man of a bad conscience & a cruel fellow to the poor prisoners.] ‡

XVI The south alley of the lantern . . .

William Ebchester, prior of Durham, lieth buried in the south alley {i.e., aisle} under a fair marble stone before the Lady of Boulton’s altar, with his verses or epitaph engraven upon the said stone in brass, which stone was taken up there & removed, and lieth now before the choir door—­the said altar being the second of the iii altars in that place, over the which altar was a mavelous lively and beautiful image of the picture of Our Lady (so called the Lady of Boulton), which picture was made to open with gymres {i.e., hinges} from her breast downward. And within the said image was wrought and pictured the image of our Savior,18 marvelous finely gilded, holding up his hands, and holding betwixt his hands a fair & large crucifix of Christ, all of gold, the which crucifix was to be taken forth every Good Friday, and every man did creep unto it that was in that church as {sic} that day. And thereafter it was hung up again within the said image. And every principal day, the said image was opened that every man might see pictured within her, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, most curiously and finely gilded. And both the sides within 15

lives}

{A book of readings (Latin: legenda) used in worship, comprised of Scripture passages and saints’

16 [Either this lectern was reconstructed or a different one was made in 1586, for we find a voucher dated May 14, “Paid and given unto William Foster of York . . . for the making of the eagle for the lectern of brass in the choir.”] 17 [{The 1650 battle} in which Cromwell routed the Scotch royalists] 18 [Rather, doubtless, of the Eternal Father]

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her very finely varnished with green varnish and flowers of gold, which was a goodly sight for all the beholders thereof; and upon the stone that she did stand on in under was drawn a fair cross upon a scutchon, called the Neville’s cross (the which should signify that the Nevilles hath borne the charges of it). . . .

XVII These monuments following were placed from the lantern in the midst of the church, in their several places, till you come to the west end of the church joining upon the Galilee19 . . .

There is betwixt the pillar of the north side which the holy-­water stone did stand in & the pillar that standeth over against it of the south side, from th’one of them to the other, a row of blue marble; & in the midst of the said row, there is a cross of blue marble in token that all women that came to hear divine service should not be suffered to come above the said cross; and if it chanced that any women to come above it within the body of the church, then straightways she was taken away and punished for certain days, because there was never women came where the holy man Saint Cuthbert was, for the reverence they had to his sacred body. Also, if any woman chanced to come with in the abbey gates or within any precinct of the house, if she had been seen but her length within any place of the said house, she was taken & set fast and punished to give example to all others for doing the like.20 ‡

XIX The north alley of the body of the church . . .

In the west end of the church, in the north alley and over the Galilee door, there in a belfrey called the Galilee steeple did hang iiij goodly great bells which was never rung but at every principal feast or at such other times as the bishop did come to the town. Every Sunday in the year there was a sermon preached in the Galilee at afternoon from one of the clock till iij; & at xij of the clock the great bell of the Galilee was tolled every Sunday, iij quarters of an hour, & rung the fourth quarter till one of the clock,21 that all the people of the town might have warning to come & hear the word of God preached. . . . And in the latter days of King Henry the Eighth the house was suppressed, & after that time the said bells was never rung. Then Dean Whittingham, perceiving them not to be occupied 19 {I.e., these are the monuments in the nave. The Galilee was a chapel or porch at the entrance to the church.} 20 {The text goes on to explain this rule by recounting the story of how a king’s daughter who found herself pregnant accused Cuthbert of having violated her; God vindicated his saint, but the incident left him with an abiding desire to avoid female contact.} 21 [“Rung” means not merely tolled but made to swing up a good height at each pull. In tolling, the bell swings only so far as just to meet the clapper. Note in what follows that ringing a heavy bell could require six men.]

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{i.e., used} nor rung a great while before his time, was purposed to have taken them down and broken them for other uses [and make his profit of them].22 Then Tho. Sparke,23 the bishop’s suffragan . . . having intellegence what the dean’s purpose was, did send into Yorkshire with all speed for a workman & caused iij of the said bells to be taken down (the iiijth bell remains there still, & was never rung since it was suspent24); & caused them iij to be hung up in the new work called the lantern, & made a goodly chime25 to be set on the said bells, the which did cost him in charges thirty or forty pounds—­which chime endureth to this day, or else the said bells had been spoiled & defaced. [But in the year 1650, this abbey church was made a prison for the Scots and quite defaced within, for there was to the number 4,500, which most of them perished & died there in a very short space & were thrown into holes by great numbers together in a most lamentable manner. But in the year 1655, the clock & chime was repaired again, which was taken down & preserved from the said ruin.] . . .

XXI The sanctuary In the old time, long before the house of Durham was suppressed, the abbey church & all the churchyard & all the circuit thereof was a sanctuary for all manner of men that had done or committed any great offence (as killing of a man in his own defence) or any prisoners had broken out of prison & fled to the said church door, & knocking & rapping at it26 to have it opened; there was certain men that did lie always in two chambers over the church door for the same purpose: that when any such offenders did come & knock, straightway they were letten in at any hour of the night, & did run straightway to the Galilee bell & tolled it, to th’intent any man that heard it might know that there was some man that had taken sanctuary; & when the prior had intelligence thereof, then he did send word and commanding them that they should keep themselves within the sanctuary—­that is to say, within the church & churchyard—­and every one of them to have a gown of black cloth made with a cross of yellow cloth, called Saint Cuthb. cross, set on his left shoulder of his arm, to th’intent that every one might see that there was such a frelige27 granted by God & Saint Cuthbert for every such offender to fly unto for succor and safeguard of their lives, unto such time as they might obtain their prince’s pardon. . . . And likewise they had meat, drink, & bedding & other necessaries, of the house{‘s} cost & charge, for certain days, as was meet for such offenders, unto such time as the prior & the covent could get them conveyed out of the diocese. This freedom was confirmed not only by King Guthrid, but also by King Alfred.

{On Whittingham, see the introduction to The form of prayers .} [In 1528, prior of Lindisfarne; in 1537 consecrated bishop suffragan of Berwick; in 1541 made prebendary of Durham; in 1547, rector of Wolsingham. He died in 1571 holding all these preferments.] 24 {I.e., since the ringing stopped at the Dissolution.} 25 {An apparatus for striking a bell or bells so as to make it (or them) “chime” melodiously.} 26 [The well-­k nown bronze knocker still remains on the north door.] 27 [Franchise, privilege] 22 23

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‡ At the east end of the said Chapter House there is a garth {i.e., yard} called the centry {i.e., cemetery} garth, where all the priors and monks was buried. . . . All which priors when they died had every one a goodly fair through-­stone laid upon their tombs or graves, some of them of marble and some of free stone; which stones Dean Whittingham did cause to be pulled down, and did break and deface all such stones as had any pictures or chalices wrought upon them. And the residue he carried them all away, and did occupy them to his own use, & did make a washing house of many of them [at the end of the centry garth, Cos.] for women launderers to wash in, so that it cannot be discerned at this present that ever any hath been buried in the said centry garth, it is made so plain and straight. For he could not abide any ancient monuments, nor nothing that appertained to any godly religiousness or monastical life [by which act he showed the hatred that he bare to the memories of his predecessors in defacing so rudely their ancient and harmless monuments, Cos.].28

XXX Holy-­water stones And also within the said abbey church of Durham there was two holy-­water stones of fine marble, very artificially made and graven, and bossed with hollow bosses upon the outer sides of the stones, very finely & curiously wrought. The stone at the north door was a fair great large one; the other at the south door was not half so great nor so large, but of the same work that the other was of: which two holy-­water stones was take away by Dean Whittingham & carried into his kitchen & put unto profane uses, and there stood during his life—­in which stones they did steep their beef and salt fish (in having29 a conveyance in the bottoms of them for letting forth the water, as they had when they were in the church). And [after his death, Cos.] the great holy water stone is removed into the lower end of the dean’s buttery where the water conduit is set, & next unto the wine cellar, wherein now they wash and make clean their pots and cups before they serve them at the table. The foot of the said greater holy-­water stone was laid without the church door, and now it is placed in the earth in Lamb’s shop, the blacksmith upon Framwellgate Bridge end, and is there now to be seen. Moreover Mistress Whittingham, after the death of her husband, took away the lesser holy-­water stone out of the dean’s kitchen, and brought it into her house in the baily30 [in Durham] & set it there in her kitchen, & also did carry away divers gravestones of blue marble & other through-­stones that did lie upon the priors & monks out of the centry garth when she builded her house in the baily; which stones, some of them, are laid in the threshold of the doors, and two great ones lieth without the doors over against the

{This parenthetical comment may be Cosin’s own. When he rebuilt the clerestory at Brancepeth, just outside Durham, he hid over a thousand medieval gravestones, all facing skywards, within its walls, presumably to protect them from vandals and puritans. In 1998 a fire exposed them. See http://www.the historyblog.com/archives/4146.} 29 {I.e., because they had} 30 [Part of Durham lying between the abbey wall and the outer wall] 28

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wall before her door: for the which fact she was complained upon, and so laid those two without the door that before was made wall-­fast within her house [which house came after to Mr. Jo. Barnes, and after to Mr. Jo. Richardson,31 who lived there a long season; but in his time there came an old man with comely gray hairs to beg an alms, and looking about him upon the tomb stones which lay in the courtyard, said to the party that came to him, that whilst those stones were there nothing would prosper about the house; and after divers of his children & others died, so he caused them to be removed into the abbey yard, where now they are; but before the alms came to serve the man, he was gone and never seen after. . . . This is verified by divers now living.] Thus may you see how godly things, which are made for the use of God’s service in the church, are put now to profane uses, which were ordained aforetime for good & godly uses in the church. ‡

XLIV The loft . . .

Also, the monks was accustomed every day after they dined to go through the cloister, in at the usher’s door and so thorough the entry in under the prior’s lodging and straight into the centry garth where all the monks was buried; and there did stand all bare-­head a certain long space, praying amongst the tombs & throughs for their brethren souls being buried there; and when they had done their prayers, then they did return to the cloister, and there did study their books until iij of the clock that they went to evensong. This was their daily exercise & study every day after they had dined. The said monks were the only writers of all the acts and deeds of the bishops and priors of the abbey church of Durham, and of all the chronicles and stories; and also did write & set forth all things that was worthy to be noted, what acts & what miracles was done in every year & in what month—­which their doings were most manifestly and undoubtedly to be most just and true, and was always most vertuously occupied; never idle, but either writing of good and godly works or studying the holy Scriptures to the setting forth of the honor & glory of God, and for the edifying of the people as well in example of good life and conversation as by preaching the word of God. Thus you may see and perceive how the monks and religious men were occupied in most godly writing & other exercises in ancient time. ‡

LI Saint Cuth. shrine defaced The sacred shrine of holy Saint Cuthbert before mentioned was defaced in the visitation that Doctor Lee, Doctor Henley, & Mr. Blythman held at Durham for the subverting of {Presumably the John Richardson mentioned in Claxton’s will—­one of the two men to whom he left his library} 31

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William Claxton (?)

such monuments in the time of King Henry 8 in his suppression of the abbeys {c. 1538–­ 1539}, where they found many worthy & goodly jewels, but especially one precious stone [belonging to the said shrine], which by the estimate of those iij visitors & their skillful lapidaries . . . was of value sufficient to redeem a prince. After the spoil of his ornaments and jewels, coming nearer to his [sacred] body, thinking to have found nothing but dust & bones, and finding the chest that he did lie in very strongly bound with iron, then the goldsmith did take a great fore-­hammer32 of a smith & did break the said chest; and when they had opened the chest, they found him lying whole, uncorrupt, with his face bare, and his beard as it had been a fortnight’s growth, & all his vestments33 upon him as he was accustomed to say Mass withal, and his metwand {i.e., crozier} of gold lying beside him. Then when the goldsmith did perceive that he had broken one of his legs when he did break up the chest, he was very sorry for it; & did cry, alas, I have broke one of his legs. Then Doctor Henley, hearing him say so, did call upon him & did bid him cast down his bones. Then he made him answer again that he could not get it in sunder, for the sinews & the skin held it that it would not come in sunder. Then Doctor Lee did step up to see if it were so or not, and did turn him and spake Latin to Doctor Henley that he was lying whole. Yet Doctor Henley would give no credit to his word, but still did cry, cast down his bones. Then Doctor Lee made answer, if ye will not believe me, come up yourself & see him. Then did Doctor Henley step up to him & did handle him & did see that he laid whole. Then he did command them to take him down. & so it happened, contrary their expectation, that not only his body was whole and incorrupted, but the vestments wherein his body lay & wherewithal he was accustomed to say Mass was fresh, safe, & not consumed. Whereupon the visitors commanded that he should be carried into the revestry, where he was close and safely kept in the inner part of the revestry till such time as they did further know the King’s pleasure what to do with him; and upon notice of the King’s pleasure therein, the prior and the monks buried him in the ground under the same place where his shrine was exalted [under a fair marble stone which remains to this day, where his shrine was exalted]. . . .

LVI The ancient solemnity of procession upon Corpus Christi day within the church and city of Durham, before the suppression of the said abbey church There was a goodly procession upon the palace green on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday in the honor of Corpus Christi day, the which was a principal feast at that time. The bailey {i.e., bailiff} of the town did call the occupations that was inhabiters within the town, every occupation in his degree, to bring forth their banners,34 with all the lights appertaining to their several banners, & to repair to the abbey church door—­every banner to stand a row in his degree; from the abbey church door to Wyndshole gate on the west side of the way did all the banners stand, and on the east side of the way did all the torches stand pertaining to the said banners. [Sledge-­hammer] [Found in 1827 and still preserved.] 34 [The banners of the various trade guilds] 32 33

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Also, there was a goodly shrine in Saint Nicholas’ church ordained to be carried the said day in procession, called Corpus Christi shrine, all finely gilded, a goodly thing to behold, and on the height of the said shrine was a four-­squared box all of crystal wherin was enclosed the holy sacrament of th’altar; and was carried the said day with iiij priests up to the palace green, & all the whole prossession of all the churches in the said town going before it; and when it was a little space within Wyndshole gate it did stand still; then was Saint Cuthbert’s banners brought forth with two goodly fair crosses to meet it; and the prior & covent, with all the whole company of the choir, all in ther best copes, did meet the said shrine sitting on their knees and praying. The prior did cense it and then, carrying it forward into the abbey church, the prior and covent with all the choir following it, it was set in the choir, & solemn service done before it, and Te Deum solemnly sung and played of the organs, every man praising God; and all the banners of the occupations did follow the said shrine into the church, going round about Saint Cuthbert’s feriture, lighting their torches & burning all the service time. Then it was carried from thence with the said procession of the town back again to the place from whence it came, & all the banners of the occupations following it; & setting it again in the church, every man, making his prayers to God, did depart; and the said shrine was carried into the revestry35 where it remained until that time twelvemonth. Then afterward, in the first year of King Edward’s reign, there was certain comissioners appointed to deface all such ornaments as was left in the parish churches in Durham undefaced in the former visitation. The names of the comissioners was Doctor Harvy and Doctor Whitby. The said doctor Harvy did call for the said shrine; and when it was brought before him, he did tread upon it with his feet and did break it all in pieces with divers other ornaments pertaining to the church. [\ T ext: Rites of Durham: being a description or brief declaration of all the ancient monuments, rites, & customs belonging or being within the monastical church of Durham before the suppression. Written 1593, ed. Rev. Canon Fowler, Publications of the Surtees Society 107 (1903).

35

[That of St. Nicholas’ church]

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GLOSSARY

artificial often means artful, skillfully made. clerk (or clark) generally means cleric. conversation can mean conduct. curious can mean painstaking, ingenious, artfully made. dear can mean precious, expensive. determine usually means to settle a controversy, or, more generally, to put an end to. doctor refers to any learned person, scholar. event often means outcome, result. fact usually means deed, act. friends can refer to one’s kin. ghost means spirit. imbecility means weakness. improve can mean disprove or rebuke. indifferent usually means impartial. item means likewise. let can mean hinder. meat can mean food. offices are duties, roles, obligations attendant upon one’s role. painful can mean difficult, painstaking. premises can mean the foregoing, the aforesaid. pretend can mean simply claim or allege (it can also, however, have the pejorative modern sense of declare falsely, use as pretext, feign). prevent usually means anticipate, come before. prove can mean to put something or someone to the test. quit can mean repay, absolve (i.e., acquit). sensible almost always means capable of being perceived by the senses. sentence usually means i. authoritative maxim, or ii. the sense or substance of a text. 637



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several usually means distinct, separate. shrewdly usually means sharply, severely (in relation to wounding). silly (or seely) generally means innocent, vulnerable, unsophisticated. story almost always means history or a factual narrative. speed often means succeed or prosper. suffer can mean allow. tables often refers to a proto-­notebook, a writing tablet. virtue (or vertue) sometimes means efficacy. ordinary, used as a noun, generally refers to the diocesan bishop (or bishop’s deputy) in his capacity as ecclesiastical judge. vulgar often means vernacular. wit (or wot, wist, wete) all mean basically to know. As a noun, wit means basically intelligence or intellectual powers. want means lack (never desire). wont means accustomed.

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