Elizabethan Controversialists. Peter Milward
every light offence, and horrible schisms for trifles be brought in”. He stresses the right of those in authority to make due determinations in law for the sake of comely order and due discipline, “without impairing of Christian liberty”. Then, retorting the argument from practical need, he points out that, in the view of the common people, “the very change of custom, as it may do good for the profit thereof, so it may make much trouble for the newness thereof”.
Immediately on the publication of this Examination, Crowley again came forward with An Answer for the Time, still within the year 1566. Whereas the Examiner had minimized the number and learning of the London ministers opposed to the Advertisements, Crowley maintained that the opposition included “the greatest part of the best learned and the eldest preachers in England”. The names of some of these “best learned” are contained in the title of A godly and zealous letter written by one of their leading members, Anthony Gilby, in 1570, “to my reverend Fathers and Brethren in Christ, Master Coverdale, M.Turner, M.Whittingham, M.Sampson, M.Doctor Humphrey, M.Leaver, M.Crowley, and others that labour to root out the weeds of Popery”. Crowley further rejected the imputation that, “puffed up in arrogancy”, they were making “post haste to be Anabaptists and Libertines”. Rather, it was “for no small matters” that the ministers had been “content to sustain so grievous loss and trouble” as ejection from their ministry and livelihood. In the days of Edward VI the visiting reformers, Martin Bucer at Cambridge and Peter Martyr at Oxford, may have been content to “bear with the things intolerable for a time”, but they wished “the utter abolishing of them” in the long run, in contrast to this Examiner who now upholds them “as good orders, profitable to edify and therefore meet to be retained still.”
Three points in particular are emphasized by Crowley in his Answer over and above those he made in his Discourse. The first is that, with all this fuss made by the bishops over external matters of apparel, the best ministers will be dismissed and the worst will remain. Already, he notes, “experience teacheth that an ass, a dissembling Papist, a drunkard, a swearer, a gamester, so he receive your apparel, may have the honour of retaining his living”, whereas the best and most conscientious ministers “for only refusing the apparel are thrust out”. Secondly, he uses an argument that will come to the fore in the subsequent development of Puritan opposition to the bishops, when he points out that in maintaining the precepts of men against the Word of God, the bishops are falling back on the Papist position. After all, he demands, “what can the Papist say more in defence of men’s traditions?” Thirdly, he comes to the main point of his position in referring to the old saying, “Principiis obsta”. For when it comes to the ceremonies of Popery, he protests, “if we receive one, we see not how to stay our consciences from the rest. Therefore it is a manifest danger that hangeth over the Church, by receiving any of these.”
This controversy by no means ended here. Within the same year it was augmented by a minor avalanche of little books and pamphlets on either side. Besides the various arguments already discussed, various authorities were cited on either side – not only Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr but also Henry Bullinger and Rudolph Gualter. A series of Pauline “epistles”, to “the faithful brethren”, were penned by Puritan leaders such as Anthony Gilby and William Whittingham and published for the consolation of the ejected ministers and the edification of the other brethren. Yet also within the same year the outcry came to an end for the time, as the strong measures taken by Matthew Parker proved effective against a disorganized opposition.
If however it subsided for the time being, the opposition was by no means silenced in the long run. There is a clear line of connection between this first outbreak of Puritan resistance to the imposition of Anglican ceremonies and the later development of the Puritan movement in the early seventies and mid-eighties. Even at this early date the issue was by no means, as Crowley pointed out in his Answer, a matter of trifles, however trivial ceremonies might seem to be in themselves. For the Puritans it was a matter of principle, the very principle of the Protestant Reformation. Accept this seemingly small point, and everything is accepted, and the road leads straight to the Commonwealth. Give way on this one point, and in Puritan eyes there is little to choose between Anglicanism and Popery.
It was out of this controversy that Anthony Gilby subsequently developed his View of Antichrist, in which he sets forth a table “of the displaying of the Pope and Popery in our unreformed Church of England”. At the beginning of this table he notes how, just as “the Pope of Rome writeth himself Father of fathers and the Head of the Church”, so “the Pope of Lambeth writeth Reverend Father, Matthew of Canterbury, by the sufferance of God Metropolitan and Primate of all England, as much as to say Chief Head of the Church of England”. And out of this View of Antichrist, we may add, sprang Martin Marprelate – even as out of the head of Zeus sprang the goddess Athena fully armed for battle.
Bibliographical Note
1 Advertisements partly for due order in the Public Administration of Common Prayers and using the holy Sacrament, and partly for the Apparel of all Persons Ecclesiastical, by virtue of the Queen’s Majesty’s Letters commanding the same. 1566 (RC 97)
2 A Brief Discourse against the Outward Apparel and Ministring Garments of the Popish Church. 1566 (RC 98)
3 A Brief Examination for the time of a Certain Declaration lately put in print in the name and defence of certain Ministers in London, refusing to wear the apparel prescribed by the laws and orders of the realm. 1566 (RC 99)
4 An Answer for the time to the Examination put in print without the Author’s name, pretending to maintain the apparel prescribed against the Declaration of the Ministers of London. 1566 (RC 100)
b) The Admonishers of Parliament, Thomas Wilcox (1549-1608), John Field (d.1588)
From the time of its Elizabethan origins English Puritanism was almost as much a political as a religious movement. Religious in its Biblical inspiration, its main emphasis came to be laid on matters of ecclesiastical polity, since it was on such matters that it principally differed from the established Church of England. It was also by political and constitutional means, at first half-heartedly through Convocation, then more concertedly through Parliament, that the Puritans sought to impose their ideal of a fully reformed Church on the whole nation. Their first sensational impact on the latter institution took the form of yet another anonymous publication, entitled An Admonition to the Parliament, which appeared in the form of “two treatises” bound together in June, 1572. Shortly after its appearance, its two young authors, Thomas Wilcox and John Field, were identified by the authorities and confined in Newgate prison.
In many respects there is a clear line of continuity from Cowley’s Brief Discourse to this Admonition. The same spirit of Puritan opposition is at work in the latter as in the former, though with increased vehemence. The connection is indeed made explicit in the opening paragraph of the Preface “To the Godly Readers”, in which the authors complain of the rigorous dealing of the bishops “for the space of these five or six years last past together” with poor men whom they call “Puritans worse than Donatists”. In each of the two treatises, the Admonition proper by Wilcox and the appended View of Popish Abuses by Field, the Book of Common Prayer is criticized as contrary to the Word of God and as a mere translation of the Popish missal. No wonder, as Field states in the title of his contribution, many “godly ministers have refused to subscribe” to it.
To give examples of their objections, Wilcox specifies such provisions as “baptism by women, private communions, Jewish purifyings, observing of holidays”, which he rejects as “patched (if not altogether, yet the greatest piece) out of the Pope’s portuis”, or breviary. Similarly, Field calls the Prayer-Book “an unperfect book, culled and picked out of that Popish dunghill the portuis and Mass book, full of all abominations.” While going over the abuses mentioned by Wilcox, such as “private communion, private baptism, baptism ministered by women, holidays ascribed to saints”, Field adds further instances, such as “kneeling at communion, wafer-cakes