Elizabethan Controversialists. Peter Milward
discussed with academic impartiality, weighing the pros and cons in equal balance. Rather, as it had been proposed by “a viperous kind of men”, who were “ruled by affection and carried headlong with blind zeal into divers sinister judgments and erroneous opinions”, so Whitgift considered it incumbent on him to meet their attacks with a corresponding counter-attack. This took the form of “An Exhortation to such as be in authority and have the government of the Church committed unto them, whether they be civil or ecclesiastical magistrates”, which he prefixed to his Answer. The main part of this Exhortation is taken up with an analysis of “the practices of the Anabaptists, their conditions and qualities, the kind and manner of their beginnings and proceedings, before the broaching of their manifold and horrible heresies”, which may well be applied to “the authors of this Admonition and their fautors”.
Altogether Whitgift lists twenty-four points of parallelism, and he returns to them again and again in the rest of his book. Several of them deserve to be quoted in full, entering as they did into the subsequent “picture of a Puritan” that came to prevail throughout the Elizabethan age. “They had their private and secret conventicles, and did divide and separate themselves from the Church, neither would they communicate with such as were not of their sect, either in prayers, sacraments, or hearing the word…. They pretended in all their doings the glory of God, the edifying of the Church, and the purity of the Gospel…. They earnestly cried out against pride, gluttony, etc. They spake much of mortification, they pretended great gravity, they sighed much, they seldom or never laughed, they were very austere in reprehending, they spake gloriously…. If they were at any time punished for their errors, they greatly complained that nothing was used but violence, that the truth was oppressed, that innocent and godly men which would have all things reformed, according to the Word of God, could not be heard nor have liberty to speak…. They gave honour and reverence to none, and they used to speak to such as were in authority without any signification of honour, neither would they call men by their titles, and they answered churlishly…. To be short, the people had them in great admiration, because of their hypocrisy and straightness of life, and such as were of contentious natures joined with them and commended their doings.”
To this damning imputation of Anabaptism, with its contemporary implication of anarchy, Whitgift frequently recurs in the course of his Answer.“Such is their perverseness, or arrogancy,” he declares of the Puritans, “that if they be debarred but of the least part of their will and desire, by and by they cry out of cruelty and persecution”. They are “arrogant spirits”, he continues, “that think themselves of all men best learned, and disdain to learn of any”. Theirs is “a scolding nature and a stomach boiling with contempt of laws and superiors”, a “taunting spirit” that “seeketh rather deformation than reformation, uttereth spitefulness of stomach rather than godly zeal”, a “conscience and religion to be always ad oppositum and to disallow that which law and authority alloweth”, a “disposition always to be singular”. It is, above all, in their claim to full equality among ministers that Whitgift smells, as he says, “plain Anabaptism”. For, he adds, “This equality of ministers which you require is both flatly against the Scriptures and all ancient authority. It engendreth schisms, factions and contentions in the Church, and bringeth in a mere confusion.” He therefore accuses his opponents of seeking this equality not as the natural right of brothers in Christ, nor “because you would not rule (for it is manifest that you seek it most ambitiously in your manner), but because you contemn and disdain to be ruled and to be in subjection”.
On the other hand, in their attempts to subvert the order of Church and State in England, Whitgift paradoxically charges the Puritans with being unwitting allies of their professed foes, the Papists. “These men,” he declares, “flatly join with the Papists and by the selfsame assertions bend their force against this Church of England,” and he goes on to enumerate seven such assertions made by the Puritans no less than the Papists about the Anglican Church. Hence, he concludes, “it is manifest that the Papists and they jointly seek to shake, nay to overthrow the selfsame foundations, grounds and pillars of our Church, although not by the selfsame instruments and engines.”
To this comparison with the Papists, as to that with the Anabaptists, Whitgift recurs in the course of his Answer. The authors of the Admonition, he says, “have conspired with the Papists to overthrow (if they could) the state both of this Church and realm, howsoever subtly they seem to detest Papistry.” He even considers them likely to “work more harm to this Church than ever the Papists did”. They shake hands, he says, with the Papists as well as the Anabaptists in affirming “that the prince hath no authority in ecclesiastical matters”. They even go beyond the Papists in letting “every minister be king and pope in his own parish”, for indeed, “the Pope never required greater authority over all Christendom than they seek to have over their parish.”
The conclusion that Whitgift draws from this twofold comparison is a practical one. “Wherefore,” he exhorts the magistrates, “it is time to awake out of sleep and to draw out the sword of discipline, to provide that laws which be general and made for uniformity, as well of doctrine as ceremonies, be generally and universally observed.” Otherwise, he prophesies, “it cannot but be that this freedom given unto men, to obey and disobey what they list, to speak what they list, against whom they list, must in the end burst out into some strange and dangerous effect.”
This warning he repeats time and time again, as the solemn refrain of his Answer. He speaks as one who well knows what he is talking about, from his past experience of the Puritans at Cambridge, and in view of the event, his warning was only too amply justified. Leniency, in his opinion, is no way of dealing with these men. “If they be no otherwise beaten than hitherto they have been,” he warns, “they will not only with schisms and factions tear in sunder this Church of England, but in time overthrow the whole state of the common wealth.” So speaking directly to the Puritan admonishers, he says, “Surely your fancies, nay your dangerous errors, will burst out one day in more plain manner.” And again, “Truly I doubt that you will never end, but from time to time coin new devices to trouble the Church, until you have brought that heavy plague of God upon us, which the like kind of men through their schisms and heresies have brought upon all those places almost where any of the apostles preached, and where the Gospel was first planted.”
Again and again in his Answer Whitgift characterizes, or rather stigmatizes, his opponents as dangerous men. Commenting on their name, attached to them since the time of the vestiarian controversy, he remarks, “This name Puritan is very aptly given to these men, not because they be pure, no more than were the heretics called Cathari, but because they think themselves to be mundiores ceteris, more pure than others, as Cathari did, and separate themselves from all other churches and congregations as spotted and defiled, because also they suppose the Church which they have devised to be without all impurity.” As for their pride, he declares, “no Turk, no Jew, no Papist, could possibly have spoken more spitefully of this Church and State, but such is the spirit of arrogancy… as though they only had the Word of God, and we contemners and rejecters of the same.” In particular, he accuses them of being (like Satan) accusers of their brethren, for, he tells them, “you cease not with railing and spiteful words in pulpits and at tables to deprave and back-bite your brethren, and trouble the whole state with your factions and daily invented new opinions”. Finally, he concludes with a sketch of their ordinary behaviour, which may well have given Shakespeare a hint for his characterization of Shylock. “These men separate themselves also from the congregation, and will communicate with us neither in prayers, hearing the word, nor sacraments. They contemn and despise all those that be not of their sect as polluted, and not worthy to be saluted or kept company with. And therefore some of them, meeting their old acquaintance, being godly preachers, have not only refused to salute them but spit in their faces, wishing the plague of God to light upon them, and saying that they were damned, and that God had taken his spirit from them, and all this because they did wear a cap, wherefore when they talk of Pharisees, they pluck themselves by the noses.”
Up to this point in his Answer Whitgift