Elizabethan Controversialists. Peter Milward
the height and plunges into the depth of his controversial eloquence. Now, in face of his adversary’s shameless muck-raking against the Roman Church, he can no longer wear his robe of majestic calm. He feels constrained to speak out in plain honest language against this “new divinity”, which he castigates as “a gross gospel, a carnal gospel, a belly gospel”. He is no longer content to deal with its exponents on the level of theological argument, but he emphasizes time and again what their innovations have brought about in practice. For one thing, they have merely fostered “such confusion of opinions and infinite variety of doctrines, as breedeth in the people a mere paganism, a heathenish looseness, and a very Epicurean atheism”. For another, they have provoked endless “trouble and broil” in almost all the lands of Christendom, “the smart thereof so keepeth it in fresh memory as I need not to rehearse, and as it were with a rough hand touch the wound that is yet raw”. He accuses the Protestants of having unscrupulously furthered their cause by tempting the greed of the German princes, “who foresaw their permission of your proceedings should fill their coffers”, of having attracted “so many malapert prentices, pleasant courtiers, discoursing parliament Machiavellists, and all other whatsoever flesh-worms, merchants, idle artificers to embrace your gospel”, and of having “torn the whole coat of Christ” with their division from the one Church and their multiplication into innumerable warring sects, which have long since appeared in Germany and are about to appear in England. “Such mighty Samsons, such constant Laurences,” he adds with sarcastic reference to the leading Puritan divines at Oxford, “your jolly Gospel breedeth. They lack but a multitude of companions that at their hiss would leap out of their shops and say, Thus we will have it and who saith nay?”
Reflecting on such harsh words, which I have admittedly taken out of their argumentative context and arranged together, if not quite so densely as Jewel, one can’t help feeling that, for all his eloquence, the author has allowed himself to get carried away by his fierce indignation. He seems to have so far forgotten his opening profession of mildness as to indulge in a mere game of tit for tat. Just as Jewel has raked up the muck of the Catholic past, so Harding is, it seems, doing the same with the Protestant present. So we feel tempted to consign both of them to the metaphorical muck-heap they have made for each other, or to a more merciful oblivion. But before we in turn go so far, we may do well to consider the differences in their respective positions and their resort to the language of abuse. Jewel is after all the challenger, and Harding the defender. Jewel is taunting him and abusing his Church, which is for him the whole of Christendom, whereas Harding is retorting with indignation from his place of exile and reminding him of the all too evident defects of the Protestant Reformation. In a sense, it is a descent to “tit for tat”, but Harding might truly plead that the first “tat” of provocation has been given by Jewel.
Then, in his reply to Jewel’s Defence, under the further title of A Detection, Harding himself comes to deal with these doubts. For Jewel prefaced his answer to the Confutation with another list of what he sarcastically terms “certain principal flowers of M.Harding’s modest speech”, and by presenting them out of context he has given his readers the impression that this is the main buttress of the other’s argument. Harding, therefore, devotes not a few pages of his reply to a justification of his seemingly intemperate language, maintaining that he is referring not so much to personalities as to objective realities. From the beginning, in his Answer to Jewel’s Challenge, he has (he says) “inclined unto more the soft and gentle way”, but in his Confutation he has been forced by the slanderous tone of the Apology to temper mildness with severity and vehemence, “being moved with due zeal and just grief of mind to see your ungodly dealings”. As for Jewel’s particular accusation against him of having resorted to “uncourteous and uncivil speech”, he protests as follows with rustic humour and eloquence. “Why, sir, if ye screech like frogs, must we say ye sing like nightingales? If ye crow like proud cocks, must we say ye mourn like simple doves? If ye bite us like mastiffs, must we say ye lick us like gentle spaniels? If ye consume us and devour us like ravening wolves, must we say ye profit us like good sheep? Must we tell the world that your serpents be fishes, your snakes be lampreys, your scorpions be crevices, briefly that your deadly poison is wholesome treacle? What were this but to please men, and to deceive God’s people?”
All the same, no less than his Anglican adversary, Harding is now beginning to tire of a controversy that has kept him busy for some five or six years – and to what avail? At the beginning of his Preface to the Detection he quotes the famous words of Ecclesiasticus, which may well serve as epigraph to the controversies of the Elizabethan age, “There is no end of making more books, and the often breaking of a man’s brain about such study is a great punishment to the body.” He then continues, “If any doubt hereof, let him set himself awork earnestly about writing in such sort as I speak of, and he shall say as I do, I doubt not. And therefore it behoveth them that give themselves to writing to have not only health but also good strength of body.” In fact, barely three years elapsed from the publication of these words than the author found himself, too, on his death-bed, doubtless worn out from his controversial labours. The final comment, however, on his lifework may be left to his young friend Richard Hopkins, who followed Harding’s advice in undertaking the English translation of Louis de Granada’s treatise Of Prayer and Meditation. In his Preface Hopkins recalls his words of fruitful advice, “Master Doctor Harding (a man for his great virtue, learning, wisdom, zeal and sincerity in writing against heresies, of very godly and famous memory) persuaded me to translate some of those Spanish books into our English tongue, affirming that more spiritual profit would undoubtedly ensue thereby to the gaining of Christian souls in our country from schism and heresy and from all sin and iniquity than by books that treat of controversies in religion, which (as experience hath now plainly tried) do nothing so well dispose the common people’s minds to the fear, love and service of almighty God as books treating of devotion and how to lead a virtuous life do.”
Bibliographical Note
1 An Answer to Master Jewel’s Challenge, by Doctor Harding. 1564 (RC 5)
2 A Confutation of a book entitled, An Apology of the Church of England, by Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinity. 1565 (RC 14)
3 A Rejoinder to M.Jewel’s Reply, by perusing whereof the discreet and diligent reader may easily see the Answer to part of his insolent challenge justified… By Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinity. 1566 (RC 8)
4 A Rejoinder to M.Jewel’s Reply against the Sacrifice of the Mass… By Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinity. 1567 (RC 9)
5 A Detection of Sundry Foul Errors, lies, slanders, corruptions and other false dealings, touching Doctrine and other matters, uttered and practised by M.Jewel in a book lately by him set forth entitled, A Defence of the Apology etc. By Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinity. 1568 (RC 16)
c) The Counterblaster, Thomas Stapleton (1535-98)
A main objection raised by the Catholic apologists to Jewel’s Challenge was that in his enumeration of 27 articles he had deliberately avoided the principal points in controversy and had aimed at throwing them mere bones to gnaw upon, lesser points, as Harding had protested, “concerning order rather than doctrine”. Jewel’s subsequent Apology afforded them larger scope for reply, but it, too, shirked the fundamental issue of the English Reformation, which wasn’t so much theological as political. In his Confutation of Jewel’s Apology, to be sure, Harding raised the issue more than once, as when he demanded of the Anglican bishop, “By what authority do you usurp the administration of doctrine and the sacraments?” and, more generally, “With what authority may one realm undo the custom of the whole Church?” But he failed to develop the point, beyond calling the Church of England as by law established a “parliament religion, parliament gospel, parliament faith”.
It was, however, Jewel’s colleague on the Episcopal bench, Robert Horne of Winchester, who ventured to raise the issue a few years later in 1566. The occasion was a manuscript declaration of “scruples and stays of conscience touching the Oath of Supremacy” which the former Abbot of Westminster, John Feckenham,