Elizabethan Controversialists. Peter Milward
few years of the new reign, however, this dissension remained simmering beneath the surface of the Elizabethan religious settlement in the pressing need of filling the places vacated by the Marian clergy with as many Protestant ministers as were available. At the time it didn’t seem to matter so much whether they were moderate or radical. In fact, not a few of the new bishops, such as the Bishop of London Edmund Grindal, were in sympathy with the radicals, while themselves accepting certain compromises, such as the very name of “bishop”, for the sake of expediency, according to the practical advice given them by Zwingli’s successor at Zurich, Henry Bullinger.
The revised Book of Common Prayer, issued by Parliament in 1552, had been reissued in 1559 with a few alterations, but its particular prescriptions and ceremonies were commonly neglected by the more radical of the new ministers. Few of the bishops ventured to insist on them, and it was the Queen herself, who disliked such radicalism in religion, who now insisted on steps being taken to restore some measure of conformity in the conduct of religious services and the ordinary attire of the clergy. The onus and opprobrium of taking these steps, however, she left on the shoulders of her bishops, especially her Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. After all, it was his responsibility to ensure the observance of a certain measure of decency and order in ecclesiastical ceremonies. Thus it was that in March 1566 certain Advertisements to this effect were published in London under his authority, in which he appealed to “the Queen’s Majesty’s letters commanding the same”.
In the Preface to this document, the Archbishop lays emphasis on the need of “one uniformity of rites and manners in the ministration of God’s holy word, in open prayer and ministration of sacraments”. He advocates “one decent behaviour in their outward apparel”, and adds many particular prescriptions not only concerning the vestments to be worn in religious services but also concerning the distinct habits to be worn by the clergy outside church. These prescriptions, he insists, are to be understood not as implying “any vain superstition” but as imposed according to the express wishes of her Majesty for the sake of “decency, distinction and order for the time”. He also refers to certain unspecified “diversities and varieties among them of the clergy and the people”, which have now to be “reformed and repressed” for the avoidance of “contention, offence and breach of common charity”.
After the Preface there followed various articles – “for doctrine and preaching”, “for administration of prayer and sacraments”, and specially “for outward apparel of persons ecclesiastical”. Nor were they merely issued by authority, but they were also enforced by means of subscription, and all who refused to subscribe were punished by ejection from their livings. The opposition to this ruling was, foreseeably, immediate and vociferous, particularly in the London area, where there were not a few radical ministers prepared to put the archbishop’s newly acquired authority to the test. They refused to subscribe and were duly ejected from their livings. Within the same year, one of their number, Robert Crowley, published their protest under the anonymous title of A Brief Discourse, and for this, in the absence of any more obvious candidate, he may be awarded the title of “the first Elizabethan Puritan”.
From the modern viewpoint it may well seem like the proverbial storm in a teacup. What, we may ask, was all the fuss about? Crowley himself explicitly recognized that the outward apparel to which he and his friends objected consisted merely of “things indifferent”. The anonymous Examiner of his book on behalf of the bishops took him up on this point, that these things “be of their own nature indifferent, and that they may be used or not as occasion shall serve”. So where was the problem? On the one hand, Crowley questioned why “things indifferent” should be imposed on the people of God, thereby restricting the liberty which Christ had won for them – from sin, from the law, and from ceremonies. On the other hand, the Examiner questioned why Crowley and his friends should object to “things indifferent”, when they were merely being imposed for the sake of “decency and comely order” at the express wishes of the Queen’s Majesty. Here, it seemed, was an impasse between members of the Protestant clergy, united in theory yet divided in practical application.
All the same, they weren’t altogether united in theory either. In the eyes of Crowley and his friends this wasn’t a mere schism over trifles, as the Examiner was suggesting. For them “things indifferent” weren’t so indifferent after all. For them such vestments were nothing but “the outward apparel and ministering garments of the Pope’s Church”, “the conjuring garments” of the Popish idolaters, the “relics and remnants” of the Romish abomination and the very limbs of Antichrist. They had originated partly in the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, from which Christ had set his followers free, partly in heathenish customs, with which Christians ought to have nothing to do, according to the saying of St.Paul, “What agreement is there between Christ and Belial?” (II Cor.vi.15) They were now too intimately connected in the popular mind with the days of Popery and superstition to be regarded by the ministers as “things indifferent”.
This appeal to the popular mind was of special importance to ministers like Crowley, who had already committed themselves to speaking out openly and in no uncertain language against “the relics and rags of Popery”. How could they now go back on their words before the people out of deference to ecclesiastical policy, though this was supported by the Queen herself? In such circumstances wasn’t it incumbent on them to say, as the Puritans were only too ready to say, with St.Peter, “We ought more to obey God than men”? (Acts v.29) This was in fact the conclusion drawn by Crowley, with his sarcastic comment on the “wisdom and policy” of the bishops as passing “the wisdom of God who knoweth what we are”, and how easily we make images into idols. If the bishops chose to follow the winds of policy, in subservience to the temporal ruler, it must fall to the ministers to uphold the course of truth and protect their faithful from spiritual shipwreck.
Of particular concern to Crowley were certain practical consequences of the Advertisements among two different groups of people. On the one hand, they would surely occasion grief of heart and discouragement among those “simple Christians over whom we should have the chief care”. The enforcement of such rules for apparel and ceremonies would only serve to beat them “back to superstition”, from which “they were before making haste to fly”. Not only that, but they would also “take occasion to think that there is no truth in anything that we have taught, and so cleave to that false religion, whereof these indifferent things are relics and remnants”. On the other hand, he adds,“the blind, stubborn and obstinate Papists (whom we ought by all means possible to draw out of the dark dungeon of ignorance, superstition and error) shall by our receiving of these things be encouraged not only to continue in ignorance, superstition and error, but also to increase in the same.”
The more he argues, the more Crowley convinces himself that the objects in question, so far from being merely indifferent, as he seemed to admit from the outset, touch on the inmost nature of Popish idolatry and the original reason for Protestant reform. He therefore concludes with a prayer that may be said to express the very heart of the Puritan movement, “Look, Lord and Judge most just, on the proud brag and boast of Antichrist thine enemy, cut his courage, confound his counsel, disappoint his hope, break his power, and give him that utter overthrow, that there do not remain so much as a memory or token of him to be had in regard, but that his memory may be had in confusion. O Lord, set up thy glory, remove thy wrath, restore thy mercy, comfort thine afflicted, turn thy loving countenance to us, pour forth thy grace on us, build us up in Christ, and love us still. Let the trumpet of thy Gospel with such power and plenty be blown that all flesh may hearken and yield thereto, thine elect to their comfort, the reprobate to their confusion.”
This Puritan challenge was at once met within the same year by an anonymous spokesman for the bishops, possibly Parker himself, in A Brief Examination. He begins by charging the London ministers, in much the same tone as John Whitgift was later to charge Thomas Cartwright, with an arrogancy that may well lead them by degrees to “fall to the sects of Anabaptists, or Libertines”, while by their disobedience to the Queen and division within the Church, they will only give matter for rejoicing to the “English Lovanists”. Considering that