divines of Europe, both Protestant and Catholic – seems certain: it was
read by both Protestants in Zurich and Catholics in France, with readers
in both dominions citing its moderation in tone.^146 But that the Apologia
targeted also the faithful of England, either as confirmation of the
Protestant faith, or as a means to dissuade those who were still
traditional in their leanings, should be assumed as evident by its overly
rhetorical nature, its lack of theological and logical precision and its
rather brazen use of hyperbole in setting the context of the arguments:
each point assumes a popular and not a strictly theologically educated
audience. But the identity of Jewel’s audience does not explain
everything. Jewel could not avoid the question of unity, for this had been
the assumption underlying his use of de re vero ipsa. Jewel knew well
enough that to Protestants communion was never insignificant, and its
diverse formulations played almost as crucial a role in their divisions
from each other as it did in their divisions from Rome. Yet Jewel’s
skirting the issue of the Eucharist aside, he still needed to maintain unity;
indeed on the question of sola fideandsola scripturathe Protestants
were united. Jewel needed this unity in order to rebut the claims of
Rome’s pretended universality as opposed to the unity of Protestantism,
a unity that gave them the title of universal.
Yet however he sought to counter Roman claims and whomever
Jewel’s audience was, the historical parameters remained the point on
which so many other things turned; here Jewel gave with the one hand
what he took away with the other. ‘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 Noe’s ark,
Christ’s spouse, the pillar and upholder of all truth, nor yet to fix therein
the whole mean of our salvation.’^147 Yet this expansive declaration
suddenly retracts when the ‘holy fathers’ come into focus. In a series of
sermons, later collated and made into a Treatise of the Holy Scriptures,
Jewel elaborated on the ancillary authority of the Fathers: ‘We may not
build upon them: we may not make them the foundation and warrant of
our conscience: we may not put our trust in them.’^148 Jewel’s parameters
in the debates engendered by his Challenge Sermon and by the Apologia
necessarily must be negative by definition and in any definition it offers,
that what the traditionalists practiced and maintained, at least those
things cited by Jewel, could not be found in the ancient Church, and this
absence vitiated all their other claims. Yet Jewel could not make the
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ELIZABETHAN CHURCH 93
(^146) See Peter Martyr’s letter to Jewel, 24 August 1562, in ZL,I. pp. 339–41; and Jewel’s
letter to Martyr, 14 August 1562, treating the response to the Apologiaof the French civil
lawyer Baudouin in Jewel, Works, IV, pp. 1254–56.
(^147) Jewel,Apologia,Works, III, p. 77.
(^148) Jewel,A Treatise of the Holy Scriptures, Works, IV, p. 1173.