Yet if the ancient Church failed as a dogmatic authority for Jewel,
they did give him a club by which he could assault traditionalists, albeit
always within the snug and narrow confines of the Challenge Sermon.
These restrictions Jewel used again in the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae.
Though the Apologiawas not a polemical tract in the same vein that the
Challenge Sermon was, nonetheless, in Part V Jewel rehearses a litany of
matters in which some practices, real or perceived – at times Jewel would
broach a common abuse as though it were a universal practice – were
contradicted either by ancient imperial edict,^152 regional councils,^153 or
the pronouncements of particular bishops. He did use statements by
several popes to prove these assertions, though in the sequels to the
Apologia– the three editions of the Defence of the Apology– less can be
made of these statements from the respective Popes than Jewel had
initially intended. One statement, which apparently Jewel had hoped was
drawn from Clement I, was actually a conflation of words from St
Bernard. Another citation, drawn from Leo the Great, in which Jewel
hoped to prove that only one Mass in one church per day alone was
permissible, he had to revise, merely having to draw some conclusions
from Leo’s statements, as they were not pregnant with the meaning Jewel
thought they were. In fact, in the Defence of the ApologyJewel did not
even answer Harding’s response to his erring use of Leo; and in his
Answer to Harding(pertaining to the Challenge Sermon), Jewel had to
admit that the use of more than one service of the Mass, in any one day,
is not forbidden, though of course Jewel never considered that this
qualified as having rightly answered his Challenge, for it could not be
shown that it had obtained practice or positive sanction.^154
From Conciliarism to Erastianism: two short treatises
Jewel’s anonymous writings were not limited to his Epistola and
Apologia. He also wrote a letter to a certain Venetian named Scipio, by
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ELIZABETHAN CHURCH 95
(^152) Jewel cited an edict of Justinian that the liturgy should be said in a clear, loud and
‘treatable’ voice. By this Jewel makes a formal abuse into a material, traditional, liturgical
practice wherein ‘these men mumble up all their service, not only with a drowned and
hollow voice, but also in a strange and barbarous tongue (Latin)’. Jewel, Apologia, Works,
III, p. 87.
(^153) Jewel references the Council of Gangra (see Encyclopedia of the Early Church,
Oxford, 1992, p. 337) a regional council that met in Asia Minor probably around AD340,
attended by 14 bishops, at which was condemned the eccentrically ascetic teachings of one
Eustathius, which included abstaining from Eucharists celebrated by married priests (a
decree Jewel especially played upon). Jewel, Apologia, Works, III, p. 87.
(^154) Jewel,Apologia, Works, III, p. 87; and Defence of the Apology, Works, IV, pp.
819–21. Cf. Answer to Hardingin Jewel, Works, II, pp. 629–33.