was representative of all (omnes), as well as for the necessity of a council
convening when matters of the gravest urgency necessitated it (omnes
tangit). Jewel took the concept of interest on a rather different path,
though one having been employed in many ways by other Protestants,
that is, that of the equality of orders within the Christian ministry. Jewel
noted in the Defense of the Apologythat the ministry of the Church of
England had bishops, and that, though of ancient custom, they were
used merely for good order.^181 Having denied any special suzerainty to
either the bishop of Rome, or even to a general council, Jewel posits
prerogative in the national ecclesiastical bodies, since, ‘we judged it
appropriate to provide for our churches by a national council’.^182
Specifically, Jewel saw the local synod as self-governing, and that only if
they were good, could foreign customs be imposed on local regions.
Jewel cites pope Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury to
support his contention.
You know my brother the custom of the Roman church, in which
you have been brought up. But my judgment is, that whatever you
have found either in the Roman church, or that of France, or any
other, which may be more pleasing to Almighty God, you should
introduce the chief of such things into the English church, which is
as yet but new in faith, and, as it were, but now to be framed. For
things are not to be valued because of the place where they are
found; but places are to be valued for the things that are in them.^183
However much emphasis Jewel reserved for local councils, they were
ultimately of little moment, even ineffectual, without the aid and support
of the godly prince. Whereas in the Ad ScipionemJewel had been
concerned with papal abuses in relation to the rest of the Church as an
ecclesiastical body, in A View of a Seditious Bull he treats the
misappropriation of papal prerogatives over realms, especially over the
realm of England. Reference has already been made to Pius V’s 1570
Regnans in Excelsis, the Bull of excommunication by which he had
anathematized Elizabeth and all who either defended her or obeyed her
laws.^184 Jewel’s treatise against this bull is also an apology for Elizabeth’s
104 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^181) Jewel quotes Jerome to this effect, that bishops are but for order and custom and that
no priest is above another, all in the context of denying papal sovereignty over any other
priests.Defense of the Apology, in Works, I, p. 379.
(^182) ‘Proprium esse judicavimus, ut municipali concilio ecclesiis nostris prospiceremus.’
Jewel,Ad Scipionem, in Works, IV, p. 1122.
(^183) Jewel,Ad Scipionem, in Works, IV, pp. 1123–24. Editor’s translation.
(^184) ‘Praecipimusque et interdicimus universis et singulis proceribus, subditis populis, et
aliis praedictis, ne illi ejusve monitis, mandatis et legibus audeant obedire. Qui secus
egerint, eos simli ananthematis sententia innodamus.’ Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis,
reproduced in View of a Seditious Bull, in Jewel, Works, p. 1132. Jewel quotes and
translates in p. 1154.
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