interpretation) where any priest SAID masse, ORDINARILI, in
OPEN CHURCH and receaved alone: D. Harding proveth Priavate
masse, that is to say, single communion, or Sole receaving.^30Rastell also took Jewel to task for how he changed the parameters of his
second proposition, for he seemingly altered the point every time his
most recent iteration was shown deficient. Initially Jewel, in the third
instance of his preaching the Challenge Sermon had stated that,
Touching the second abuse of the communion under one kind, it
would be long to say so much as the place would seem to require.
For, besides the institution of Christ, and the words of St Paul, which
to a christian man may seem sufficient, it was used throughout the
whole catholic church six hundred years afer Christ’s ascension,
under both kinds, without exception.Further on Jewel denied ‘that there was then any communion ministered
unto the people under one kind’.^31 The words ‘without exception’ and
‘any communion’ would prove too large for Jewel’s argument.
Necessity forced Jewel’s hand once the Recusants produced examples
that the laity, St Basil the Great, St Ambrose and even Christ to the
disciples on the road to Emmaus, had administered and partaken of
communion only under the form of bread. Once these items were
brought forward as evidence, Jewel altered his Challenge to demand that
this practice be shown in the first 600 years to have ever been openly
performed in the church and as a public usage. Lastly Jewel added the
proviso ‘as it is practiced in the Church of Rome’. Numerous examples
came out that showed Jewel’s initial sermon’s point – ‘without exception’
- faced numerous exceptions, and thus Jewel in the course of his
controversy with Harding had to shift his ground. From his vantage
point in Louvain in 1566 Rastell saw Jewel’s maneuvers and rightly
pounced on the shift. Paramount for Rastell, Jewel’s Challenge needed to
be reformed, that ‘the first question should have bene: Whether Christes
Institution doth stand with receaving under one kinde’, and ‘whether it
were an abuse in the primitive church to receve under one kind’.^32 This
echoed a point Rastell had made the previous year against Thomas
Cooper, bishop of Lincoln, concerning the minister communicating alone
or privately.
[Cooper’s defence]But you should bring such places as might prove
that the common minister in place of the Lorde his supper, did
celebrate and receyve alone, other being present, and not partakyng.
No Syr, you must rule us in the manner of our reasoning, and
appoint us to prove that, which we take not upon us. This is it,130 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^30) Ibid., f. 10b. Emphasis Rastell’s.
(^31) Jewel,Works, I, pp. 9, 20.
(^32) Rastell,Beware,17b–18a.
http://www.ebook3000.com