against an anonymous apology for private Mass. Rastell, assailed bishop
Cooper for more than just coming to wrong conclusions, but also cited
him for equivocal reasoning. Rastell had responded by defending the
Apologiawhen it had argued that as no prayer is merely a private prayer,
so no communion is merely a private communion, and that Sir Thomas
communicating in Paris and Sir Ambrose communicating in Venice were
also communicating with each other, for communion with other
Christians was predicated upon and effected through communion with
Christ.
[Cooper’s Defence] Sir I deny your argument, and say, that neyther
thone, nor thother doth communicate with any Christian man,
because neyther of both receiveth according to Christ his institution.
[Rastell] You be allwaies lyke your selfe, in forgetting your selfe. For
here you denye the argument, and the cause of your denyall is the
fault which you fynde with the major and minor propositions of it.
But if the faulte be only in the propositions, why denye you the
argument? And if the argument be faultie, how uncunningly do you
prove that, by denying of the propositions? But go to, let the first
proposition be interpreted as you would have it, and lett us then
repete the argument, saying, Thei which receive in divers places,
according to the institution of Christ do communicate togeather. But
Syr Thomas etc. (as before [Thomas celebrateth Masse and
receyveth alone in Parys, and Syr Ambrose doth the lyke in Venyce:
Ergo Thomas and Ambrose doe communicate togeather]) doe so:
Ergo thei communicate togeather. How saye you? doth this
argument please you? yea truly I thinke it doth. why then dyd you
deny the former argument, which was altegeather of the same forme
and making with this? But such disputors they be, with whom the
church hath to doe. Now againe, if you admitt the argument as
concerning the forme of it, what saie you to any of the propositions,
and say that none of those two priestes, whom I named, do worke
according to the institution of Christ. And why so? Forsoth (saie
you) because thei receive alone by them selfes. Yea but herein you
say falsely, because the one of them at the least, receiveth with the
other, and so thei have a communion, and observe the institution of
Christ.^49Rastell’s arguments responded not merely to Cooper, but also Jewel who
had made the identical argument against Harding in A Replie to M.
Harding’s Answer. Treating of the question of ‘private Mass’, Harding
had maintained that St Jerome in Bethlehem and St Augustine in
Carthage were in communion with one another – Jerome had written
that Augustine was episcopum communionis meae – despite the miles
that sundered them. Jewel attacked Harding for equivocating on the
termcommunio, that it had two senses, communion of doctrine and
communion of shared action in corporate reception, and that Harding
138 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^49) John Rastell, A Replie against and Answere(Antwerp: Aegidius Diest, 1565), f. 118b.
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