of Reformation evangelical piety was maintained, they took up their
respective English crosses and followed Elizabeth. Vestments could be
abhorred but still countenanced: for Jewel, these dregs of popery and
relics of the Amorites remained perfectly licit, and within the domain of
the royal prerogative.^32 These he could live with; the absence of prince he
could not. In this sense, a national church who formed her identity
around externals – most notably Her Majesty and Parliament – must
also exist on the minimum of doctrinal distinctives: the more defined the
doctrine, the more limited the scope and extent of the Church’s
inclusivity. Yet this does not entail that for Jewel and his coreligionists
England’s was merely some visible Church, whose existence depended
not a whit on the Spirit of God. Nonetheless it would seemingly demand
a great deal of charity for such an institution to function.
Consequently, where Protestants maintained minimal doctrinal
content in their confessions, there also was found the most broad
employment of adiaphora as a defense for external actions. The most
notable instance of the employment of adiaphora outside of England was
Melanchthon’s defense of the Augsburg and Leipzig Interims. Luther had
distinguished the Christian under grace from Israel under the law; and
those who by faith had been freed from bondage, from those still bound
by the commandments of men, for example, traditionalists.^33 Luther,
however, had no burning passion to tamper with even impious rites:
[W]e nevertheless both beg and urge you most earnestly not to deal
first with change[s] in the ritual, which [changes] are dangerous, but
to deal with them later. You should deal first with the center of our
teaching and fix in the people’s minds what [they must know] about
our justification .... Adequate reform of ungodly rites will come of
itself.^34Both Luther and Melanchthon embraced latitudinarian views on order,
rite and discipline when these had no express Biblical parameters.^35 Still,
the Christian conscience, free from ‘Jewish’ observances, could use such
rites for godly discipline. ‘Some works ... commanded are in themselves
adiaphora ... such are the rules about not eating meat, wearing a long or
short dress and the like – if not commanded or prohibited in God’s
word’, wrote Melanchthon.^36 Nonetheless, the individual Christian had
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 165
(^32) Cf. Jewel’s letters to Peter Martyr in Works, IV, pp. 1222–24 (5 November 1559) and
pp. 1205–6 (14 April 1559).
(^33) This is one of the central themes, and the basis of a good deal of the argument as well,
of Luther’s 1520 treatise, The Freedom of a Christian Man.
(^34) Martin Luther, 1530 letter to the clergy of Lubeck, Luther’s Works, Vol. 49, Letters
II. ed. & trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Philadelphia, 1972), pp. 262–63.
(^35) Verkamp, Indifferent Mean, pp. 26–28. If the Bible had not forbidden it, then it was
licit.
(^36) Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communestrans., and ed., Clyde L. Manschreck (Oxford,