Florentine’s part in the controversy with Hooper in which he had
enjoined Hooper to conform. Martyr had argued that vestments were
licit things, however defiled they be, and defenders of vestments, both in
England and in Zurich, employed Martyr’s arguments against
Humphrey and Sampson. Further, in his commentary on I Corinthians
Martyr had said that use of indifferent things was left to the discretion
of the Church, and that since the Church had such discretion, obedience
was obligatory. Whitgift eventually used this very argument in his
controversy with Cartwright, appealing to Martyr as his authority in the
subject.^64 The prince’s prerogative as governor of both religion and
conscience supplanted that of the medieval bishop, with the prince as
religious head given greater unilateral prerogatives than even that
granted any general or regional council. Jewel did not grant the
monarchy all the prerogatives he believed had been assumed by Rome,
but did nonetheless grant it vast and unilateral rights over order, doctrine
and ceremony. Treating the prerogative putatively enjoyed by Justinian
over matters liturgical, Jewel notes that ‘it is lawful for a godly prince to
command bishops and priests; to make laws and orders for the church;
to redress the abuses of the sacraments; to allege the Scriptures; to
threaten and punish bishops and priests, if they offend’.^65
In the Defence of the Apology Jewel maintained that ‘[no] new-
imagined extraordinary power’ had been granted the prince, but this
should not be taken as akin to some medieval limitation on the prince,
but analogous to the protean topos of the Henrician primacy ‘as far as
the law of God allows’, for he maintained the right of the prince
to be the nurse of God’s religion; to make laws for the church; to
hear and take up cases and questions of the faith, if he be able; or
otherwise to commit them over by his authority unto the learned; to
command the bishops and priests to do their duties, and to punish
such as be offenders. Thus the godly emperor Constantinus sat in
judgement in a cause ecclesiastical .... Greater authority than
Constantinus the emperor had and used our princes require none.^66
The telling clause – ‘to take up ... questions of faith if he be able’ –
even as a concession, destroys any limitations to Jewel’s definition: a
theologically trained monarch would enjoy unprecedented privilege in
the definition of dogma. And though the uninformed prince would
merely have a judicial right (as Elizabeth certainly exercised in the case
of Grindal and the question of prophesyings) and not a magisterial one,^67
172 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^64) Cf. Gary W. Jenkins, ‘Peter Martyr and the Church of England after 1558’, in Frank
James, ed., Peter Martyr and the European Reformations(Leiden, 2004), pp. 47–69.
(^65) Jewel,Works, I, p. 287.
(^66) Jewel,Works, III, p. 167.
(^67) Cf. Patrick Collinson, ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius’, reprinted in Godly
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