even lacking aptitude in theology, the prince still grants others to judge
in matters of doctrine only ‘by his authority’. When it was to his
advantage Jewel employed diversity as a grand answer to Harding – it
meant no Roman universality; but this did not stop him from claiming
uniformity on the national level, for the sovereignty of the prince limited
the conscience. By this tactic Jewel trumped Puritan appeals to a
ubiquitous Church of Christ: the royal prerogative excluded diversity in
the national Church. The prerogative and jurisdiction of the universal
Church, the court appealed to by both the Puritans and the
Traditionalists, could not exist. Further, because of the royal prerogative,
regional churches possessed a right of jurisdiction even over general
councils.^68
Matthew Parker’s approach to adiaphora stressed the transforming
character constituted in the royal prerogative. That Rome may have
defiled the linen surplice was irrelevant, for the garment had no
sacerdotal function, but only one of order.^69 Further, the appeal to
conscience against authority could not stand, for it is never a tyranny to
obey the prince’s ordinance in matters that could be shown to be merely
one of preference, which in the case of vestments adiaphora entailed. The
conscience is free, obedience is not.^70 With this bifurcation of the internal
from the external, and by his ability to redefine what were legitimate
scruples, Parker has erected outward conformity in apparel above
individual purity of conscience. Likewise, Elizabeth’s letter to Parker of
25 January 1565 emphasized not dogma but discipline and above all
else, unity and charity. The attempt by some to exercise their liberty in
respect to outward garb could only ‘impair, deface and disturb Christian
charity, unity and concord, being the very bands of our religion’.^71 In this
anti-Augustinian twist, charity no longer assumed the face of unity, but
of purity and order; Augustine’s notion of love as the bond of unity could
not exist, for obedience was now that bond; love or charity becoming at
best the goal of order. The 1559 Settlement and its amplification in
Parker’s Advertisements, redefined the place of both charity and the
individual’s conscience within the new arrangement.^72 Bullinger’s
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 173
People(London, 1983), pp. 108–33.
(^68) As already noted in Jewel’s letter to Peter Martyr recounting the Westminster
disputation, Jewel gives his own expansion on the third debated point: quamvis ecclesiam
provincialem, etiam injussu generalis concilii, posse vel instituere, vel mutare, vel abrogare
ceremonias et ritus ecclesiasticos, sicubi id videatur facere ad aedificationem. Works, IV, p.
- One wonders why for Jewel a general council would ever be called.
(^69) Primus,Vestments, p. 90.
(^70) Primus,Vestments,p. 91.
(^71) Elizabeth R. to Parker 25 January 1564, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, Parker
Society (Cambridge, 1848), p. 225.
(^72) For the Advertisements, see Henry Gee and W.J. Hardy. Documents Illustrative of