head,^50 and the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.^51 For Jewel, the
godly prince had to become the arbiter of the limits of Scripture and
conscience, at least in some cases, for she guarded the religion of the
people, and by the sword defended them from heresy. This Jewel did
when he granted the prince sovereignty in regard to both tables of the
law, comprehending both religion and order, both the laity and the
clergy.^52 In a Protestant guise Jewel had granted the prince a jurisdiction
the equivalent of the medieval doctrine of the two swords – the temporal
and the spiritual – which during the Middle Ages had, theoretically at
least, always been kept distinct. Granting the queen the prerogative over
vestments further substantiates her prerogative as well over certain
matters of scriptural authority. This antinomy of conflicting ultimates
has formed one of the basic tenets of this book. When the prince would
side with those who went beyond both Geneva and Zurich, even beyond
the most liberal Reformed limit, could there be any reconciliation of the
two sides?
An acquaintance once remarked on what an intriguing fellow Jewel
must have been, since he managed to enrage both Mary Tudor and John
Knox. These seeming contraries in his nature, these putative conflicting
principles of his professed beliefs, nonetheless, he tried sincerely to
reconcile, finding a resolution in his Erastian ecclesiology, a dogma that
fit hand-in-glove with his Protestant convictions. Yet I also think he was
a calculating rhetorician, whose polemics and prose often mask the real
dissonances of his life. Jewel maintained what would appear mutually
incompatible beliefs and conflicting absolutes, and each fundamental to
him: the primacy of the prince and the primacy of Scripture. Couple this
with Jewel’s use of undulating traditions in a communion that valorized
particular customs and practices, all in an attempt to establish provincial
and royal prerogative, and it can be seen how Jewel’s rhetoric
outstripped his dogmatics. Nonetheless, he aspired to a theologically
precise dogmatics (right doctrine producing right practice), but he lived
in a politically imprecise world: Jewel suffered both exile for his religious
convictions under Mary, and pangs of conscience under Elizabeth.
Moreover, while his views on the primacy of the prince and the
THE IDENTITY OF THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH 243
(^50) This is one of the central tenets of the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, in Jewel,
Works, IV, pp. 5–47. The English translation by Lady Ann Bacon, entitled An Apologie or
answere in defence of the Churche of Englande, in Works, IV, pp. 52–108.
(^51) That Scriptures are the final authority in all matters of faith is expressed throughout,
but most notably in his references that they were the authority of the Fathers, their court
of appeal, and that Christ and the Apostles knew no such thing as antiquity or tradition.
Cf.A Treatise of the Holy Scriptures, in Works, IV, pp. 1161–88. Especially the section on
the perspicuity of the Scriptures, pp. 1182 ff.
(^52) Jewel. Sermon on Haggai 1:2–4, in Works, II, p. 997.