neither the clergy nor the prince owed allegiance to any foreign potentate
(that is, the Pope), it is both their prerogative and duty to arrange their
local Christian commonwealth. The third of Jewel’s themes pertains to
his embracing only a modicum of essential doctrines that form the sine
quo nonof true religion. In the Apologia Ecclesiae AnglicanaeJewel’s
profession of Faith includes little more than an amplified version of the
Nicene Creed, which at times bears a striking resemblance to the
language of the Athanasian formula. The Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion are not treated directly, but the minimum of doctrine that they
profess is.^31 In comparison with other Protestant confessions and
formulas, the Church of England’s articles, and Jewel’s enumeration of
them, are slight. For Jewel, this lowest common denominator approach
to Protestant doctrine entails ancillary aspects of the final two themes.
The first of these two is Jewel’s minimalist reading of the church Fathers,
which also calls for a necessary lessening of Patristic authority and a
consequent deprecation for what may be termed the Catholic faith as
found in the early Church. Jewel’s stratagem cut out from under his
opponents any ground from which they could assail the English Church,
and to do this he sought to erode the early Church’s status as the unified,
Catholic domain from which traditionalists could conveniently draw
sustenance. The minimalist doctrinal base was a natural corollary.
Finally, and a consequent to the last point, Jewel asserted that the
Church of England’s Protestant apprehension of Christianity, however
minimal it may be, does not make it the purveyor of novelty, but instead
that Rome is the one guilty of innovation.^32 In each of the controversies
that engulfed Jewel, he would build his apologetic around one or more
of these notions, and in such a work as his Apologiaand his Defense of
the Apology, they all appear.
58 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
government Courts all Judges all Causes ... This power being sometime in the Bishopof
Rome... was ... annexed unto the King’sroyal seat and crown ... [O]ur laws have provided
that he King’s supereminent authority and power shall serve, as namely when the whole
Ecclesiastical state ... do need visitation and reformation.’
(^31) The Thirty-Nine Articles had omitted the Edwardian article on the Pope as Antichrist,
and interestingly enough, Jewel also refrains from so labeling the Pope, though he is quick
to employ the testimony of others to this end, and thus keeps himself one step removed
from deed. Cf. Jewel’s comments on II Thessalonians 2:4 in his Commentary upon the
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in Works, II, pp. 902–07, where Jewel culls from
numerous writers the necessary evidence that the Pope is the Antichrist of whom St Paul
wrote, although, since the Antichrist will style himself as God, who fits this bill? ‘You look
that I should name the bishop of Rome, that it is he which hath suffered himself to be called
by the name of God. I will not tell you in mine own words.’ p. 906. These same sentiments
and arguments Jewel employs in a sermon on Luke 10: 23–24, Works, II, p. 1080.
(^32) Jewel,Works, III, p. 89.
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