- In fact, except for the Anabaptists, Erastianism was the order
embraced by all the Reformers, though all to a relatively greater or lesser
degree. Of the major Reformers, either Lutheran or Reformed, the first
to break thoroughly with this tradition was Calvin’s successor at Geneva,
Theodore Beza, who backed George Withers in his debate with the
Heidelberg physician Thomas Erastus, from whom the doctrine took its
name.^35 The Zurich Reformers Rudolph Gualter, Josiah Simler and
especially Heinrich Bullinger, all aligned themselves with Erastus.
Though Jewel never commented on the debate, it is abundantly clear that
he sided with Erastus as well.^36
Protestantism, from the movement’s earliest beginnings in Germany
under Luther, had looked to the princes and nobility to protect itself
against both the Papacy and those powers whose allegiance was to
Rome. Jewel by bitter experience had apprehended the expediency and
need of the godly prince as the governor and protector of the Protestant
church: initially, the death of the Protestant Edward made Jewel a pariah
in both Oxford and England because of his own Protestant inclinations;
and even before his exile his religious proclivities had brought him into
intimate familiarity with the Oxford martyrs Latimer, Ridley and
Cranmer, put to death at the hands of a Catholic hierarchy acting under
the aegis of Mary. Jewel would never shrink from employing the concept
of the necessity of the godly prince, as it became one of the chief articles
that he both defended against traditionalist invectives, and as well used
as a defense of the English Church. In this regard, Jewel’s defense of the
English polity was never, to use the happy phrase, making a virtue of a
necessity. For Jewel, that the godly prince held some form of power for
the good of the Church within his realm, was axiomatic.
Although Jewel had spent the previous 23 years prior to 1558, both
by education and by experience, in a manner that would prepare him for
the role he would play in the early Elizabethan Church, nevertheless
before his return to England nothing in either his academic life or clerical
career, however well prepared he was, commended him for the role he
subsequently played in the Elizabethan Church’s first decade. Further,
though having attained the post of orator for Corpus Christi college,
having written the congratulatory epistle to Mary on behalf of Oxford
60 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^35) McNeill,History and Character of Calvinism, pp. 273–74. For Beza and his influence
on England see Gordon Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation, Ch. VI. ‘Godly Magistracy
and the Godly Prince’ (Cambridge, 1960); and Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan
Movement, pp. 110–12.
(^36) Patrick Collinson, ‘Episcopacy and Reform in England in the Later Sixteenth
Century’,Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism(London: The
Hambledon Press, 1983), pp. 161–62. Originally published in Studies in Church History,
Vol 3, ed. G.J. Cuming (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966), 91–125.
http://www.ebook3000.com