Simultaneous with Jewel’s consternation over the crucifix and his
carping about the use of vestments,^72 Jewel prepared and delivered his
Challenge Sermon, an address given three separate times in the course of
the fall and spring, 1559–60. Jewel first preached his sermon 26
November 1559 at Paul’s Cross. The merchant Henry Machyn noted
that the sermon was witnessed by as ‘grett audyense as [has] bene at
Powelles crosse’, and that it was attended as well by a number from
court.^73 Jewel preached the sermon the second time before Elizabeth’s
court on 17 March 1560. He would preach it for a third time on the
second Sunday before Easter, 31 March 1560, and this time it was again
delivered before a prominent crowd at Paul’s Cross.^74 In isolation, the
initial sermon could have been viewed as merely another among many of
the Protestant diatribes against Rome, as Southgate points out; but that
it was preached before court, and then given a third hearing, once again
at Paul’s Cross, marked it as a public, official challenge to traditional
religionists.^75 Jewel proffered 27 propositions, which,
if any learned man of all our adversaries, or if all the learned men
that be alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any
old catholic doctor, or father, or out of any old general council, or
out of the holy scriptures of God, or any one example of the
primitive church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved ... if
any one of all our adversaries be able to avouch any one of all these
articles ... I am content to yield unto him and to subscribe.^76In the first delivery of the sermon Jewel had used 15 propositions, and
with the subsequent sermons added the additional 12.^77 Most of the
propositions, 22 to be exact, revolve around the niceties and
complexities of Catholic sacramental theology and liturgical traditions
of the Eucharist. The other five challenges touch on issues substantial
enough in themselves (the use of icons or images, the use of the
vernacular in both common prayer and the reading of Scripture, papal
jurisdiction and whether ignorance led to piety),^78 but the preponderance
of Jewel’s challenge focused on points pertaining to the Mass.
70 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^72) ‘(that scenic dress ... these trifles) are indeed as you very properly observe, the relics
of the Amorites.’ Jewel, Letter to Martyr, 5 November 1559, Works, IV, p. 1223.
(^73) Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of
London, 1550–1563(London: Camden Society, 1848), p. 218.
(^74) The text of the third sermon, amplified from the original November 1559, is
reproduced in the Parker Society edition of Jewel, Works, I, pp. 3–25.
(^75) Southgate,Doctrinal Authority, p. 49.
(^76) Jewel, ‘The Challenge Sermon’, Works, I, pp. 20–21.
(^77) See Appendix I (pp. 251–2) for the 27 challenges.
(^78) That the people had their common prayers then in a strange tongue; that the bishop
of Rome was then called a universal bishop, or the head of the universal church; that
images were then set up in the churches, to the intent the people might worship them; that
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