Many of the arguments Jewel used in treating the Mass apply to
seeming minutiae, matters probably too arcane for the vast majority of
the faithful in England to have contemplated, let alone considered at any
length. But with such matters Jewel felt he retained the upper hand in
debate, to the exclusion of matters with which he could not hope to
flourish given the terms and parameters he had adduced: justification by
faith alone, the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, the invocation of
saints,inter alia. It is on just such matters and points that Jewel’s
challenge was initially answered. Two of the previously mentioned
traditionalists, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral Henry Cole, and the
former Salisbury treasurer Thomas Harding, both of whom were
educated at Oxford, were quick to point this out. Cole, in a letter to
Jewel following his second delivery of the Sermon, inquired about the
parameters of Jewel’s Challenge:
why ye rather offer both in your sermon yesterday in the court, and
at all times and at all other times at Paul’s Cross, to dispute in these
four points, than in the chief matters that lie in question betwixt the
church of Rome and the protestants. It seemeth to me far the nearer
way to compass that you would so fain win, if ye began not with
such matters, which we deny not but a general council might take
order that they should be practised as ye would have it.^79Cole then listed several articles which he considered more germane to the
present debate than those offered by Jewel; among them the value of a
Christian’s good works, whether the Mass is at all tolerable, whether it
is in any way a sacrifice and whether there is any Scripture denying the
use of saints as intercessors. Cole then concludes, ‘I ween, if ye had the
upper hand but in one of these questions, the world might well think we
were smally to be trusted in all the rest.’^80 Cole then breaks Jewel’s
challenges down to four issues: whether the substance of bread and wine
remain after consecration, whether the people can tolerably receive
under one kind, whether it is offensive to God that a common service be
performed in Latin and whether it is offensive to God for a priest to say
Mass without someone else to communicate with him. Jewel responded
by reiterating his challenge, accusing Cole of being a poor listener (or
rather a non-listener, as he must have obtained his information from
someone who attended the sermon and then poorly reported it to him).
Cole, says Jewel in his response, ‘misliketh all sermons, and yet will not
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ELIZABETHAN CHURCH 71
the laity were then forbidden to read the Word of God in their own tongue; that ignorance
is the mother and cause of true devotion and obedience. Numbers 3, 4, 14, 15 and 27
respectively. Jewel, Works, I, pp. 20–21. For many of these it is evident that Jewel is
erecting straw adversaries, imputing meanings beyond his antagonists’ words.
(^79) Henry Cole, an open letter to Jewel, 18 March 1560, in Jewel, Works, I, p. 26.
(^80) Cole, 18 March 1560, in Jewel, Works, I, pp. 26–27.