theology goes beyond the scope of the chapter, but it should be noted
that here Jewel’s argument rests upon Peter, Elijah and Bartholomew
having by nature physical properties similarly empowered to
supernatural ends in the same manner as Christ’s body was also
supernaturally empowered in his Incarnation; a point Jewel could not
have admitted to. Jewel here follows, however, a line against the
traditionalist doctrine of the real presence that had been set out for him
by Peter Martyr in his Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ.^90 Martyr
had written the dialogue against the peculiar Eucharistic views of
Johannes Brenz and Brenz’s doctrine of ubiquitarianism, the means
whereby Brenz chose to defend the Lutheran doctrine of
consubstantiation. This was not the official Lutheran explanation of the
doctrine, for indeed such an argument had already been repudiated by
both the Lutheran theologian Chemnitz and the Formula of Concord
(although it did not deny that Christ according to his human nature
could be everywhere). Martyr had dedicated the work to Jewel, and had
cast Jewel as Palaemon, one of the characters, and the judge of the
dialogue. In his letter thanking Martyr for the honor, Jewel referred to
this work as Orothetes(Greek:, one who sets boundaries).^91
Martyr’s argument basically affirms the temporal presence of Christ’s
body in heaven, and denies that it possessed supra- or trans-temporal
qualities that would make it more than a human body.
Jewel’s tacit dismissal of Harding’s major premise – the supernatural
effect that both the divine nature and the divine person of Christ had
upon the human body of the Incarnation – is apparent in his making the
major premise of his argument the identity of Christ’s incarnate body
with the merely temporal and defined nature of the human bodies of
Peter and Thomas, inter alia. Jewel’s syllogism would run: Peter
performed miracles as Christ performed miracles, Peter as to his
humanity is limited, ergo Christ as to his humanity is limited. This is a
four-term syllogism, thus an equivocal one, stemming from the equivocal
‘middle term’ of the first term of the syllogism, that Christ’s and Peter’s
bodies (inter alia) are supernaturally effected in the same way. Jewel does
not make this clear, and had this been his point he would have
transgressed orthodoxy to have done so.^92 Jewel in his polemical works
́ ́
76 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^90) Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Peter Martyr Library, Vol II, Dialogue on the Two
Natures in Christ, Vol XXXI of Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, trans. and ed., with
introduction by John Patrick Donnelly, S.J. (Kirksville, MO, 1995).
(^91) See Jewel, Letter to Martyr, 7 February 1562, Works, IV, 1245–46. See also
McClelland,Visible Words, pp. 65–67. The antagonist is the personification of Brenz,
dubbed Pantachus (Greek, everywhere).
(^92) It is not clear whether Jewel’s equivocation on this point was a willful tactic employed
merely for the rhetorical points to be had with his assumed audience, or his own
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