Jewel would also link images with the good of the commonwealth,
but the Catholic distinction between image and prototype, and between
worship and veneration as regards images and saints, he would not
admit. Nonetheless, this distinction Jewel happily embraced when
paying homage to the image of the prince. For Jewel, Elizabeth exercised
the spiritual oversight of her people and became an image worthy of
veneration: for ‘she doth nothing but which she may lawfully do,
nothing but whereunto the Lord God hath given her especial warrant.
Her majesty is supreme governor over her subjects. The bishops within
her realm are subject to her. She governeth; they yield obedience’.^22 As
noted in the last chapter, Jewel made sweeping, hagiographical allusions
to Elizabeth, drawn from Scripture, and initially used of either the Virgin
or Christ.
The greatest blessing which God giveth to any people is a godly
prince .... The greatest misery ... to have a godly prince taken from
them. For by a godly prince he doth so rule the people as if God
himself were with them in visible appearance. The prince walketh in
the ways of the Lord: the nobles follow ... and the people fashion
themselves to the example of the nobles. The face of a godly prince
shineth as the sun-beams and bringeth joy and comfort to his
subjects.^23The venerated icon now was no longer a saint, but her majesty.
When Harding first responded to Jewel perhaps he took the bishop
aback by his response, for Harding was quite willing to agree with Jewel
that in the first 600 years of the Church’s existence there had never been
put up any images for the purpose of the people to worship. This would
have been idolatry, for after all, worship is due to God alone. Instead,
Harding maintained, images had been set up for veneration, for what
Catholics termed duliaor mere reverence. Worship, or Latreiawas due
to God alone, and thus Catholics venerated images, they did not worship
them; and this, Harding asserted, was the attitude of the first 600 years.
Jewel would not permit this distinction, and in this he was little different
than other Protestants. Calvin had both denied that this distinction was
clear, or that any religious adoration could be given to creatures. The
Greek term
, Calvin asserted, could only have God as its
object, and turned to Cornelius’s prostration before Peter in the book of
Acts and John’s prostration before the angel in the Apocalypse as
evidence of this. Calvin did not, however, address why this is the word
THE CATHOLIC REACTION TO JEWEL 127
(^22) Jewel,Seditious Bull, in Works, IV, p. 1145. Jewel did not live long enough to witness
her majesty’s ‘due consideration’ to archbishop Grindal. Cf. Patrick Collinson, Grindal, pp.
233–52.
(^23) Jewel,Seditious Bull, in Works, IV, p. 1153.