Church of Christ throughout the world as embodied in the bishops.
Horne, according to Stapleton, was now asserting the exact opposite of
what had previously obtained in the history of the Church: once bishops
of a particular place were prescribed by general councils, ‘yet all the
Bishoppes of England nether have or may at any time prescribe over
every foraine Prelatewithout the realme of England’.^80 Horne and Jewel,
in keeping with the tenets of the second proposition of the Westminster
Disputation, valorized the regional Church at the expense of the
universal.
Rastell accused Jewel of equivocation on the question of conciliar
authority, seeing in his granting of doctrinal prerogatives to regional
councils a means by which he could pick and choose what he wished to
believe and by which he then could justify England’s breach with both its
past and with the universal Church. By the same stratagem which he had
used to eradicate the normative authority of the Church Fathers, Jewel
had granted to England’s prelates and prince an authority which he said
had been pretended by councils. By contrast, Rastell noted that
provincial councils, while not to be despised, were never held by the
Fathers to be in opposition to general councils, and that except for
heretics, no council was ever convened in contempt of the whole Church.
Rastell, in his marginalia, asked what should come if by such standards
as Jewel used that ‘the Baron like one waie and the Palsgrave an other,
maie both defend themselfs by these examples and conteime what soever
Authoritie in Christendom?’ Rastell concluded that Jewel and the
English, and by extension, all of Protestantism, had now set themselves
up as arbiters for all of the Church, living and dead.
All this might be true [that God’s truth is truth only if so acclaimed
by a general council, and thus the Catholics had claimed for
themselves to be judges of God], if the Holy ghost had not promised
unto the Church to tary with it for ever, and to instruct it. Againe,
Gods Trueth is trueth in it selfe: yet unto us it is not knowen, but by
meanes. Now among those meanes, which is the most worthie? The
text of the Scripture, which except some body tel me, I shal not
know, in what estimation to have it: the repose of a few men of our
owne parshe? or Country? Or the determination and consent of a
general or provincial councel? I should thinke, then, seeing we come
to faith by meanes of men whom we credite, it were not amisse to
harken Chiefly after the voice of a general Councel, where, As greate
authoritie and as worthie of credite is represented, as maie be
possiblie found in al the world. But M Jewel is afeard of a folie. and
like a wyse man, and such as worketh surely, he careth for none but
for God him selfe: and Let men tel hym what they list, he hangeth
not upon the Authority of any of them al, Or of al together, recevingTHE CATHOLIC REACTION TO JEWEL 153
(^80) Stapleton,Counterblaste, f. 430b.