that ministers keep in mind that they maintain the person of Christ’.^89
Having thrown down the gauntlet, Jewel now draws his rhetorical
sword, though using it with feigned delicacy: ‘I would rather mention
these old things (the abominations of the Canaanites), than to use recent
and fresh examples.’^90 He then proceeds to libel Rome directly, using the
Protestant commonplaces of gross superstition, the blasphemy of the
mass, the cult of the saints, the errors of sacerdotalism, and especially
the presumptions of the bishop of Rome, and so on.^91 Jewel knew the
largely traditional opinions of his audience – ‘I know that most of these
things seem novel (vestrum) and implausible (incredibilia) to most of
you’, he says toward the end of the sermon – and he also knew the limits
of propriety: to attack certain medieval abuses was dangerous, but in
England in 1550 by linking them with Rome he probably hoped to
mollify the more vitriolic of the assumed traditionalist responses.
Two final points about the sermon should be noted. The first item
concerns two particular forms of argument, made with reference to the
Church Fathers, both of which Jewel would later employ in his position
as an Elizabethan apologist. In the sermon’s text they are little more than
passing allusions, hardly developed within the larger context of the
sermon, yet when cultivated and employed in later years they would
become axioms of his polemical discourse. The first, an argument
growing out of his above discussed Eucharistic thought, is a negative
appeal to the ancient church, here with regard to the reservation and
adoration of the sacramental elements. ‘By the immortal God I beseech
you, consider in your minds, brethren, whoever – I do not say of the
apostles – but of the holy fathers, either himself worshiped the Eucharist,
or has shown it to others for adoration?’^92 Jewel’s aim is to build upon
the silences and spaces that a sixteenth-century reading of the early
church’s liturgical practice offered, and to use these lacunae as an
argument against the contemporary practice of Roman Catholics. The
second polemical point is Jewel’s assertion that ‘Certainly, I could not say
anything more of them (the fathers), than that they frequently disagreed
among themselves on great and serious matters’.^93 Jewel’s attempt to
28 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^89) ‘Verum simulationem et hypocrisin Christus non docuit. Id potius agit, ut pastores
meminerint Christi personam sustinere.’ Ibid, p. 961.
(^90) ‘Haec enim vetera commemorare malo, quam exemplis uti vivis et recentibus.’ Ibid.,
p. 956.
(^91) Ibid., pp. 956–57.
(^92) ‘Nam per Deum immortalem, cogitate cum animis vestris, fratres, quis unquam, non
dico apostolorum, sed sanctorum, eucharistiam vel adoravit ipse, vel aliis proposuit
adorandam?’ Ibid., p. 959.
(^93) ‘Certe, ne quid dicam praeterea, maximis saepe et gravissimis de rebus parum inter
sese convenerunt.’ Ibid., p. 958.
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