The Apology of the Church of England

I read this book, mostly inspired by reading Anglican Theology. In that, it said John Jewel and Richard Hooker are sort of the respected middle-way (via media) voices in the Anglican history of the church. I also happened to have this one in my logos library. But a quick Google search will give you it for free.

In the preface that I had, it said

This work came forth with the consent of the Bishops, and with the Queen’s sanction; and is therefore to be regarded as an authoritative vindication of our Protestant Church

Again repeating Mark Chapman's idea of the place of Jewel's voice within the Anglican church.

While reading this, I remembered why I don't read much reformers' work: they often forget to use the full stop. It's like they had to pay for each sentence they wrote, so to get around it, they make use of the comma, colon, semicolon or anything else to stretch out the sentence for as many lines as they can. Jewel was not as hard a slug as John Owen - for all Owen is worth, I found him impossible to read. Jewel became easier as I started to understand his argument and style of writing. (I don't know Latin, the long sentences may have to do with that, as originally this was in Latin and the version I read was a translation from 1849)

Essentially this work was and was not groundbreaking. Like in apologetics, Jewel is writing a defence to charges against the Church of England, and essentially those charges were how it has strayed from the Roman Catholic church. Jewel's argument was "We haven't strayed - you have!". The method Jewel uses to combat these charges is really to quote old church fathers extensively (who lean on the Bible). This drove home the point that the Church of England has gone back to its roots. If the Catholic church is to claim any of the OG church fathers, it is they who need to change their ways. It was a good method. For the life of me, I have no idea how the Catholic church could recover from some of the arguments, in particular about the Lord's Supper. In one of the chapters, quote after quote from church fathers showed time and time again that they almost pre-empted transubstantiation and had already refuted that concept before Thomas Aquinas and Co came along. It makes me wonder how they agreed with it in the first place with all that was quoted.

There are paragraphs like:

Ambrose saith: “Bread and wine remain still the same they were before; and yet are changed into another thing:” or, that which Gelasius saith: “The substance of the bread, or the nature of the wine, ceaseth not so to be:” or, that which Theodoret saith: “After the consecration the mystical signs do not cast off their own proper nature: for they remain still in their former substance, form, and kind:” or, that which Augustine saith: “That which ye see is the bread and cup, for so our eyes tell us: but that which your faith requireth to be taught, is this: the bread is the body of Christ, and the cup is his blood:” or, that which Origen saith: “The bread which is sanctified by the word of God, as touching the material substance thereof, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy:” or that which Christ himself said, not only after the blessing of the cup, but after he had ministered the communion: I will drink no more of this fruit of the vine. It is well known that the fruit of the vine is wine, and not blood

You can see how he leans on lots of different older voices and then to scripture to make the final point. This in a nutshell is the book.

Scripture is given the main authority in the church, as:

Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Cyrillus have taught: that they be the very might and strength of God to attain to salvation: that they be the foundations of the prophets and apostles, whereupon is built the church of God: that they be the very sure and infallible rule, whereby may be tried, whether the church do stagger, or err, and whereunto all ecclesiastical doctrine ought to be called to account

And the issue of the power of Bishops and the extent of their power is questioned. Bishops can (and have) err, and their jurisdiction is limited to an area, not to the whole world:

And according to the judgment of the Nicene council, we say, that the bishop of Rome hath no more jurisdiction over the church of God, than the rest of the patriarchs, either of Alexandria, or of Antiochia have

There are other issues like allowing priests to marry. This was once allowed, but now that it wasn't, there were many corrupted examples of priests having concubines which doesn't fit right by anyone's standard. Private masses were countered, as the whole body is to come together and participate, they are also to share in both elements. The role of the civil government in calling church councils was argued for. I think was a dig at Rome who after the early seven councils, the rest were called by Popes. All of these points were backed up by old mates.

The thrust of the argument and method of the book could be this quote:

Irenæus oftentimes appealed to the oldest churches, which had been nearest to Christ’s time, and which it was hard to believe had erred. But why at this day is not the same respect and consideration had? Why return we not to the pattern of the old churches?

The argument for the Church of England is that they are reaching back to the past and not progressing forward with new ideas that run contrary to scripture and past teachings. The Church of England is reforming, but not progressing, they are going back to what was originally intended. And since the Church of England's DNA can be traced back to European/Western Christianity, they are essentially claiming they are going back to what was originally intended for their church when with all the people who came before them. They didn't break away from the steam, they went back to the source and followed it again. It is the Roman church that has been polluted, they need to change course in line with all who have gone before them.

With Mark Chapman in the back of my mind, it did make me wonder what distinctly English or Anglican was argued for, and really I don't think anything. What little I know of Luther or Calvin or Zwingli, I think on all the main points, of scripture, the Lord's Supper, priests etc... would have all broadly been supported by those reformers. However, maybe the topic of bishops and their role and power may have been debated by some of the reformers. There is an argument that says priests and bishops are the same and we don't need an extra layer of oversight. But Jewel would say, since scripture may not be clear, we can at least look at how the old school church did it, and follow their lead. We should trust them and not make more things up than we need to.

Today there is a great need for the Anglican church to consider the stream that they have come from - to go as far back up the source as they can. It would be worth us to understand the arguments for things in the past and not to just blindly follow them. If seeking wisdom from the past was our default position, then in my simple mind, lots of things might not be an issue today. Such as, the confusion over what might be considered a legitimate marriage. It may not make us socially popular today, but tradition the democracy of the dead. We can and should enlarge our view of whose voices we listen to beyond our contemporaries. This of course is not saying that just because it is old it is good. There is always scripture as the final voice, and if there were things in the past, that previous generations were culturally blind to (as we are today) that scripture speaks against, then that hands down trumps the practice. The church fathers and reformers would both agree on that.