Читать книгу Elizabethan Controversialists - Peter Milward - Страница 10

If the Anglican champion in the sixties was John Jewel, his place in the seventies may be seen as taken by John Whitgift. Only the combat was now no longer against the external enemy, the old Papists, but against the internal enemy, the new Puritans. In the sixties, moreover, Jewel had been the attacker, provoking the Papists to controversy with his Challenge Sermon and his Apology, but now Whitgift appeared as the defender of the established Church of England against the attacks of the Puritan admonitions. Then the difference had been largely on matters of faith and doctrine, but now it was chiefly on matters of Church government and discipline.

Once the Admonition was published, it clearly called for some kind of official answer. The two sermons at Paul’s Cross and the pamphlet put out by the bishops entitled A View of the Church, which led to the second Admonition, were hardly a sufficient form of refutation. Already, however, a more solid work was under way, entrusted to the one man who seemed to be chosen by destiny for dealing with the Puritan menace. Earlier on in the reign John Whitgift, then fellow of Peterhouse, had been disposed to sympathize with the Puritan rejection of the surplice at chapel services, but he came to be persuaded otherwise and so to follow a swift path of preferment both at Cambridge University and in the Anglican Church. The turning-point was slight, even trivial in appearance, but it made all the difference between the path of honour that took him all the way to Canterbury and the path of exile that took his Puritan opponent by devious ways to Germany and Geneva. This alternative is significantly stated in his Answer to the Admonition. On the one hand, he points out, “such as consent in wearing of this apparel consent also in other points of doctrine and keep the peace of the Church”, whereas, on the other hand, “such as refuse the same apparel not only dissent and disagree among themselves, but fall into divers and strange opinions without stay and slander the Gospel with their contentiousness and tear in pieces the Church of Christ with their factions and schisms”. For this reason, both when he was appointed Master of Trinity College in 1567 and even more when he became vice-chancellor of the university in 1570, Whitgift stood out as a determined foe of the Puritan party and in particular of their acknowledged leader, Thomas Cartwright. It was therefore to him that the Anglican bishops turned as their champion against the challenge implied in the Admonition.

From the outset the position of Whitgift, like that of Parker before him, was based on practical rather than theoretical grounds, namely, the importance of comely order and peace within the Church of Christ. He was quite satisfied with the extent of ecclesiastical reform as it had been carried out under Queen Elizabeth, and he was indignant at the perversity of the Puritans in looking for their model of reform away from Canterbury to Geneva. Not that he was himself opposed to Calvin, but what was good for Geneva, he maintained, wasn’t necessarily good for England. “We have to consider,” he said, “what is most meet for this Church and State, and not to follow other as though we were children.” The Puritans, of course, claimed to be following the model not of Geneva but of the Bible, but Whitgift flatly told them, “I find no one certain and perfect kind of government prescribed or commanded in the Scriptures to the Church of Christ”. Much has been left, he pointed out, to the determination of Church authorities according to circumstances of place and time, and though these determinations may of themselves “be but trifles”, yet when they are commanded by the authorities “they are no trifles”. Not that this implies any curtailment of Christian liberty, as the Puritans complain, for, he explains, “Christian liberty is not a licence to do as thou list, but to serve God in newness of mind.”

This was evidently no merely theoretical question, to be discussed with academic impartiality, weighing the pros and cons in equal balance. Rather, as it had been proposed by “a viperous kind of men”, who were “ruled by affection and carried headlong with blind zeal into divers sinister judgments and erroneous opinions”, so Whitgift considered it incumbent on him to meet their attacks with a corresponding counter-attack. This took the form of “An Exhortation to such as be in authority and have the government of the Church committed unto them, whether they be civil or ecclesiastical magistrates”, which he prefixed to his Answer. The main part of this Exhortation is taken up with an analysis of “the practices of the Anabaptists, their conditions and qualities, the kind and manner of their beginnings and proceedings, before the broaching of their manifold and horrible heresies”, which may well be applied to “the authors of this Admonition and their fautors”.

Altogether Whitgift lists twenty-four points of parallelism, and he returns to them again and again in the rest of his book. Several of them deserve to be quoted in full, entering as they did into the subsequent “picture of a Puritan” that came to prevail throughout the Elizabethan age. “They had their private and secret conventicles, and did divide and separate themselves from the Church, neither would they communicate with such as were not of their sect, either in prayers, sacraments, or hearing the word…. They pretended in all their doings the glory of God, the edifying of the Church, and the purity of the Gospel…. They earnestly cried out against pride, gluttony, etc. They spake much of mortification, they pretended great gravity, they sighed much, they seldom or never laughed, they were very austere in reprehending, they spake gloriously…. If they were at any time punished for their errors, they greatly complained that nothing was used but violence, that the truth was oppressed, that innocent and godly men which would have all things reformed, according to the Word of God, could not be heard nor have liberty to speak…. They gave honour and reverence to none, and they used to speak to such as were in authority without any signification of honour, neither would they call men by their titles, and they answered churlishly…. To be short, the people had them in great admiration, because of their hypocrisy and straightness of life, and such as were of contentious natures joined with them and commended their doings.”

To this damning imputation of Anabaptism, with its contemporary implication of anarchy, Whitgift frequently recurs in the course of his Answer.“Such is their perverseness, or arrogancy,” he declares of the Puritans, “that if they be debarred but of the least part of their will and desire, by and by they cry out of cruelty and persecution”. They are “arrogant spirits”, he continues, “that think themselves of all men best learned, and disdain to learn of any”. Theirs is “a scolding nature and a stomach boiling with contempt of laws and superiors”, a “taunting spirit” that “seeketh rather deformation than reformation, uttereth spitefulness of stomach rather than godly zeal”, a “conscience and religion to be always ad oppositum and to disallow that which law and authority alloweth”, a “disposition always to be singular”. It is, above all, in their claim to full equality among ministers that Whitgift smells, as he says, “plain Anabaptism”. For, he adds, “This equality of ministers which you require is both flatly against the Scriptures and all ancient authority. It engendreth schisms, factions and contentions in the Church, and bringeth in a mere confusion.” He therefore accuses his opponents of seeking this equality not as the natural right of brothers in Christ, nor “because you would not rule (for it is manifest that you seek it most ambitiously in your manner), but because you contemn and disdain to be ruled and to be in subjection”.

On the other hand, in their attempts to subvert the order of Church and State in England, Whitgift paradoxically charges the Puritans with being unwitting allies of their professed foes, the Papists. “These men,” he declares, “flatly join with the Papists and by the selfsame assertions bend their force against this Church of England,” and he goes on to enumerate seven such assertions made by the Puritans no less than the Papists about the Anglican Church. Hence, he concludes, “it is manifest that the Papists and they jointly seek to shake, nay to overthrow the selfsame foundations, grounds and pillars of our Church, although not by the selfsame instruments and engines.”

To this comparison with the Papists, as to that with the Anabaptists, Whitgift recurs in the course of his Answer. The authors of the Admonition, he says, “have conspired with the Papists to overthrow (if they could) the state both of this Church and realm, howsoever subtly they seem to detest Papistry.” He even considers them likely to “work more harm to this Church than ever the Papists did”. They shake hands, he says, with the Papists as well as the Anabaptists in affirming “that the prince hath no authority in ecclesiastical matters”. They even go beyond the Papists in letting “every minister be king and pope in his own parish”, for indeed, “the Pope never required greater authority over all Christendom than they seek to have over their parish.”

The conclusion that Whitgift draws from this twofold comparison is a practical one. “Wherefore,” he exhorts the magistrates, “it is time to awake out of sleep and to draw out the sword of discipline, to provide that laws which be general and made for uniformity, as well of doctrine as ceremonies, be generally and universally observed.” Otherwise, he prophesies, “it cannot but be that this freedom given unto men, to obey and disobey what they list, to speak what they list, against whom they list, must in the end burst out into some strange and dangerous effect.”

This warning he repeats time and time again, as the solemn refrain of his Answer. He speaks as one who well knows what he is talking about, from his past experience of the Puritans at Cambridge, and in view of the event, his warning was only too amply justified. Leniency, in his opinion, is no way of dealing with these men. “If they be no otherwise beaten than hitherto they have been,” he warns, “they will not only with schisms and factions tear in sunder this Church of England, but in time overthrow the whole state of the common wealth.” So speaking directly to the Puritan admonishers, he says, “Surely your fancies, nay your dangerous errors, will burst out one day in more plain manner.” And again, “Truly I doubt that you will never end, but from time to time coin new devices to trouble the Church, until you have brought that heavy plague of God upon us, which the like kind of men through their schisms and heresies have brought upon all those places almost where any of the apostles preached, and where the Gospel was first planted.”

Again and again in his Answer Whitgift characterizes, or rather stigmatizes, his opponents as dangerous men. Commenting on their name, attached to them since the time of the vestiarian controversy, he remarks, “This name Puritan is very aptly given to these men, not because they be pure, no more than were the heretics called Cathari, but because they think themselves to be mundiores ceteris, more pure than others, as Cathari did, and separate themselves from all other churches and congregations as spotted and defiled, because also they suppose the Church which they have devised to be without all impurity.” As for their pride, he declares, “no Turk, no Jew, no Papist, could possibly have spoken more spitefully of this Church and State, but such is the spirit of arrogancy… as though they only had the Word of God, and we contemners and rejecters of the same.” In particular, he accuses them of being (like Satan) accusers of their brethren, for, he tells them, “you cease not with railing and spiteful words in pulpits and at tables to deprave and back-bite your brethren, and trouble the whole state with your factions and daily invented new opinions”. Finally, he concludes with a sketch of their ordinary behaviour, which may well have given Shakespeare a hint for his characterization of Shylock. “These men separate themselves also from the congregation, and will communicate with us neither in prayers, hearing the word, nor sacraments. They contemn and despise all those that be not of their sect as polluted, and not worthy to be saluted or kept company with. And therefore some of them, meeting their old acquaintance, being godly preachers, have not only refused to salute them but spit in their faces, wishing the plague of God to light upon them, and saying that they were damned, and that God had taken his spirit from them, and all this because they did wear a cap, wherefore when they talk of Pharisees, they pluck themselves by the noses.”

Up to this point in his Answer Whitgift had been directing his attack against the anonymous authors of the Admonition and their Puritan supporters in general, and so he was showing no animosity against any individual. In the following year, however, there appeared a Reply to his Answer in defence of the Admonition under the initials T.C. And then Whitgift had no difficulty in identifying them as belonging to his old adversary at Cambridge, Thomas Cartwright. This prompted him to return to his attack on the Puritans, this time on Cartwright in person, in the form of a Defence of his Answer. Now we find a new fire in his style, as he is now defending himself as well as his Church, and as he discerns an answering fire in the style of his adversary.

“If you should have written,” Whitgift exclaims from the outset, “against the veriest Papist in the world, the vilest person, the ignorantest dolt, you could not have used a more spiteful and malicious, more slanderous and reproachful, more contemptuous and disdainful kind of writing, than you use throughout your whole book.” “And truly,” he continues, “if you had not these two letters T.C. for your name, yet could I have easily conjectured by the haughtiness of the style and contemptuous speeches, who had been the author of the book, so well am I acquainted with your modesty, and such experience have I of your mildness.” In almost every line written by T.C. he professes to find his “fierceness and fiery heat”, his “old rancour and desire of revengement”. In general, he charges, “wheresoever you come, you make contention and kindle the fire of discord.”

What Whitgift particularly blames in Cartwright, as also in the authors of the Admonition, is his insistence on the written Word of God as the only rule of human conduct. For, he demands, what man “is able to show the Word of God for all things that he doth?” Such a paradox as that now maintained by T.C.“that all the commandments of God and of the Apostles are needful for our salvation”, is in his opinion nothing but “to lay an intolerable yoke and burden upon the necks of men”. What an absurd requirement, he exclaims, “what a torment is this doctrine able to bring unto a weak conscience!” In short, he accuses his adversary of plain Judaism and Pharisaism. “You bound us before to the judicial law, and now you will bind us to the ceremonial also. What remaineth but to say that Christ is not yet come?”

This particular accusation, however, grievous though it may be, is in his eyes of but secondary importance. What is of primary importance is the actual contention that Cartwright has everywhere stirred up, beginning with his own university of Cambridge. This is what Whitgift has most of all against his adversary from past experience, and what he now brings up against him in this Defence.“I know by experience that some of you devise and practice by all means possible, to stir up contention in this university, to dissuade men from the ministry, to bring such as be sober, wise, learned and godly preachers into contempt, and to make a confusion and divide every college within itself. But howsoever you have prevailed (as you have prevailed too much), yet I trust you shall never thoroughly bring to pass that which you desire. And I doubt not but that your undutiful, uncivil and uncharitable dealing in this your book, your many errors and foul absurdities contained in the same, hath so detected you, that honest, discreet, quiet and godly learned men will no more be withdrawn by you and such as you are, to any schism or contention in the Church, but rather bend themselves against the common adversary, and seek with heart and mouth to build up the walls of Jerusalem, which you have broken down, and to fill up the mines that you have digged, by craft and subtlety to overthrow the same. And howsoever some will still be waywardly disposed, yet I doubt not but that if such as be in authority will do their duties, they may by convenient discipline either be kept within the bounds of modesty, or else removed from this place, wherein of all other places they may do most harm.”

By this time, however, Whitgift was speaking to an adversary in exile, as Cartwright had fled to the continent to avoid certain arrest at home. Yet somehow from his land of exile the latter managed to bring out his Second Reply to what he called Whitgift’s “second answer”, in two successive parts which he published as best he could in 1575 and 1577. Whitgift for his part was content to leave them unanswered, as he had now become increasingly preoccupied with administrative affairs, first as Bishop of Worcester from 1577, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 till his death in 1604. It was above all in this second position that he was able to carry out in practice the advice he had given to all civil and ecclesiastical magistrates of the realm in his “Exhortation”, but even so he was unable to prevent the ultimate fulfillment of his prophecies in the following century.

Bibliographical Note

1 “A View of the Church that the Authors of the late published Admonition would have planted within this realm of England, containing such positions as they hold against the State of the said Church as it is now.” Published within the above-mentioned Certain Articles, but not otherwise surviving. 1572. (RC 114)

2 An Answer to a Certain Libel entitled, An Admonition to the Parliament. By John Whitgift, D. of Divinity. 1572 (RC 115)

3 The Defence of the Answer to the Admonition, against the Reply of T.C. By John Whitgift Doctor of Divinity. 1574 (RC 118)