the time of Queen Mary; Jewel for fear, and Harding upon hope of favour and preferment by it. But Jewel's fall may be compared to that of St. Peter, which was short and sudden, rising again by his repentance, and fortified more strongly in his faith than before he was: but Harding's like to that of the other Simon, premeditated and resolved on, never to be restored again (so much was there. within him of the gall of bitterness) to his former standing. But some former differences had been between them in the church of Sarisbury, whereof the one was Prebendary, and the other Bishop, occasioned by the Bishops visitation of that cathedral; in which as Harding had the worst, so it was a presage of a second foil which he was to have in this encounter. Who had the better of the day, will easily appear to any that consults the writings, by which it will appear how much the Bishop was too hard for him at all manner of weapons. Whose learned answers as well in maintenance of his challenge, as in defence of his Apology (whereof more hereafter) contain in them such a magazine of all sorts of learning, that all our controversors since that time, have furnished themselves with arguments and authority from it."

Thus far that learned man has discoursed the event of this famous challenge with so much brevity and perspicuity, that I thought it better to transcribe his words, than to do it much worse my self.. When Queen Mary died, Paul the Fourth was Pope, to whom Queen Elizabeth sent an account of her coming to the crown, which was delivered by Sir Edward Karn her sisters resident at Rome;

4

Was Prebendary.]. [Harding was then Prebendary when Mr. Jewel was elected, and gave his vote for him. Humf. p. 140.]

to

to which the angry gentleman replied, "That England was held in fee of the Apostolick See, that she could not succeed being illegitimate; nor could he contradict the declarations made in that matter by his predecessors Clement the Seventh, and Paul the Third: he said it was a great boldness in her, to assume the crown without his consent; for which in reason she deserved no favour at his hands; yet if she would renounce her pretensions, and refer her self wholly to him, he would shew a fatherly affection to her, and do every thing for her that could consist with the dignity of the Apostolick See." Which answer being hastily and passionately made, was as little regarded by the Queen. But he dying soon after, Pius the Fourth an abler man succeeded; and he was for gaining the Queen by arts and kindness; to which end he sent Vincent Parapalia, Abbot of St. Saviours, with courteous letters to her, dated May the fifth 1560, with order to make large proffers to her under hand: but the Queen had rejected the Pope's authority by Act of Parliament, and would have nothing to do with Parapalia, nor would she suffer him to come into England. In the interim the Pope had resolved to renew the Council at Trent, and in the next year sent Abbot Martiningo his Nuncio to the Queen, to invite her and her Bishops to the Council, and he accordingly came to Bruxells, and from thence sent over for leave to come into England: but tho France and Spain interceded for his admission, yet the Queen stood firm, and at the same time rejected a motion from the Emperor Ferdinando, to return to the old Religion as he called it. Yet after all these denials given to so many and such potent Princes, one Scipio a gentleman of Venice, who formerly had had some acquaintance with Bishop Jewel when he

was

was a student in Padua, and had heard of Martiningo's ill successes in this negotiation, would needs spend some eloquence in labouring to obtain that point by his private letters, which the Nuncio. could not gain as a publick minister; and to that. end he writes his letters of expostulation to Bishop Jewel his old friend, preferred not long before to the See of Sarisbury. Which letter did not long remain unanswered; that learned prelate (saith my author, Dr. Heylyn, Eccl. Rest. p. 349.) was not so unstudied in the nature of councils, as not to know how little of a General Council could be found at Trent: And therefore he returned an answer to the proposition so elegantly penned, and so elaborately digested, that neither Scipio himself nor any other of that party durst reply upon him. Which letter the reader will find in this small piece new translated. But this was written some time. after the Apology was printed in England.

In the year following Bishop Jewel put out The Apology of the Church of England in Latin; which tho written by him, was published by the Queens authority, and with the advice of some of the Bishops, as the publick confession of the Catholick and Christian Faith of the Church of Eng-. land, &c. and to give an account of the reasons of our departure from the See of Rome, and as an answer to those calumnies that were then raised against the English Church and nation, for not. submitting to the pretended General Council of Trent then sitting.

So that it is not to be esteemed as the private work of a single Bishop, but as a publick declara

3 In the year following.] [A. D. 1562. Humfrey in the Life of Jewel. p. 177. Peter Martyr's Letter to Bishop Jewe Concerning this book is dated Aug. 24, 1562.]

Mr.

tion of that Church whose name it bears. Humfrey seems in this place to confound this and the Epistle together, as if they had been written at the same time, which it is apparent they were

not.

This Apology being published during the very time of the last meeting of the Council of Trent, was read there, and seriously considered, and great threats made that it should be answered; and accordingly two learned Bishops, one a Spaniard and the other an Italian, undertook that task, but neither of them did any thing in it.

But in the mean time the book spread into all the countries in Europe, and was much applanded in France, Flanders, Germany, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and Scotland; and found at last a passage into Italy, Naples and Rome it self; and was soon after translated into the German, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, and last into the Greek tongue; in so great esteem this book was abroad: and at home it was translated into English by the Lady Bacon wife to Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the great Seal of England.

It very well deserves the character Mr Humfrey has given of it, whose words are these. (Page 187.) "It is so drawn, that the first part of it is an illustration, and as it were a paraphrase of the Twelve Articles of the Christian Faith (or Creed); • the second is a short and solid confutation of whatever is objected against the Church. If the order be considered, nothing can be better distributed; if the perspicuity, nothing can be fuller of light; if the stile, nothing more terse; if the words,

* Into the Greek.] And also into Welch, by M. Kyffin Oxford, 1571. 8vo.

VOL. IV.

E

nothing

nothing more splendid; if the arguments, nothing stronger."

The good Bishop was most encouraged to publish this Apology by Peter Martyr (as appears by Martyr's letter of the 24th of August) with whom he had spent the greatest part of his time in exile. But Martyr only lived to see the book which he so much longed for, dying at Zurick, on the twelfth day of November following, after he had paid his thanks for, and expressed his value of this piece in a letter which is subjoyned to this book in all the following prints. And Mr. Camden also in his Annals expresly saith, this Apology was printed first in the year 1562.

In the year 1564. Mr. Harding put out a pretended answer to Bishop Jewel's famous challenge at Paul's Cross, mentioned above, to which in the year following the Bishop made a very learned reply, the epistle before which bears date at London the 27th of October of that year: the Bishop is said to have spent two years in that piece. The same year the University of Oxon gave him (tho absent) the degree of Doctor of Divinity; and

5 Spent two years.] This could hardly be, if Harding's Answer came out first in 1564. But in fact the privilege prefixed to that book bears date Jan. 15, 1563. The Epistle prefixed to Jewel's Reply is not dated 27th Oct. 1565, but, 6th August, 1565. The writer has also committed another mistake where, a little below, it is said that the Defence was finished Oct. 27, 1567; that is the date of the Epistle prefixed to the second Edition. Humfrey, p. 194, has given occasion to part of these errors. Harding's principal work against the Apology, intitled, Confutation of a book called An Apology, &c. came out in 1565, and not as Bishop Tanner and others have said, in 1563. The privilege prefixed is dated April 12, 1565. See also Jewel's Letter to Bullinger, in Strype's Annals. Vol. I. p. 81. Records.

certainly