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OF IGNORANCE.

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ARTICLE.

THE BISHOP OF SARISBURY.

OR that ignorance is the mother and cause of true devotion and obedience.

Fol. 77.

M. HARDING.

Master Jewel had great need of articles for some shew to be made against the catholic church, when he advised himself to put this in for an article. Verily, this is none of the highest mysteries, nor none of the greatest keys of our religion, as he saith it is, but untruly, and knoweth that for an untruth. For himself imputeth it to D. Cole, in his replies to him, as a strange saying by him uttered in the disputation at Westminster, to the wondering of the most part of the honourable and worshipful of this realm3. If it were one of the highest mysteries and greatest keys of the catholic religion, I trust the most part of the honourable and worshipful of the realm would not wonder at it. Concerning the matter itself I leave it to D. Cole. He is of age to answer for himself. Whether he said it or no, I know not. As he is learned, wise, and godly, so I doubt not but, if he said it, therein he had a good meaning, and can shew good reason for the same, if he may be admitted to declare his saying, as wise men would the laws to be declared, so as the mind be taken, and the word spoken not always rigorously exacted.

John iz

κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ μ KaTa Tò ρητόν.

THE BISHOP OF SARISBURY.

Here M. Harding allegeth no doctor but Doctor Cole. And touching the matter itself, he thinketh this error well excused, for that it is not the principal key of his religion. Howbeit, he that in most honourable assembly doubted not openly to pronounce these words, "I tell you, ignorance is the mother of devotion," was thought then to esteem the same as no small key of his religion. Verily, it appeareth by the whole practice and policy of that side, they are fully persuaded that without deep ignorance of the people it is not possible for their church to stand.

Therefore they chase the simple from the scriptures, and drown them in ignorance, and suffer them utterly to know nothing, neither the profession they made in baptism, nor the meaning of the holy mysteries, nor the price of Christ's blood, nor wherein or by whom they may be saved, nor what they desire of God, either when they pray together in the church or when they privately pray alone.

"They shut up the kingdom of heaven before men; and neither will they Matt. xxiii. enter themselves, nor suffer others that would enter." And, as it is written by the prophet Esay: Dicunt videntibus, Nolite videre: " They say unto them that see, Isai. xxx. Stop your eyes, and see no more." "As the people is, such is the priest; and as Isai. xxiv. the priest is, such is the people." "The blind is set to guide the blind." Thus they welter in darkness and in the shadow of death. And yet, as it is written in the book of Wisdom: Non satis est illis errasse circa scientiam Dei; Wisd. xiv. sed in magno viventes inscitiæ bello, tot et tanta mala pacem appellant: They

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Hæc mea fides est, quoniam hæc est catholica fides.
This is my faith, forasmuch as this is the catholic

faith.]

Matt. xv.

thought it not sufficient to be deceived and blinded in the knowledge of God; but, living in such a war of ignorance, all these evils they call peace," and make the people believe it is obedience, catholic faith, and devotion; or rather, as Iren. Lib. ii. Irenæus writeth against the Valentinian heretics: "Veritatis ignorantiam cognitionem vocant1: "Ignorance of the truth and blindness they call knowledge.”

cap. xix.

Judg. xvi.

John xii.

Concil, Tolet.
IV. can. 24.

August. in
Psal. xxxiii.
Conc. 1.

Dist. 38. Si juxta.

Gregor. in

Pastor. Lib. i. cap. i.

27.

By these policies they over-rule the church of God, and keep the people in obedience; even as the Philistines, after they had once shorn off Samson's hair and bored out his eyes, notwithstanding the strength and sturdiness of his body, were able to lead him whither they listed at their pleasure. "For he that walketh in the dark knoweth not whither to go."

In the council of Toledo in Spain it is written thus: Mater omnium errorum ignorantia: "Ignorance is the mother (not of devotion, but) of all errors." Like as St Augustine also saith: Erat...in illis regnum ignorantiæ,...id est, regnum erroris3: "There was in them the kingdom of ignorance; that is to say, the kingdom (not of devotion, but) of error."

St Hierome saith: Scripturarum ignorantia Christi ignorantia est1: “The ignorance of the scriptures is the ignorance of Christ."

And St Gregory saith: Qui ea, quæ sunt Domini, nesciunt, a Domino nesciuntur5: "Whoso know not the things that pertain unto the Lord, be not known of the Lord."

But above all others these words of the ancient learned father Origen are Orig.in Num. specially worthy to be noted: Dæmonibus est super omnia genera tormentorum, et super omnes pœnas, si quem videant verbo Dei operam dare, scientiam divinæ legis et mysteria scripturarum intentis studiis perquirentem. In hoc eorum omnis flamma est: in hoc uruntur incendio. Possident enim omnes, qui versantur in ignorantia: "Unto the devils it is a torment above all kinds of torments, and a pain above all pains, if they see any man reading the word of God, and with fervent study searching the knowledge of God's law and the mysteries and secrets of the scriptures. Herein standeth all the flame of the devils: in this fire they are tormented." For they are seized and possessed of all them that remain in ignorance.

Num. xi.

To be short, Moses wished that all the whole people might have understand1 Thess. iv. ing, and be able to prophesy. St Paul wished that the whole people might daily more and more increase in the knowledge of God, and saith: "Whoso continueth in ignorance, and knoweth not, shall not be known."

1 Cor. xiv.

John x.

Eph. iv.

God, the God of light and truth, remove all ignorance and darkness from our hearts; that we may fly the spirit of error, and know the voice of the great Shepherd; that we grow into a full perfect man in Christ Jesu, and be not blown away with every blast of vain doctrine; that we may be able to know the only, the true, and the living God, and his onlybegotten Son Jesus Christ: to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory,

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[1 Iren. Op. Par. 1710. Contr. Hær. Lib. 11. cap. xiv. 7, p. 135; where agnitionem.]

[2 Ignorantia mater cunctorum errorum.-Concil. Tolet. iv. cap. 24. in Crabb. Concil. Col. Agrip. 1551. Tom. II. p. 201.]

[3 August. Op. Par. 1679-1700. In Psalm. xxxiii. Enarr. i. 8. Tom. IV. col. 213.]

[...ignoratio scripturarum ignoratio Christi est. -Hieron. in Corp. Jur. Canon. Lugd. 1624. Decret.

Gratian. Decr. Prim. Pars, Dist. xxxviii, can. 9. col. 190.]

[5 Gregor. Magni Papæ I. Op. Par. 1705. Reg. Pastor. Prim. Pars, cap. i. Tom. II. col. 3.]

[ Orig. Op. Par. 1733-59. In Num. Hom. xxvii. 8. Tom. II. p. 378; where in isto uruntur. See before, page 57, note 14.]

[ Flee, 1565.]
[8 Perfite, 1565.]

THE CONCLUSION,

EXHORTING M. JEWEL TO STAND TO HIS PROMISE.

THUS your challenge, M. Jewel, is answered. Thus your negatives be arouched. Thus the points you went about to improve, by good authority be proved, and many others by you over rashly affirmed clearly improved. Thus the catholic religion, with all your forces laid at and impugned, is sufficiently defended. The places of proofs which we have here used are such as yourself allow for good and lawful: the scriptures, examples of the primitive church, ancient councils, and the fathers of six hundred years after Christ. You might and ought likewise to have allowed reason, tradition, custom, and authority of the church without limitation of time. The manner of this dealing with you is gentle, sober, and charitable. Put away all mists of blind self-love, you shall perceive the same to be so. The purpose and intent towards you, right good and loving, in regard of the truth, no less than due, for behoof of christian people, no less than necessary; that you hereby might be induced to bethink yourself of that wherein you have done unadvisedly, and stayed from hasty running forth, pricked with vain favour and praise of the world to everlasting damnation, appointed to be the reward at the end of your game; that truth might thus be tried, set forth and defended; and that our brethren be led, as it were by the hand, from perilous errors and danger of their souls, to a right sense and to surety.

Now it remaineth that you perform your promise: which is, that, if any one clear sentence or clause be brought for proof of any one of all your negative articles, you would yield and subscribe. What hath been brought, every one that wilfully will not blindfold himself may plainly see. If some haply, who will seem to have both eyes and ears, and to be right learned, will say hereof, they see ne hear nothing, no marvel. The favour of the part whereto they cleave, having cut off themselves from the body, the despite of the catholic religion and hatred of the church, hath so blinded their hearts, as, places alleged to the disproof of their false doctrine being never so evident, they see not, ne hear not, or rather they Matt. xiii. seeing see not, ne hearing hear not. Verily, you must either refuse the balance which yourself have offered and required for trial of these articles, which be the scriptures, examples, councils, and doctors of antiquity; or, the better weight of authority swaying to our side, that is, the truth found in the ancient doctrine of the catholic church, and not in the mangled dissensions of the gospellers, advisedly return from whence unadvisedly you have departed; humbly yield to that you have stubbornly kicked against, and embrace wholesomely that which you have hated damnably.

Touching the daily sacrifice of the church, commanded by Christ to be done in 1. remembrance of his death, that it hath been (and may be well and godly) celebrated without a number of communicants with the priest together in one place, which you call private mass, within the compass of your six hundred years after Christ: That the communion was then sometimes (as now also it is and may be) 2. ministered under one kind: Of the public service of the church, or common prayers 3. in a tongue not known to all the people: That the bishop of Rome was sometime 4. called universal bishop, and both called and holden for head of the universal church: That by ancient doctors it hath been taught, Christ's body to be really, subtan- 5. tially, corporally, carnally or naturally in the blessed sacrament of the altar: Of 6. the wondrous, but true being of Christ's body in more places at one time; and of 7. the adoration of the sacrament, or rather of the body of Christ in the sacrament,— we have brought good and sufficient proofs, alleging for the more part of these

[ From H. A. 1564; being not given in the editions of Jewel.]

articles the scriptures, and for all, right good evidence out of ancient examples, 8. 9. councils, or fathers. Concerning elevation, reservation, remaining of the accidents 10. 11. without substance, dividing the host in three parts, the terms of figure, sign, 12. 13. token, etc. applied to the sacrament, many masses in one church in one day, the 14. 15. reverent use of images, the scriptures to be had in vulgar tongues for the common

John 1.

Luke xv.

Gen. i.

2 Cor. iv.

12.

people to read, which are matters not specially treated of in the scriptures by express terms; all these have been sufficiently avouched and proved, either by proofs by yourself allowed, or by the doctrine and common sense of the church.

As for your twelve last articles, which you put in by addition to the former, for shew of your courage and confidence of the cause, and to seem to the ignorant to have much matter to charge us withal, as it appeareth; they report matter (certain excepted) of less importance. Some of them contain doctrine true, I grant, but over curious, and not most nccessary for the simple people. Some others be through the manner of your utterance perverted, and in terms drawn from the sense they have been uttered in by the church: which, by you being denied, might of us also be denied in regard of the terms they be expressed in, were not a sleight of falsehead, which might redound to the prejudice of the truth, therein worthily suspected. Verily to them all we have said so much, as to sober, quiet, and godly wits may seem sufficient.

Now this being so, what you mind to do, I know not; what you ought to do, I know right well. I wish you to do that, which may be to your own and to the people's soul-health, that, being by you and your fellows deceived, depend of you to the setting forth of the truth, to the procuring of a godly concord in Christ's church, and finally to the glory of God. This may you do by forsaking that, which perhaps seemeth to you truth, and is not; that which seemeth to you learning, and is but a flourish or varnish of learning; that which seemeth to you clear light, and is profound darkness; and by returning to the church, where, concerning the faith of a christian man, is all truth, and no deceit, right learning, and the very light, even that which lighteneth every man coming into this world, which is there to be found only, and not elsewhere, forasmuch as the head is not separated from the body.

that you would once mind this seriously, M. Jewel! As for me, if either speaking, writing, or expending might further you thereto, I should not spare tongue nor pen, nor any portion of my necessary things, were it never so dear. I would gladly pour out all together to help you to attain that felicity. But, O Lord, what lets see I whereby you are kept from that good! Shame, wealth of your estate, your worldly acquaintance, beside many others. But, sir, touching shame, which always irketh those that be of any generosity of nature, if you call your better philosophy to counsel, you shall be taught not to account it shameful to forsake error for love of truth, but rather wilfully to dwell in error after that it is plainly detected. As for the wealth of your estate, which some assure you of, so long as you maintain that part, I cannot judge so evil of you, but that you think how fickle and frail these worldly things be, and how little to be esteemed in respect of the heavenly estate which remaineth to the obedient children of the church, as the contrary to the rebels, apostates, and renegades. Touching your acquaintance, what shall the familiarity of a few deceived persons stay you from that felicity which you shall achieve with the love and friendship of all good men, of whose good opinion only riseth fame and renown, and also with the rejoicing of the angels in heaven?

This your happy change the better and wiser sort of men will impute to grace mightily by God's power in you wrought, which sundereth light from darkness, and maketh light shine out of darkness. Neither shall they judge that inconstancy, where is no change in will, but only in understanding. Where the will remaining one, always bent to the glory of God, the deceived understanding is by better instruction corrected and righted; there is not inconstancy to be noted, but amendment to be praised. Neither shall you in this godly enterprise be alone. Many both of old time and of our days have gone this way, and have broken the ice before you: Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palæstina, Beryllus of Bostra in Arabia, and Theodoritus of Cyrus in Persie; who forsook heinous heresies against Christ,

and by grace returned to the catholic faith again. So have done in our time Georgius Wicelius, Fridericus Staphylus, Franciscus Balduinus', and many more.

Thus having called to my mind the considerations that are like to withhold you from yielding to the catholic faith, from returning to the church, and from performing your promise; I find no bands so strong, to keep you fast in the chair of pestilence, which this long time you have sitten in; that through God's grace working humility and denial of yourself in your heart, whereof I spake in my preface, you should not easily loose and be in liberty, where you might clearly see the light spread abroad over the whole church, and espy the darkness of the particular sects of your new gospel which you lived in before.

But, all this notwithstanding, peradventure your heart serveth you to stand stoutly according to the purport of your challenge, in the defence of the doctrine you have professed, and for which you have obtained a bishoprick, thinking great scorn to be removed from the same by any such means as these to you may seem. And now perhaps you enter into meditation with yourself and conference with your brethren to frame an answer to this treatise, and by contrary writing to fortify your negatives. Well may you so do. But to what purpose, I pray you? Well may you make a smoke and a smother, to darken the light for a time; as men of war are wont to do, to work a feat secretly against their enemies. But that cannot long continue. The smoke will soon vanish away, the light of the truth will eftsoons appear. Well may you shut the light out of a few houses by closing doors and windows; but to keep away the bright sun from that great city which Matt. v. is set on high upon a hill, do what ye can, therein all your travail, your devices, and endeavours shall be vain and frustrate.

As iron by scouring is not only not consumed, but kept from rust and canker and is made brighter, so the church by the armours and hostility of heretics is not wounded, but through occasion strengthened, stirred to defence, and made invincible. When it is oppressed, then it riseth; when it is invaded, then it overcometh. When by the adversaries' objections it is checked and controlled, then it is acquitted and prevaileth. Wherefore talk, preach, and write against the doctrine of the church whiles ye will, ye shall but spurn against the stone, whereat ye may break your shins, and be crushed to pieces, the same not moved. Matt. xxi. Ye shall but kick against the prick. Ye shall but torment your own conscience Acts ix. condemned in your own judgment, as witting that ye resist the church, and, for the Tit. iii. life to come, increase the heap of everlasting damnation. All the reward ye shall win hereby is the vain favour of a few light and unstable persons by you deceived; whom the blasts of your mutable doctrine shall move and blow away from God's floor the church, like chaff, the good and constant people remaining still, like weighty Matt. iii. and sound wheat.

Synesius.

Platonem.

Agrippa.

The arguments and reasons you shall make against the doctrine of the church may haply persuade some of the worldly-wise, who be fools in God's judgment, as the reasons of them that have commended infamous matters have persuaded some. Of whom one praised the fever quartan; another drunkenness; another Phavorinus. baldness; another unrighteousness; and in our time, one ignorance, and another Glaucus apud foolishness. Which by the authors hath been done only for an exercise of wits, Cornelius and rather to the wondering than corrupting of the readers. Would God of all Erasmus. the writings of your sect against the catholic faith, which be no less beside reason and truth, the intent were no worse, the danger ensuing no greater! And as, for commendation of those unseemly and unworthy things, those rhetoricians have not brought good and true reasons, but only a probability of talk; right so for confirmation of your negative divinity, and of many new strange and false doctrines, you have no sure proofs, but shadows, colours, and shews only, that perhaps may dazzle blear eyes, and deceive the unlearned; but the learned-wise, and by any ways godly-wise, will soon contemn the same. For they be assured, how probably soever you teach or write, that the church, always assisted and prompted by the Holy Ghost the Spirit of truth, in points of faith erreth not, and that against truth, already by the same Spirit in the universal church taught and received, no truth can be alleged.

[' H. A. 1565 adds Nocolaus Villagagno after Balduinus.]

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