Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell and Company edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
by
JOHN JEWEL,
Bishop of Salisbury.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.
1888.
The great interest of Jewel’s “Apology” lies inthe fact that it was written in Latin to be read throughout Europe asthe answer of the Reformed Church of England, at the beginning of QueenElizabeth’s reign, to those who said that the Reformation setup a new Church. Its argument was that the English Church Reformerswere going back to the old Church, not setting up a new; and this Jewelproposed to show by looking back to the first centuries of Christianity. Innovation was imputed; and an Apology originally meant a pleading torebut an imputation. So, even as late as 1796, there was a bookcalled “An Apology for the Bible,” meaning its defence againstthose who questioned its authority. This Latin book of Jewel’s,Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ—written in Latinbecause it was not addressed to England only—was first publishedin 1562, and translated into English by the mother of Francis Bacon,whose edition appeared in 1564. That is the translation givenin this volume. The p. 6bookhas since had six or seven other translators, but Lady Ann Bacon’stranslation was that which presented it in Queen Elizabeth’s timeto English readers, and it had the advantage of revision by the Queen’sArchbishop of Canterbury, her coadjutor in the establishment of theReformed Church of England, Matthew Parker. It was published,with no name of author or translator on the title-page, as “AnApologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande, with a briefeand plaine declaration of the true Religion professed or used in thesame.” The book was prefaced by a letter, “To theright honorable learned and vertuous Ladie, A. B.” [Ann Bacon]“M. C. wisheth from God grace, honoure, and felicitie,”where M. C. signifies Matthew Cantuar, Matthew Parker, Archbishop ofCanterbury, whom Lady Ann Bacon had made her judge, and whose judgment,the letter says, her book had singularly pleased.
Lady Ann Bacon was the second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, whowas tutor to King Edward VI. Sir Anthony gave to his five daughtersa most liberal education. His eldest daughter, Mildred, marriedSir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, while Ann became the secondwife of the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon. Their p. 7fatherhad made Mildred and Ann two of the most learned women in England.
John Jewel was forty years old when he wrote the “Apology.” He was born in Devonshire in 1522, on the 24th of May, at the villageof Buden, near Ilfracombe. He studied at Oxford, where he becametutor and preacher, graduated as B.D. in 1551, and was presented tothe rectory of Sunningwell. At the accession of Queen Mary hebowed to the royal authority, but he was a warm friend and discipleof Peter Martyr, who had come to England in 1547, at the invitationof Edward VI., to take the chair of Divinity at Oxford. On theaccession of Queen Mary, Peter Martyr (who was born at Florence in 1500,and whose family name was Vermigli) returned to Strasburg, and wentthence to Zurich, where he died in 1562. Jewel, repenting of hisassent to the new sovereign’s authority in matters of religion,followed his friend Peter Martyr across the water, and became vice-masterof a college at Strasburg. Upon the accession of Elizabeth, in1588, Jewel came back, and he was one of the sixt