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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
It is well known that following the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 English Catholic and Protestant polemicists turned to the Church Fathers, and particularly to St Augustine, for source material with which to bolster their doctrinal arguments. Augustine's works were, of course, the basis for so many Reformation controversies, yet the theological disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were entirely different from those of the Early Church. Further development and refinement of doctrine had created a wide gulf between the two periods. Early modern polemic was therefore relying on patristic sources which at times were patently inappropriate. It might therefore be thought that there would be little to be gained from an examination of its use of the Fathers, particularly as there was no reason for bitterly opposed polemicists to take a restrained, objective, or even particularly discerning approach to the patristic sources in order to refute the ‘errors’ of the other side. Historians of the English Reformation have indeed shown little interest in the seventeenth century's preoccupation with St Augustine, the most widely cited of the patristic writers. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote that in this period ‘the true meaning of St Augustine was the object of as much unprofitable speculation as has ever been expended on the equally inscrutable mind of God’. Those historians who have dealt briefly with polemical technique in this period have suggested that seventeenth-century uses of patristic texts were likely to be primitive. J. C. H. Aveling argued that both Catholic and Protestant writers were afflicted by the same weaknesses: their understanding of source texts was undermined by a ‘cult of great erudition’ which was essentially shallow.
1 Trevor-Roper, H., Archbishop Laud, London 1962, 23Google Scholar.
2 Aveling, J. C. H., ‘The English clergy, Catholic and Protestant, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Aveling, J. C. H., Loades, D. M. and McAdoo, H. R. (eds), Rome and the Anglicans, Berlin 1982, 131Google Scholar. Greenslade, S. L. shows that some academics were capable of a critical approach to the Fathers: ‘The faculty of theology’, in McConica, J. (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, Oxford 1986, iii. 321–3Google Scholar; nevertheless, in some tracts, strings of citations were not the result of research but simply compilations of references cited in other contemporary tracts: Luoma, J. K., ‘Who owns the Fathers? Hooker and Cartwright on the authority of the primitive Church’, Sixteenth Century Journal viii (1977). 52Google Scholar.
3 For a survey of the ‘Challenge’ debate, see Milward, P., Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, London 1977, 1–8Google Scholar.
4 Persons, Robert, The Jesuits Memorial, for the Intended Reformation of England, London 1690, 41Google Scholar; Walsingham, Francis, A Search Made into Matters of Religion, [St Omer] 1609, 127, 195, 234–5Google Scholar. Several seminarians at the English College in Rome said they had been converted, in part at least, by reading ‘Challenge’ works, e.g. Good, John and Kemys, Thomas: Responsa Scholarum, ed. Kenny, A. (Catholic Record Society liv, 1962), 95–6, 202Google Scholar.
5 Whitaker, William, Disputation on Holy Scripture, [Cambridge 1588], 669Google Scholar, cited in Hughes, P., The Theology of the English Reformers, London 1965, 33Google Scholar.
6 cf. Walsingham, , A Search, 480Google Scholar; Fisher, George (alias Musket), The Bishop of London his Legacy, [St Omer] 1623, 104–5Google Scholar.
7 A Manual of Controversies, Paris 1614, 5–6Google Scholar.
8 Allison, A. F., ‘Who was John Brereley? The identity of a seventeenth-century controversialist’, Recusant History xiii (1982), 17–41Google Scholar. Allison shows that Brereley, long thought to have been the Jesuit Lawrence Anderton, was in fact a cousin, James Anderton of Lostock, a layman and a crown official. He was an immensely erudite man who had a ‘familiarity with sources remarkable even by the standards of that learned epoch’: ibid. 29. James Anderton's acceptance of James I'S absolutist claims may have left him opposed to the political line with which the Jesuits were associated, but his books had Jesuit approval and were printed at St Omer.
9 Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R. (eds), A Short-title Catalogue of Books printed in England…1475–1640, 2nd edn, revJackson, W. A., Ferguson, F. S. and Pantzer, K. F., 3 vols, London 1976–1991, 6060Google Scholar. In early 1625 Richard Neile and William Laud attacked Archbishop George Abbot by accusing his chaplain Daniel Featley of licensing two Nonconformist tracts, one of them being Crompton's: Featley, Daniel, Cygnea Cantio, London 1629, 3–7, 14–15, 30–4, 39–41Google Scholar. Crompton, a cleric firmly on the left wing of the Church of England, was attached to the group around Archbishop Abbot, and Daniel Featley assisted him with the production of Saint Austins Summes; DNB s.v.
10 Fisher, , The Bishop of London, 115Google Scholar.
11 Crompton, William, Saint Austins Summes, London 1624, 64Google Scholar; Brereley, John, Sainct Austines Religion, n.p. 1620, preface, 23, 25Google Scholar; Brereley argues that the work in question, the Quaestiones veteris et novi Testamenti, even if not by Augustine, was still an orthodox statement of doctrine; nevertheless, Bellarmine's condemnation of it as an heretical text (which Crompton emphasises) shows that there was some disagreement about it in Catholic circles, of which, perhaps, Brereley ought to have been aware: Bellarmine, Robert, ‘De Sacramentis in genere’, ii. 10Google Scholar, in Opera Omnia, 6 vols, Naples 1856–1862, iii. 101–3Google Scholar. Scholars have accepted Ambrosiaster as the work's author, following Souter, A. (ed.), Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, i, Vienna 1908, pp. xii, xxiiiGoogle Scholar.
12 Carier, Benjamin, A Copy of a Letter, n.p. 1615, 4Google Scholar; cf. Leech, Humphrey, Dutifull and Respective Considerations, [St Omer] 1609, 84Google Scholar; Vane, Thomas, A Lost Sheep Returned Home, Paris 1649, 23–5Google Scholar.
13 For a general treatment of this issue, see Tavard, G. H., The Seventeenth-Century Tradition, Leiden 1978, ch. iiGoogle Scholar. See also Kastli, J. D. and Wermelinger, O. (eds), Le canon de l'Ancien Testament: sa formation et son histoire, Geneva 1984Google Scholar; Metzger, B. M., The Canon of the New Testament: its origin, development and significance, Leiden 1987Google Scholar.
14 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 26Google Scholar.
15 Contra epistulam Manichaei 5, CSEL xxv. 197.
16 Crompton, , Saint Austins Sumrnes, 38Google Scholar.
17 Cf. Contra epist. Manich., 5, CSEL xxv. 197, in which there is no evidence to support Crompton's argument that were the Church to have departed from Scripture, Augustine would not depart from the authority of Christ.
18 Augustine wrote ‘non igitur debet ecclesia se Christo praeponere’ but Crompton substituted ‘Ecclesia non debet se Christo praeponere’, eliding the significant ‘igitur’: Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 38Google Scholar; Contra Cresconium 2. 21, 26, CSEL lii. 385.
19 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 36Google Scholar; De doctrina Christiana iv. 21, 45. 125–6, CSEL lxxx. 153–4.
20 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 35Google Scholar; De baptismo v. 23, 31, CSE L li. 289. He cites Scripture in this section of De baptismo only to show how it accords with his own understanding of the tradition relative simply to rebaptism. Nor does he state in this section that heretics rely on Scripture alone and not tradition.
21 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 36Google Scholar; De Genesi ad litteram x. 23, CSEL xxviii. 326–7. Augustine says that infant baptism is within apostolic tradition and not Scripture, but does not thus make the point which Brereley drew from it. Augustine is speaking in this text of a traditio in the restricted sense of liturgical custom. He did not believe that the doctrines of the Church could ever be in conflict with the Scriptures. See Karpp, J., ‘Bibel IV: die Funktion der Bibel in der Kirche, 1: Alte Kirche’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie vi, Berlin 1980, 48–59Google Scholar; Studer, B., La riflessione teologica nella chiesa imperiale, Rome 1989 (sec. iv, ch. v), 142–66Google Scholar.
22 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 47–8, 49Google Scholar; De baptismo v. 23, 31, CSEL li. 289.
23 Crompton intended to use Augustine's statement as evidence that Augustine did not hold absolutely to the infallibility of Church tradition since the Church later rejected a position affirmed and taught by Cyprian. Crompton, however, fails to note that Augustine explicitly states in the same text that it was because of the greater authority of a plenary church council (Aries, AD 314) that the Church and Augustine had rejected Cyprian's teaching.
24 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 51Google Scholar; De baptismo ii. 1, 2, CSEL li. 174–6.
25 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 51Google Scholar; Enarrationes in Psalmos xxx. 2, serm. 2, 5, Corpus Christianorium, Series Latina, Turnhout 1956, xxxviii. 205Google Scholar.
26 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 63Google Scholar. See also Crompton's use of Augustine's commentary on Psalm 108, where he argues, correctly, that Augustine thought Christ intended the granting of the keys to Peter not as the ‘head’ of the apostles but as a metaphor for the Church: Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 65Google Scholar; Enarrat. in Ps. cviii. 1, CCSL 1. 1585. See Chadwick, H., Augustine, Oxford 1986, 83–4Google Scholar; La Bonnardiére, A. -M., ‘Tu es Petrus: la péricope “Matthieu 16, 13–23” dans l'œuvre de saint Augustin’, Irenikon xxxiv (1961), 451–99Google Scholar; Eno, R., ‘Forma Petri-Petrus, figura ecclesiae: the uses of Peter’, Augustiniana xli (1991), 659–76, at pp. 671–6Google Scholar.
27 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 61–2Google Scholar; Tractatus in epistulam Johannis 10. 1, PL xxxv. 2054.
28 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 53Google Scholar; De utilitate credendi, 17, CSE L xxv. 45.
29 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 67Google Scholar.
30 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 53Google Scholar; Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum 1. 1, CSEL lx. 423. For a scholarly treatment of papal primacy in the Church of Augustine's day, see Zmire, P., ‘Recherches sur la collegialité épiscopale dans l'église d'Afrique’, Recherches augustiniennes vii (1971), 3–72, at pp. 62–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Merdinger, J., ‘Africa vs. Rome: Ecclesiastical Politics in the Era of St Augustine’, unpubl. PhD diss., Yale 1985Google Scholar.
31 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 66Google Scholar; Contra litteras Petiliani 51. 118, CSEL lii. 88.
32 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 39–40Google Scholar; Contra Cresconium i. 28, 33, CSEL lii. 352.
33 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 40Google Scholar; ep. liv. 5, CSEL xxxiv/2, 165; De baptismo, vii. 533) CSEL li. 359; Brereley's final citation is taken from Contra epist. Pelag. In this text it seems that he was attracted to Augustine's affirmation of the legal and moral competence of Pope Zosimus' condemnation Epistula tractatoria in AD 418 against Pelagius. Again, Augustine's remarks do not constitute an assertion that the Church itself is infallible: Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 40Google Scholar; Contra epist. Pelag. iv. 12, CSEL lx. 570.
34 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 54Google Scholar; Retractationes i. 19. 9, CCSL lvii. 60, even though he is drawing out of Augustine by implication things which are not there; cf. ibid. ii. 18, CCSL lvii. 104.
36 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 54Google Scholar; Contra epist. Pelag. iv. 7, 17, CSEL lx. 540–1. The context of this passage is the Pelagian dispute in which the question of the possibility of ‘plena iustitia’ and ‘impeccantia’ (the possibility of perfect righteousness and not sinning) were rejected by Augustine.
36 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 48Google Scholar; Enarrat. in Ps. xlvii. 2, CCS L xxxviii. 539; Contra litt. Pet., 2. 32, 74, CSEL lii. 62–3.
37 Simonis, W., Ecclesia visibilis et invisibilis: Untersuchungen zur Ekklesiologie und Sakramentlehre in der afrikanischen Tradition von Cyprian bis Augustinus, Frankfurt 1970, 122Google Scholar.
38 See Evans, R., One and Holy: the Church in Latin patristic thought, London 1972, 94–6Google Scholar.
39 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 53Google Scholar; Contra epist. Pelag. i. 1, CSEL lx. 423.
40 Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 36Google Scholar; ep. liv. 1, CSEL xxxiv/2, 159–60. See also van der Brink, J. N. Bakhuizen, ‘Traditio im theologischen Sinne’, Vigiliae Christianae xiii (1959), 65–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Congar, Y., Tradition and Traditions: an historical and a theological essay, trans. Naseby, Michael and Rainborough, Thomas, London 1966, 42–50, 138–55Google Scholar.
41 Cf. Milton, A., ‘The Laudians and the Church of Rome c. 1625–1640’, unpubl. PhD diss., Cambridge 1989, 109–19Google Scholar.
42 The Manicheans were a sect which claimed to be the rightful heir of Christ's revelation. Augustine argues against them that all true teaching is to be found only within the Church (and may be verified by reference to apostolicity). In Augustine's words, as translated by Brereley, Rome ‘from the Apostolical sea by successions of Bishops haith obtained the hight of authority’: Brereley, , Sainct Austines Religion, 53Google Scholar.
43 Ibid. 54, citing the Centurists who ‘confesse that he [Augustine] laboured much for the primacy of the Roman Church, which is evident by al his epistles’. Unusually, this is one occasion on which Crompton does not give details of Catholic dissent, something which he tries to do in most sections of his tract.
44 Ibid. 36–7.
45 Crompton, , Saint Austins Summes, 49Google Scholar.
46 Ibid. 59, citing De civitate Dei xx. 8. 1, CCSL xlviii. 712.
47 Ibid. 59–60.
48 Anthony Milton, ‘The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: the demise of a Jacobean consensus’. We are very grateful to Dr Milton for allowing us to see and quote from this forthcoming essay.
49 Evans, , One and Holy, 84Google Scholar.
50 Simonis, , Ecclesia visibilis, 84Google Scholar.
51 Ibid: ’Daher sind aber auch ecclesia mixta und ecclesia sancta nicht zwei getrennte Wirklichkeiten, sondern zwei von verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten her gewonnene Begriffe der einen komplexen kirchlichen Wirklichkeit, die wenigstens zur Zeit noch so ist, daβ sie nicht einfach in zwei getrennte Wirklichkeiten zerlegt werden kann.’
52 Milton, ‘The Church of England’.
53 The convert, Walter Montagu, emphasises the effect which Protestant divisions of this kind had in influencing his change of religion: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 853, fo. 154.
54 Milton, , ‘The Church of England’, citing Prideaux, J., Viginti-duae lectiones de totidem religionis capitibus, Oxford 1648, 130, 137Google Scholar.
55 Wadkins, T. H., ‘The Percy – “Fisher” controversies and the ecclesiastical politics of Jacobean anti-Catholicism, 1622–1625’, Church History lvii (1988), 153–69, at p. 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake, P., ‘Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1655’, Past and Present cxiv (1987), 32–76, at p. 43 and n. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Wadkins sees John Percy's, arguments on visibility as merely ‘a simplified version of Robert Bellarmine's…theology and Thomas Stapleton's…controversial methods’: 'The Percy – ”Fisher” controversies', 156Google Scholar; cf. O'Connell, M. R., Thomas Stapleton and the Counter-Reformation, New Haven 1964, 55Google Scholar.
57 For Percy's massive output of visibility polemic, see Milward, P., Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, London 1978, 217–26Google Scholar.
