John Jewel Quotes

Your grace, when God sent you to your inheritance and the right of this realm, found the church in horrible confusion, and in respect of the true worship of God a church of brick, or rather (as Ezechiel saith) daubed up with unseasoned mortar. Your grace hath already redressed the doctrine: now cast your eyes towards the ministry; give courage and countenance unto learning, that God's house may be served; so shall you leave a church of God, and a testimony that the zeal of the Lord's house hath eaten you up.

If any learned man of all our adversaries, or if all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old catholic doctor, or father, or out of any old general council, or out of the holy scriptures of God, or any one example of the primitive church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved that there was any private mass in the whole world at that time, for the space of six hundred years after Christ; Or that there was then any communion ministered unto the people under one kind; Or that the people had their common prayers then in a strange tongue that they understood not; Or that the bishop of Rome was then called an universal bishop, or the head of the universal church; Or that the people was then taught to believe that Christ's body is really, substantially, corporally, carnally, or naturally, in the sacrament... Or that whosoever had said the sacrament is a figure, a pledge, a token, or a remembrance of Christ's body, had therefore been judged for an heretic; Or that it was lawful then to have thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten, or five masses said in one church, in one day; Or that images were then set up in the churches, to the intent the people might worship them; Or that the lay people was then forbidden to read the word of God in their own tongue—if any man alive were able to prove any of these articles by any one clear or plain clause or sentence, either of the scriptures, or of the old doctors, or of any old general council, or by any example of the primitive church; I promised then that I would give over and subscribe unto him.

The philosopher telleth us, truth and falsehood are nigh neighbours, and dwell one by the other: the utter porch of the one is like the porch of the other; yet their way is contrary: the one leadeth to life; the other leadeth to death: they differ little to the shew, save that oft-times the door of falsehood is fair, painted, graven, and beautifully adorned; but the door or forefront of truth is plain and homely. Thereby it happeneth that men be deceived; they mistake the door, and go into error's house, when they seek truth. They call evil good, falsehood truth, and darkness light. They forsake that is good, deny the truth, and love not the light.

[W]e have searched out of the holy bible, which we are sure cannot deceive, one sure form of religion, and have returned again unto the primitive church of the ancient fathers and apostles, that is to say, to the first ground and beginning of things, as unto the very foundations and head-springs of Christ's church... [A]s the holy fathers in former time, and as our predecessors have commonly done, we have restored our churches by a provincial convocation, and have clean shaken off, as our duty was, the yoke and tyranny of the bishop of Rome, to whom we were not bound, who also had no manner of thing like neither to Christ, nor to Peter, nor to an apostle, nor yet like to any bishop at all.

This only will I speak, and that in a word: they which brought in transubstantiations, masses, calling upon saints, sole life, purgatory, images, vows, trifles, follies, babbles, into the church of God, have delivered new things, and which the scriptures never heard of. Whatsoever they cry or crack, they bring not a jot out of the word of God... These they honour instead of the scriptures, and force them to the people instead of the word of God: upon these men suppose their salvation and the sum of religion to be grounded.

[W]e have exhibited to the queen all our articles of religion and doctrine, and have not departed in the slightest degree from the confession of Zurich.

We found every where the people sufficiently well disposed towards religion, and even in those quarters where we expected most difficulty. It is however hardly credible what a harvest, or rather what a wilderness of superstition had sprung up in the darkness of the Marian times. We found in all places votive relics of saints, nails with which the infatuated people dreamed that Christ had been pierced, and I know not what small fragments of the sacred cross. The number of witches and sorceresses had every where become enormous. The cathedral churches were nothing else but dens of thieves, or worse, if any thing worse or more foul can be mentioned

For the rage of the papists among us at this time is scarcely credible; and rather than seem to have been in error in any respect, they most impotently precipitate and throw all things into confusion. May that God whose honour and glory alone we look to, aid our endeavours, and confound the conspiracies and wicked designs of his enemies!

I am compelled, almost alone, to engage with enemies, I know not whether to call them foreign or domestic ones. They are indeed our own countrymen, but enemies in heart, dwelling in a hostile land... [O]ur enemies, when they accuse our cause of novelty, both wrong us and deceive the people; for that they approve new things as if they were old, and condemn as new things of the greatest antiquity; that private masses, and mutilated communions, and natural and real presence, and transubstantiation, &c. (in which things the whole of their religion is contained), have no certain and express testimony either of holy scripture, or of ancient councils, or of fathers, or of anything that could be called antiquity.

[I]f we do shew it plain, that God's holy gospel, the ancient bishops and the primitive church do make on our side, and that we have not without just cause left these men, and rather have returned to the apostles and old catholic fathers; and if we shall be found to do the same not colourably, or craftily, but in good faith before God, truly, honestly, clearly, and plainly; and if they themselves which fly our doctrine, and would be called catholics, shall manifestly see how all those titles of antiquity, whereof they boast so much, are quite shaken out of their hands, and that there is more pith in this our cause than they thought for; we then hope and trust, that none of them will be so negligent and careless of his own salvation, but he will at length study and bethink himself, to whether part he were best to join him.

I wish that all, even the slightest vestiges of popery, might be removed from our churches, and above all from our minds. But the queen at this time is unable to endure the least alteration in matters of religion.