The Dead Yet Speaking, Biography 49
IOHN IEVELL.
The Life and Death of John Jewell.
IF ever any were happy in the imposition of names in those whom they dedicate to God at the Font, certainly they were who christned this holy and learned man Iohn Iewell; for his rare and admirable part…, and both naturall and supernaturall gifts were every way corresponding to his gracious and precious name. According to his christian name Iohn signifying gra…e, he was a gracious instrument of Christ, to reforme the gold of the Sanctuary, which through the negligence or impiety of later times became dim and drossie with superstition. And according to his surname he was a rich Iewell, consisting of many Gems, shining as well in his life, as his incomparable writings extant, almost in all languages. This great Clerke was borne at Berrenber, in the County of Devon: of which it may truly be said as it was sometimes of Hyppo, that Hyppo was more ennobled by great Saint Austine, then Saint Austine by little Hippo. For his education, it was first in Morton and after in Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford. The former hath proved a famous nursery of Phylosophy and Schoole Divinity; the latter of the knowledge of Tongus and polite literature; in both which our Iewell shewing by his golden thighs what flowers he most sucked and longest sat upon; excelled for an acuter Disputant, an eloquenter Oratour, a more universall Schollar, and every way an accomplished Divine the Church hath not had for many hundreds of years.
The first glistering of this Iewell was in the Rhetoricke Lecture conferred upon him in Corpus Christi Colledg, when he was yet but Batchelor of Arts. This Lecture he read with such facility and felicity, that all his Auditors perceiving that he spake potius ex arte, than de arte rhetorice; rather from an excellent faculty he had in that flexanimous Art, then of the Art it selfe. Neither were these his Lectures onelyonly strewed as it were with flowers of Rhetorick, but richly fraught with all varietie of humaine Learning; which drew many Auditors unto him from other Colledges, and among them his Tutor Master Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of Norwitch, who tooke great delight to behold the sparklin… of that Diamond, which himselfe had first pointed; and h… could not containe his joy, but vented it on the sudden in this extempore Disticon:
Olim discipulus mihi chare Juelle fuisti,
Nunc ero Discipulus te renuente tuus.
Dear Iewell whilome Schollar thou wert mine,
But now against thy will I will be thine.
This his fame and love abroad purchased him envy and hatred at home; for he found shortly after to his cost, th… truth of the Philologist his observation concerning truth, vertue and curtesie, three of the best Mothers, are often delivered of three of the worst Daughters; truth of hatred, curtesie of contempt, and vertue of envie; Vrit enim fulgore suo; the glory of eminent worth dazelleth the infirme eyes of worthlesse men; such, as at this time the seven Seniors and Officers of that Coledge were; who as the Patriarks moved with envie, sold Ioseph into Egypt; so they, sicke of the same malady, expelled Iewell out of the House, more to their owne discredit and disadvantage, then to his. For soone after his expulsion, they found a great misse of him in the education of their Youth; and his greatest enemies who cloaked their envie for the present, with pretended zeale for the Romish religion, yet after were heard to speak thus of him within themselves, we should love thee if thou wert not a Zuinglian; though we believed Iewel that thy Belief is not sound, yet in thy life thou art an Angel. Neither was this all, but when Master Welch Dean of the Colledge made his brags before Doctor Brooks, sometimes Fellow of that Colledge, but then Bishop of Glocester, that they alone had kept safe their rich Copes, …ushens, Plate, and other Ornaments of their Chappell. It is true, quoth Doctor Wright, Arch-deacon of Oxford, standing by, you have saved them, but you have lost a more precious Ornament of your house, your Iewel.
But the best was, what the Colledge lost, the University found; and of a private Lecturer, made him their publick Oratour, and for the substraction of his maintainance by the losse of his Fellows place in the Colledge, that defect was abundantly supplyed by the bounty of some of his Schollars Par…nts, who procured for him, and conferred upon him a good Benefice neer Oxford. And now he grows in estate and fame in the University, and grace with all the Heads of Colledges and Hals; but especially he was precious in the eyes of the most renowned Doctor of the Chai…, Peter Martyr, by whom he was presented Batchelour of Divinity; and now nothing seemed to stand in his way from orderly ascending to higher degrees and preferment in the Church. But the face of the skye is not more changeable then the condition of our estate in this world, all the fair weather we spake of but now was overcast in a moment; for by the untimely death of Edward the sixt, and by the succeeding advancement of Queen Mary to the Crown, a bitter storm of persecution fell upon the newly reformed Church of England, and blew away many of our prime Doctors, and other men of eminent worth, and among them our Iewel, who now banished from his native Soyl, found yet great comfort in conversing, first at Frankeford with Sir Francis Knowls and his eldest Son, Robert Horn, and Edward Sands, and afterwards at Argentine with Iohn Poynet, Edmund Grindall, Iohn Cheek, Anthony Cook, Richard Morison, Peter Carew, Thomas Wroth, and divers others.
These noble Confessors deserve rather the naming, because in this their retiring, they seemed as it were, to fetch their fees, to make the greater leap in England; where after their return, they were highly preferred, Grindall to the Archbishop first of York, then of Canterbury; Sir Francis Knowls to be privy Councellour and Lord Treasurer, Robert Lorne to the Bishoprick of Winton, Sands of London, Poynet of Worcester, and the rest all of them to eminent places in the Church and Commonwealth, to set off their future glory, their present poverty and misery served as a foyl: It was yet for the present lamentable to see these men of worth, who had change of houses in their own Country, hardly getting a shed to shelter them from wind & weather in forreign parts; they who opened the fountain of their bounty to other men in England, were now constrained in Germany to fetch waters of Comfort, drop by drop, from others Conduits. At the first, the pious charity of the Londoners (be it spoken to the honour of that City) was as an unexhausted mine to them, till by Stephen Gardner it was discovered, and the rich vein stopt by the imprisonment of their chief Benefactors: And now these servants of Christ, of whom England at this time was not worthy, were putt o many difficult plunges, yet partly by the comfortable letters of Zuinglius, Peter Martyr, Calvin, Melancthon, Pelican, Lavater, Geznar, and other privy Pastours of the reformed Churches beyond the Seas, they were held up by the chin, and partly by the charitable contributions of Christopher Prince of Wittenberg, and the Senators of Zurick, they were so kept above water, as it were, with bladders, that none of them utterly sunk in their hope. And for Iewell in particular, though he were tossed from pillar to post, and sometimes dashed upon one rock, and sometimes upon another, yet in the end he found safe harbour in Peter Martyrs house, first in Argentine, and after in Tigury; where it is hard to say, utrum Euripides ex Archelai an Archelai ex Euripides familiaritate fama magis incluruerit. Whether Iewel gave more luster & reputation to his Host, or his Host to him; certain it is, Iewel assisted Peter Martyr in setting forth divers Books; and by name, his learned Comentaries upon the Iudges: And very fortunate to the Church o… God was the conjunction of these two Stars of the first magnitude; for from them had we the first light to find the tract of those who in the former Ages and purest time walked with a right foot to the Gospel, and professed the Doctrine of the reformed Churches. Although we must acknowledge our Churches very much indebted in this kind to Reynolds, Whitaker, Bilson, Abbot, Cāmier, Morney, and Chemitius; yet it cannot be denied, that these later tinded their candles at these Torches; for Peter Martyr had cleered the judgement of Antiquity in the point of the Sacrament, and some other controversies between us and the Church of Rome; and Iewel in all before Chemitius took Andradius to task, or Bilson, Allen; or Reynolds, Hart; or Whitaker, Stapleton; or Abbot, Bishop; or Morney, Perrane; or Camier, Bellarmine; our I…wel was the first who made a publick challenge to all the Papists in the world, to produce but one cleer and evident testimony out of any Father or famous Writer, who flourished within five hundred yeers after Christ, for any one of the many Articles which the Romanists at this day maintain against us, and upon good proof of any such one allegation to yeeld them the bucklers and reconcile himselfe to Rome; and although Harding and some others undertooke him, and entered into the lists with him about the controverted Articles: yet they came off so poorely and Iewel on the contrary so amaz…d and confounded them with a cloud of witnesses in every point in question, that a… Bishop Godwine, upon good ground affirmeth no one thing in our age, gave the Papacy so deadly a wound, as that challenge at Pauls Crosse so confidently made and bravely maintained. But this challege was not now made in the time of Iewels banishment, but after his returne into England; at this time he and many other cleare lights of the Church, were hid under a Bushell, till the fire of persecution of England (in which, not onelyonly many faithfull bretheren, but diverse reverend Fathers, as Latimer, Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper were burned to ashes, for the testimony of the truth) was laved out partly by the teares of compassionat… Confessors, povring out their souls to God in publick and private, but especially by the blood of so many Noble Martyres.
But as soone as God in justice looked upon the persecutours of the truth, and called Queen Mary, and tho…e who diped their hands in his Saint blood to his tribunall, and set Queen Elizabeth upon her sisters throne that mirrour of Princes, and parragon of her sex, and phaenix of her age, restoring at the same time preachers to the Gospell and Gospell to the preachers; themselves in the first year of her Raigne commanded a survey to be taken of the whole Realme, and finding in many parts palpable Egyptian darkenesse, sent for all these concealed lights above mentioned, and after they were fetcht from under the bushels which had covered them, she set them in golden candlesticks in all the Counties within her Dominions, and among them Iewell in the diocesse of Sarum. Where he shined most brightly for eleaven years, and after his extinction by death left a most sweet smell behind him, the savour of a good name, much more pretius then oyntment, for his Apostolick doctrine and Saintlike life, and prudent government, and incorrupt integrity, unspotted chastity, and bountifull hospitality. In his first visitation he began, and in his last he perfected such a reformation, not onelyonly in the Cathedrall and Parochiall Churches, but in all Courts of his jurisdiction, that even those who before esteemed not so well of Iewell as Bishops, yet now were brought to have a reverend opinion of Bishops, for Iewels sake; for he was a carefull overlooker and strickt observer not onelyonly of all the flocks, but the Pastors also in his Diocesse according to the Apostles prescription; first he attended to himselfe and his owne doctrine, and then to all the doctrine which as he heard was Preached in his See; first he examined his owne actions, and then the proceedings of all his inferiour officers. The Chauncellour and Archdeacons, are in the count of the law, the Bishops eyes, and his Collectours and receivers and his hands: therefore he had a continuall eye upon these his eyes, and held a strickt hand over these his hands, and if these his eyes caused him to offend, or raised any scandall in his Diocesse, by winking at foule abuses, and enormities, or these hands by exaction and scraping, or taking bribes, he pluckt out the one and cut off the other. And if other Bishops take not the like course though in their owne persons they be never so innocent and uncorrupt; yet they will never free their See from foule and scandalous aspertions. Iniquity will be committed even in the seat of justice, and carnall vices winked at in spirituall Courts, and one corruption be borne out by another, corporall by pecuniary: the heaviest censures of the Church will be inflicted upon the lightest offenders, if they offer not to the Officiate shrine, and the foulest delinquents will escape away by the Posterne gate of Iuno Moneta's temple: Poore gnats if they be taken in their nets will be straigned to death, and a camell laden with gold swallowed up, and it will be said that Churches are visited before they be sick, nay, that they are sick of their Visitations, and that all the Processes, and Citations are ad collegendum, not ad corregendum: for collection of moneyes, not for correction of manners. To prevent these and the like abuses for which the court Christians heare ill abroad, the good Bishop sate often in his Consistory, and saw that all things were carried straight there, neither did he onelyonly sit as judge in the Consistory, but also oftentimes as assi…tant on the bench of justice, informing the Judges in such causes where the law of God and of the land seemed to clash, and exhorting the prisoners willingly and patiently to subject themselves to the stroak of justice; but especially to prostrate themselves before the throne of mercy in heaven; and though they were cast by the Jury, and condemned by the last, yet they might be justified by grace and saved by mercy, at the tribunall of Christ.
What shall I speake of his peaceable ending (for the most part at his Table) litigious strifes and contentions, of which it is hard to say whether they more nourished the Law or the Law them. So was he thrice happy by the judgement of truth it selfe, because a threefold peace-maker in his Consistory on the Bench and at his Table, as a Judge, Justice and an Arbitratour. Yet did he no way forget that unum necessarium, which Saint Paul so deeply chargeth Timothy before God and his Angels, to be carefull of, to wit, to Preach in season and out of season, 1 Cor. 9.16. I have heard of the Hetrurian, goddesse, that whilest she was clad in a Coun…rey habit, and worshipped under a shed in the field, she delivered many Oracles; but after she was brought into a Temple, and cloathed with Purple and fine linnen, she became mute, and gave no answer at all: So it falleth out with many, whose office it is to publish and interpret the Oracles of God, like Saul, when they come to the high places, they make an end of Prophecying. Iewell did not so, but the more eminent he was in dignity, the more diligent in the worke of the Ministery, not so much in frequent as in exq…isite Teaching; for though his Sermons were very frequent, yet they were alwayes rare for the matter and manner of his delivery; he never Preached quicquit in buccam, but as Abraham offered to Melchisedecke, as St. Ierome renders it, de prenpuis, or summi…ate a ceri, of the top and best of the heape. The Roman Orator tels us of negligentia quedam diligens, a certaine diligent negligence, and learned ignorance; when the speaker carefully shunneth all affectation of Art, and laboureth that his speech may not seem elaborate. But the sober and discreet hearer hath often cause to complaine of diligentia quedam negligens, a negligent kinde of diligence in many popular Preachers, who ascend frequently into the Pulpit, but with extempora…y provision, are often in travile but without paine, and delivered of nothing for the most part, but empty words and idle tautalogies; as if Sermons were to be valued by the number and not by the weight. These mens Sermons, though they exceed the houre in len…th, and the dayes of the week in number; yet they themselves lye open to the curse of the Prophet denounced against all those that doe the work of the Lord negligently. From the danger of which malediction Iewell was freest of all of his parts and place; for though he might best of any presume in this kinde upon his multiplicity of reading, and continuall practice of Preaching, yet never would he Preach in the meanest Village, without precedent meditation and writing also the chiefe heads of his Sermons. And as his tongue was the pen of a ready writer, so was his pen the tongue of a living speaker to all posterity.
When I perused the catologue of his Sermons, I wonder what time he had to write: agane, when I number and weigh his writing, I wonder what time he had to provide for Preaching; and when I compare both, I wonder how he could doe any thing els. Yet did not his constant preaching take him off from his aceurate writing, nor both from his discharging each part of his Episcopall function in his owne Person. Which that it may not seeme incredible, I will open his day booke and read out of it how he spent every houre: Rising at four of the clock, after praiers with his family at five, and in the Cathederall about six, he was so affixed to his studies all the morning, th… he could not without great violence be drawne from it… after dinner his doores and eares were open to all Suter…; and it was observed of him, as it was of Titus (who was stiled amor & delitiae humane generae) that he never sent any sed from him. Suters being thus dismissed, he heard wi…h great indifferency and patience, such causes debuted before him as either were devolved to him as a Judge, or refer…d to him as an Arbitrator; and if he could spare any t…me from th…se troublesome businesses, he reckoned as cleare gaine to his Study.
About nine of the clocke at night he called all his s…rvants to an account, how they had spent the day, and then offered up his enening sacrifice together with them to God; from his Chappell he with…ew himselfe againe to hi… Study till neer midnight, and from thence to his Bed; in which after he was laid, the Gentleman of his Bed-chamber red to him till wearied nature shut up the offices of hi… senses; long after his Porter had lockt up the Gates of his Pallace.
This watchfull and laborious kind of life without any recreation at all, save what his necessary refection at hi… meals, and a very few hours of rest in the night aforded him, spent the oyl of this sweet Lamp the faster, and thereby hastened his extinction and death in this world. Which as he foresaw by the spirit, so he foretold by letters to the Bishop of No…wich.
Yet upon record in the works of Doctor Humfrey, and as he forefaw it, and foretold it, so accordingly he prepared for it, as a Traveller, who hath little day and much way left, spurreth on faster, that he may reach home by daylight: so he, desirous to finish his course before the night of death approached, mended his pace, and dispatched all sorts of businesse with more celerity; and as he was visiting his Diocesse more severely then ever before, God visited him; and as he preached at Lacock upon the words of the Apostle, Walk in the Spirit, Death arested him in the Pulpit, from whence he was carried to his bed, where he still continued preached to all that came to visit him, either by heavenly instruct…ons, or pious ejaculations, or divine meditations and paraphrases upon the p…ssages of Scripture, which were read unto him even till at one and the selfsame instant he committed both his hearers and his soul to God.
Valerius Maximus writeth of Sylla, that it was hard to say whether he or his anger were first extinct, for he threatned his enemies dying, and dyed threatning: but on the contrary, it may be said of this servant of Christ Jesus, it is hard to determine whether his naturall heat or his zeal first was extinguished, whether his Prayers or his soul first arrived at Heaven, for he dyed praying, and prayed dying: His last words worthy to be written with a pen of Diamond, never to be rased out, were these… A Crown of righteousnesse is laid up for me, Christ is my righteousnesse; this is my body, this day quickly let me come …nto the…, this day let me see the Lord Iesu. He was buried in the midst of the Quire, where after he had been interred two yeers, Dr. Humfrey laid upon him a faire marble stone, with an inscription upon it, containing a brief Chronicle of his life; of which monument of that religious Professor it may be truly said, as it was of that which Iulius Caesar raised to Pompey, Caesar dum Pompeii statuas erexti suas confirmavit. In making this monument to continue the memory of Iewel, he eternized his own; but Iewel left himself a second monument more famous then that, the Library he built in Salisbury; and yet a third more lasting then either of the former, his Works here ensuing; whereof these were Manuscripts.
1. A Paraphrasticall Exposition of the Epistles and Gospels through the whole yeer. 2. A continuate Exposition of the Creed, Lords Prayer, and ten Commandements. 3. A Commentary upon the Epistle to the Galathians. 4. A Commentary upon the Epistle of Saint Peter.
The Printed are these.
1. Anno Dom. 1550. A latine Sermon preached at Saint Maries, upon 1 Pet. 4.11. [2. An. Dom. 1558. Divers Sermons preached before Queen Elizabeth at Pauls Crosse. 3. An. Dom. 1559. Epistola ad Scipionem patritium vene…um de causis cur Episcopi Angliae ad Concilium Tridentinum non convenerint. 4. Anno 1560. A Challenge to all Papists at Pauls Crosse, with an Answer to Doctor Cole, in defence of a Sermon preached before the Queens Majesty, and her most honourable Councell. 5. Anno 1561. Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae. 6. Anno 1562. An Exposition upon the first Epistle to the Thessalonians. 7. Anno 1563. An Exposition upon the second Epistle to the Thessalonians. 8. An. 1564. A Reply to Master Hardings Answer, concerning the seven and twenty Articles contained in Master Jewel his Challenge, viz.
1. Of private Masse. 2. Communion under both kinds. 3. Of Prayer in a strange tongue. 4. Of the Supremacy. 5. Of the reall presence. 6. Of Polytopue, or being in many places at once. 7. Of the Elevation. 8. Of adoration of the Host. 9. Of carrying the Sacrament under a Canopy. 10. Of accidents without subject. 11. Of dividing the Sacrament. 12. Of a figure in the Sacrament. 13. Of plurality of Masses. 14. Of adoration of Images. 15. Of reading the Scripture in the mother tongue. 16. Of Consecration under silence. 17. Of the Sacrifice of the Masse. 18. Of receiving the Communion for others. 19. Of the application of Christ… death by the Masse. 20. Of Opus Operatum. 21. Of the Title of the Sacrament Lord and God. 22. Of remaining under accidents. 23. Of Mice eating the body of Christ. 24. Of Individium Vagum. 25. Of the form and shews of Bread and Wine. 26. Of hiding and covering the Sacrament. 27. Of Ignorance, whether it be the mother of Devotion.
9. Anno 1565. A Rejoynder to Mr. Hardings Reply. 10. An. 1566. A defence of the Apology of the Church of England. 11. An. 1567. An answer to Mr. Hardings Preface. 12. An. 1568. A Treatise of the Sacraments. 13 An. 1569. The view of a seditious Bull sent into England. 14. An. 1570. A Treatise o… the holy Scriptures.
If any desire to be more familiarly acquainted with Iewels, and to be particularly informed of his method and course of study, his witty and learned Discourses at Table, his Poems and penned Speeches in the Colledge, his Exercises for his Degrees, his holding the golden Ballances of Minerva before Vrania, being Moderator in Divinity, Disputations in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, at an Act at Oxford; as also, how he attained to that admirable faculty of memory, whereby he wa… able on the sudden to repeat Chapters of names, read to him backward and forward, broken sentences and exutick words, Welsh, Irish, or any other Language, after once or twice reading, at the most; let him read the story of his life at large in Do…tor Humfrey, or at least the abridgement thereof, which I drew in the year of our Lord 1611. being then Student in Corpus Christi Colledge, at the command of Archbishop Bancroft: which as soon as it was sent up, was suddenly printed, and prefixed to Iewels Works, before I had time to revise it: and note the Errata, which I entreat thee for thine own sake as well as for mine, thus now to correct.
Page 5. line 30. The wisdome of God so ordered this matter, adde, For Jewel his greater honour, and the advantage of the truth. P. 7. l. 10. for the blessed Spouse of Christ, r. the blessed husband of the Spouse of Christ. P. 8. l. 21. for Valerius, r. Vellerius. p. 9. l. 16. for his Apologie fell in the yeer 1566. r. the defence of his Apologie. And l. 23. for cene, r. scene. p. 12. l. 17. which is his Church, adde, on earth, and set it in a Crown of pure Gold upon her head in Heaven.
The Preface to the King before the life is not mine, but Dr. Overals, then Dean of St. Pauls: the Appendix likewise i… not mine, but Doctor Morton, then Lord Bishop of Duresm; the modell of the life drawn by me, beginneth thus: If rare and admirable qualities of our Ancestors deserve a …hankefull acknowledgement of Posterity. And endeth thus: Lord adorn and en…ich continually thy Church with such Iewels, deck her cheeks with rows of such Rubies, and her neck with chains, make her borders of gold, with st…ds of silver, Amen.
Holy Learning, sacred Arts;
Gifts of Nature, strength of Parts;
Fluent Grace, an humble minde;
Worth reform'd, and wit refinde;
Swéetnesse both in tongue and Pen;
Insight both in Bookes and Men:
Hopes in woe, and feares in weals;
Humble knowledge, sprightly zeale;
A liberall heart… and frée from Gall;
Close to friends, and true to all.
Height of courage in Truths duell,
Are the stones that made this J…well.
Let him that would be truly blest,
Weare this Jewell in his brest,