The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Apology of the Church of England, by John
Jewel, Edited by Henry Morley

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Title: The Apology of the Church of England

Author: John Jewel

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: February 5, 2006 [eBook #17678]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APOLOGY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND***

Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell and Company edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE APOLOGY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

BY
JOHN JEWEL,

_Bishop of Salisbury_.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1888.

INTRODUCTION.

The great interest of Jewel's "Apology" lies in the fact that it was
written in Latin to be read throughout Europe as the answer of the
Reformed Church of England, at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
to those who said that the Reformation set up a new Church. Its argument
was that the English Church Reformers were going back to the old Church,
not setting up a new; and this Jewel proposed to show by looking back to
the first centuries of Christianity. Innovation was imputed; and an
Apology originally meant a pleading to rebut an imputation. So, even as
late as 1796, there was a book called "An Apology for the Bible," meaning
its defence against those who questioned its authority. This Latin book
of Jewel's, _Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae_--written in Latin because it
was not addressed to England only--was first published in 1562, and
translated into English by the mother of Francis Bacon, whose edition
appeared in 1564. That is the translation given in this volume. The
book has since had six or seven other translators, but Lady Ann Bacon's
translation was that which presented it in Queen Elizabeth's time to
English readers, and it had the advantage of revision by the Queen's
Archbishop of Canterbury, her coadjutor in the establishment of the
Reformed Church of England, Matthew Parker. It was published, with no
name of author or translator on the title-page, as "An Apologie or
answere in defence of the Churche of Englande, with a briefe and plaine
dec