Elizabethan Controversialists. Peter Milward

in identifying them as belonging to his old adversary at Cambridge, Thomas Cartwright. This prompted him to return to his attack on the Puritans, this time on Cartwright in person, in the form of a Defence of his Answer. Now we find a new fire in his style, as he is now defending himself as well as his Church, and as he discerns an answering fire in the style of his adversary.

      “If you should have written,” Whitgift exclaims from the outset, “against the veriest Papist in the world, the vilest person, the ignorantest dolt, you could not have used a more spiteful and malicious, more slanderous and reproachful, more contemptuous and disdainful kind of writing, than you use throughout your whole book.” “And truly,” he continues, “if you had not these two letters T.C. for your name, yet could I have easily conjectured by the haughtiness of the style and contemptuous speeches, who had been the author of the book, so well am I acquainted with your modesty, and such experience have I of your mildness.” In almost every line written by T.C. he professes to find his “fierceness and fiery heat”, his “old rancour and desire of revengement”. In general, he charges, “wheresoever you come, you make contention and kindle the fire of discord.”

      What Whitgift particularly blames in Cartwright, as also in the authors of the Admonition, is his insistence on the written Word of God as the only rule of human conduct. For, he demands, what man “is able to show the Word of God for all things that he doth?” Such a paradox as that now maintained by T.C.“that all the commandments of God and of the Apostles are needful for our salvation”, is in his opinion nothing but “to lay an intolerable yoke and burden upon the necks of men”. What an absurd requirement, he exclaims, “what a torment is this doctrine able to bring unto a weak conscience!” In short, he accuses his adversary of plain Judaism and Pharisaism. “You bound us before to the judicial law, and now you will bind us to the ceremonial also. What remaineth but to say that Christ is not yet come?”

      This particular accusation, however, grievous though it may be, is in his eyes of but secondary importance. What is of primary importance is the actual contention that Cartwright has everywhere stirred up, beginning with his own university of Cambridge. This is what Whitgift has most of all against his adversary from past experience, and what he now brings up against him in this Defence.“I know by experience that some of you devise and practice by all means possible, to stir up contention in this university, to dissuade men from the ministry, to bring such as be sober, wise, learned and godly preachers into contempt, and to make a confusion and divide every college within itself. But howsoever you have prevailed (as you have prevailed too much), yet I trust you shall never thoroughly bring to pass that which you desire. And I doubt not but that your undutiful, uncivil and uncharitable dealing in this your book, your many errors and foul absurdities contained in the same, hath so detected you, that honest, discreet, quiet and godly learned men will no more be withdrawn by you and such as you are, to any schism or contention in the Church, but rather bend themselves against the common adversary, and seek with heart and mouth to build up the walls of Jerusalem, which you have broken down, and to fill up the mines that you have digged, by craft and subtlety to overthrow the same. And howsoever some will still be waywardly disposed, yet I doubt not but that if such as be in authority will do their duties, they may by convenient discipline either be kept within the bounds of modesty, or else removed from this place, wherein of all other places they may do most harm.”

      By this time, however, Whitgift was speaking to an adversary in exile, as Cartwright had fled to the continent to avoid certain arrest at home. Yet somehow from his land of exile the latter managed to bring out his Second Reply to what he called Whitgift’s “second answer”, in two successive parts which he published as best he could in 1575 and 1577. Whitgift for his part was content to leave them unanswered, as he had now become increasingly preoccupied with administrative affairs, first as Bishop of Worcester from 1577, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 till his death in 1604. It was above all in this second position that he was able to carry out in practice the advice he had given to all civil and ecclesiastical magistrates of the realm in his “Exhortation”, but even so he was unable to prevent the ultimate fulfillment of his prophecies in the following century.

      Bibliographical Note

      1 “A View of the Church that the Authors of the late published Admonition would have planted within this realm of England, containing such positions as they hold against the State of the said Church as it is now.” Published within the above-mentioned Certain Articles, but not otherwise surviving. 1572. (RC 114)

      2 An Answer to a Certain Libel entitled, An Admonition to the Parliament. By John Whitgift, D. of Divinity. 1572 (RC 115)

      3 The Defence of the Answer to the Admonition, against the Reply of T.C. By John Whitgift Doctor of Divinity. 1574 (RC 118)