In his method of conducting controversy, moreover, there is something that discourages the casual reader who approaches the books of Harding outside the historical context in which they were written. Like Sir Thomas More (“that man of blessed memory”, as Harding calls him in his Rejoinder to Jewel) when engaging in controversy with Tyndale, Harding replies to his adversary paragraph by paragraph and point by point. Consequently, one easily loses sight of his forest of wisdom by paying too much attention to the particular trees of his theological learning. Yet this is a method which he adopts in fairness to his adversary and out of consideration for his readers, who may wish to see both sides of the discussion. His reasons he gives at length in the Preface to his Confutation of Jewel’s Apology. “The order,” he explains, “that I thought to keep is this. First, as thou mayst here see, I have put the words of the Apology as I found them translated, sometimes by whole paragraphs, sometimes by more, sometimes by fewer and brief sentences, according to the dependence and weight of the matter. Then followeth my confutation longer or shorter, according to the thing confuted. Here thou shalt find the Apology whole, sentence for sentence, word for word. That I might seem to deal uprightly, I would leave out nothing.” All the same, despite the lack of continuity such a method might seem to occasion, it serves to bring out the ebullient vigour of Harding’s style, as each thrust of Jewel’s criticism prompts him to make renewed outbursts of eloquent indignation.
In his particular way of dealing with his adversary, however, Harding provides no small material of offence to modern readers who are not necessarily unsympathetic to his cause. From the outset of both his Answer and his Confutation he professedly aims at writing “without choler, without gall, without spite” and at avoiding, so far as he can, all “glikes, nips and scoffs, bites, cuts and girds”. Yet considering the character of his adversary, he feels himself compelled at times to follow the example of “the meekest and holiest of the ancient Fathers” who, “in reproving heretics, oftentimes have showed themselves zealous, earnest, eager, severe, sharp and bitter”. The modern reader, however, is in a position to peruse the list of “glikes, nips and scoffs” sedulously excerpted by Jewel and put at the beginning of his Reply. All the same, in reading Harding’s Answer and Confutation, we may find in such strong terms, when sparsely scattered and not gathered all together, a kind of spice to his prose style. If he resorts to them, he evidently does so in the sincerity of his indignation. He speaks, as it were in the accents of Kent in Shakespeare’s King Lear, in the character of a plain man who will not mince his words in dealing with such a toady as Oswald. What Cornwall ironically remarks of Kent, “He cannot flatter, he, an honest mind and plain, he must speak truth” (II ii.104-5), is what Harding simply says of himself in his Confutation, “But now the law of upright dealing specially in God’s cause so requiring, ye must pardon us if, as among husbandmen we call a rake a rake, a spade a spade, a mattock a mattock, so among divines we call heresy heresy, and likewise falsehood, lying, slandering, craft, hypocrisy, apostasy, malice, blasphemy, every such crime, by his proper name without all glosing. Which if we did not, we should do injury to the truth.”
Such are the characteristics of Harding’s controversial prose which have militated against his posthumous reputation as a writer and have led so many to neglect his writings. His very indignation combined with his deep theological learning imparts to his words that majesty and eloquence which even his adversaries admired in his time. In its uniqueness it is a quality not to be described but to be illustrated with direct quotations, so that, like Casca’s hands, it may speak for itself.
To begin with, in his opening Answer to Jewel’s Challenge, Harding demands of his adversary what has moved him “to show such courage, to use such amplification of words, so often and with such vehemency to provoke us to encounter, and as it were at the blast of a trumpet to make your challenge?” In particular, he echoes the earlier question of Cole, which had already been published by Jewel, “why you treat not of matters of more importance than these articles be of, which yet lie in question betwixt the Church of Rome and the Protestants”. Thus, he adds, “craftily you shift your hands off those greater points, wherein you know scriptures, councils, doctors, and examples of the primitive Church to be of our side, and cast unto us, as a bone to gnaw upon, this number of articles of less weight, a few excepted, to occupy us withal”. Still, after having made this initial protest, Harding accepts the terms of his adversary and replies to him point by point, according to the 27 articles offered by Jewel.
Dealing as he does with briefly stated articles, Harding restrains his temper and even shows a measure of balance and humour in his replies. Concerning the new English service, for example, he expresses his fear that “the new learned boldness is not so acceptable to God as the old simple humility. It were good the people having humble and reverent hearts understood the service, I deny not. Yet all standeth not in understanding.” Subsequently, considering the many criticisms which have been made by the English Protestants against the plurality of Masses in Catholic churches, when they have taken away the Mass itself, he can’t help comparing them to thieves. “Verily,” he comments, “this kind of men fareth with the Church much like unto strong thieves, who having robbed an honest wealthy man of all his money, say afterwards unto him uncourteously, Ah carl, how camest thou by so much old gold?” He then proceeds to anticipate the reply which Jewel and his associates will doubtless be devising from the moment they receive this Answer of his. “And now perhaps you enter into meditation with yourself and conference with your brethren, to frame an answer to this treatise, and by contrary writing to fortify your negatives. Well may you do so. But to what purpose, I pray you? Well may you make a smoke and a smother to darken the light for a time, as men of war are wont to do to work a feat secretly against their enemies. But that cannot long continue. The smoke will soon vanish away, the light of truth will eftsoons appear.”
In this first of his controversial writings Harding maintains a certain distance from his adversary, without giving way to any excessive heat of disputation as he proceeds from one article to the next. But in his subsequent Rejoinder to Jewel’s Reply he betrays a darker mood, stung as he has been by the other’s mocking taunts. “Thorough his whole book,” he cries out against Jewel, “he intermedleth his scoffs and mocks, as it were his very purpose with such sauce to make it pleasant and to give his readers, specially those that be delighted with that kind of merry divinity, an appetite not only to taste of such cates but also to feed of them their fill.” In particular, he objects to the “jolly sport” mingled with “sad hypocrisy” in his adversary’s frequent resorts to such exclamations as “Blessed be God, O Master Harding, Alas M.Harding”, with other such strange phrases and affected terms, “pinching nips, irksome cuts, scornful scoffs and spiteful mocks”. Unfortunately, this leads Harding himself to forget his original intention of meekness and to get his own back, not without satirical eloquence, in the form of this imaginary description of the Bishop of Salisbury in the pulpit. “Your sightly state and condition, your rhetorical persuasions in the pulpit with a holy holding up of the hands, and casting up of the eyes to heaven, and with your lamentable crying out of your Do’s, which you use very commonly, weening thereby to persuade the simple, your stout asseverations, your favour of the common people and others that clap you on the shoulder, your vain pulpit buzzing, your Gloria Patri at Paul’s Cross – all this hath made many a one believe that M.Jewel was a great clerk, a pillar of the Gospel, a peerless fellow.”