An Apology of the Church of England
Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562)
John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury — Englished by Anne Cooke Bacon, 1564
A bishop who published the case against himself first, in full, so that nobody could say he had softened it.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 358
- Stat total
- 358
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Short, and built to be answered. Jewel published it in Latin so that every scholar in Europe could take a swing at it, and then survived twelve years of them doing so.
It does not defend the English church so much as prosecute the case against it, at length, and then take the case apart.
The highest Defend of any book in the era, and it is earned by structure: every charge is stated in full before it is answered, so there is nothing left to ambush him with.
Latin, official, and read by governments. It travels well and it never travels fast.
Cited for this book
Written in Latin in 1562 by the Bishop of Salisbury, and translated into English two years later by Anne Cooke Bacon — a woman’s translation, published with the bishops’ approval, and the version England actually read. Its editor Henry Morley states the genre exactly: an apology originally meant a pleading to rebut an imputation. The imputation was that the English reformers had founded a new church. Jewel’s answer is that they had returned to the old one, and that the way to settle it is to open the fathers and look.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Stranger in the World | History | Argument | 74 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 38 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 38 | Unity Is No Mark | Ecclesiology | Argument | 92 | 100% | 5 |
| 39 | Heresy Is No Light Word | Ecclesiology | Argument | 82 | 100% | 10 |
| 40 | Departed from the Errors | Ecclesiology | Argument | 90 | 100% | 5 |
| 41 | Wasps Make Combs Too | Ecclesiology | Argument | 78 | 100% | 15 |
| 43 | Galatia Went Amiss | History | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 45 | None Other Force | History | Argument | 86 | 100% | 10 |
Read it: The Truth Wanders as a Stranger
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“It hath been an old complaint, even from the first time of the patriarchs and Prophets, and confirmed by the writings and testimonies of every age, that the truth wandereth here and there as a stranger in the world, and doth readily find enemies and slanderers amongst those that know her not.”
Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England (1562), trans. Anne Cooke Bacon 1564, ed. Henry Morley (Cassell, 1888), public domain.
“Of a truth, unity and concord doth best become religion: yet is not unity the sure and certain mark whereby to know the Church of God. For there was the greatest consent that might be amongst them that worshipped the golden calf; and among them which with one voice jointly cried against our Saviour Jesus Christ, ‘Crucify Him.’”
Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England (1562), trans. Anne Cooke Bacon 1564, ed. Henry Morley (Cassell, 1888), public domain.
“For the wasps also make honey-combs as well as bees, and wicked men have companies like to the Church of God…”
Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England (1562), trans. Anne Cooke Bacon 1564, ed. Henry Morley (Cassell, 1888), public domain.
“Thus did the holy fathers always fight against the heretics with none other force than with the Holy Scriptures.”
Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England (1562), trans. Anne Cooke Bacon 1564, ed. Henry Morley (Cassell, 1888), public domain.
Written in Latin in 1562 by the Bishop of Salisbury, and Englished two years later by Anne Cooke Bacon — a woman’s translation, published with the bishops’ approval, and the version England actually read.
The charge was that the English reformers had founded a new church. Jewel’s answer is that they had returned to the old one, and that the way to settle it is to open the fathers and look.
Unity is no mark, he says, and reaches for the golden calf and the crowd shouting “Crucify Him” — the two most unanimous gatherings in the Bible.