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The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Peter Lake
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Extract

It has become a commonplace of modern historical scholarship that most Elizabethan Protestants regarded the pope as Antichrist. The present article is an attempt to penetrate beneath the surface of that commonplace. It does not seek to cast doubt on the existence of such a common perception of the pope as Antichrist. However, it will be argued that within that consensus, and to an extent masked by it, there existed very important implicit differences over the consequences of that doctrine.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 161 - 178
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 For treatment of this theme see Hill, C., Antichrist in the Seventeenth Century, Oxford 1971Google Scholar, and more recently Bauckham, R. J., The Tudor Apocalypse, Abingdon 1978, andGoogle ScholarChristiansen, P., Reformers and Babylon, Toronto 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For Whitgifts entirely orthodox identification of the pope as Antichrist see Cambridge University Library (hereafter cited as CUL.) MS f. 1.9 fo. v.

5 For this group of divines see my Cambridge Ph.D. diss., ‘Laurence Chaderton and the Cambridge Moderate Puritan Tradition’. for the career of Fulke see Bauckham's, R. J. 1973 Cambridge Ph.D. diss., ‘The Career and Theology of Dr William Fulke’Google Scholar.

4 For an analysis of this puritan view see Coolidge, J. S., The Pauline Renaissance in England, Oxford 1970Google Scholar.

5 Both Burghley and Whitgift supported Whitaker throughout his career. For Whitgifts good opinion of Whitaker see Trinity College Cambridge (hereafter cited as TCC) MS B/4/9 fo. 118. Whitaker acknowledged Whitgifts patronage since his undergraduate days in the dedicatory epistle of his Advers Thomas Stapletoni… Dcfensionem of 1594. Whitaker became Burghley's chaplain in the 1590s, and of his major polemical works those against Campion (1581), Sanders (1583), Duraeus (1583), Rainolds (1585) and Bellarmine (1588) were all dedicated to the Lord Treasurer. For Leicester's support over the expulsion of Everard Digby from St John's College Cambridge, see BL Lansdowne MSS vol. 57. no. 41 and no. 71- For his attempt to win over Essex to an anti-Pelagian purge of the university, see his Praelectio habita Februarii 27 Anno. Dam. 1594–5 printed at the back of his Controversia … de Coniliu … Cambridge 1600.

6 For this insistence on the authority of scripture alone against the rival claims othe Church and the fathers, see , Whitaker'sA Disputation of Holy Scripture, Parker Society, Cambridge 1849Google Scholar.

7 Whitaker, William, Praelectiones … de ecclesia …, Cambridge599.Google Scholar

8 Whitaker defined the universal Church as 'the number of Cod's elect' or ‘the whole multitude of the faithful’. See his An Answer to a certain book written by William Rainolds, London 1585, 55 and his Disputation of Holy Scripture, 280Google Scholar.

9 Whitaker, Praelectiones… de ecclesia, 139f. Tertia Quaestio. An Ecclesia possit deficere.

10 Whitaker, W., Responsio ad Nicolai Sanderi… Demonstrationes, London 1583, 48.Google Scholar

11 Whitaker, W., An Answer to a certain book written by Mr William Rainolds, Cambridge 1585Google Scholar, Dedicatory epistle.

12 Haller, William, Fox's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation, London 1963. In tn's Whitaker was merely typical. Dr Bauckham has stressed how little basis there was for such an idea of an elect nation in the anti-papal polemic of the period.Google Scholar, Bauckham, The Tudor Apocalypse, 71–3 Or BaleGoogle Scholar; for Fox, 87.

15 For the denial that the true Church (equated with the elect) could be tied to any one visible Church or succession of Churches, see , Whitaker's, Praelectiones … de ecclesia …, 141Google Scholar.

14 Pembroke College Cambridge MS IC, II, 2, 164 fo. 16v. These are notes taken from lectures given in 1590 by Laurence Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel College and a close friend of Whitaker's.

15 This does not necessarily preclude the assumption that England had a special role to play in the unfolding of God's will relative to Antichrist. This was an assumption that tended to come to the fore in moments of national crisis. Hence, writing in 1588–9, a group of London puritan ministers argued that, ‘as the first absolute kingdom to come out of Babylon’, England should take the lead against Rome. However, the basic thrust of their argument was toward English involvement in an ideological struggle against Rome that transcended national boundaries and which was based on the essential unity of all Protestants. See CUL MS Hh, VI, 10, fo. 35v where the leading role of England is defended; also fo. 48v where it is asserted that ‘whosoever hath given his name to the gospel hath made a league with them all which hold of the communion of the saints’. For the attitude to foreign policy of which this paper is a fine example see Adams's, S. L. 1973 Oxford D.Phil, diss., ‘The Protestant Cause; religious alliance with Western European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585–1630’Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Adams for many discussions of this subject and for permission to cite his thesis.

16 Whitaker devoted a whole book to proving that the pope was Antichrist (Ad NicolaiSanderi … Demonstrationes) and defended the proposition at least twice in the schools at Cambridge; see his work against Sanders, 88 and Stype, J., The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, Oxford 1822, I, 459Google Scholar.

17 Whitaker placed Antichrist's span in the period between Christ's ascension and his second coming. He did not, however, speculate on the length of that period.

18 In all this Whitaker was entirely typical of the thought of the period, for an account of, which on this issue of ‘millenaianism’ see Bauckham, The Tudor Apocalypse, chap. 11; Whitaker dated the final rise to power of Antichrist to the reign of the Emperor Phocas and the gift to the pope of the title univen episcofnu (Ad Nicolai Sanderi Demonstrations, 88). However, in reality his rise had been so gradual as to be hardly liable to precise dating. ( , Whitaker, An Answer to the Ten Reasons of Campion the Jesuit, translated from the original Latin by Stock, Richard, London 1606, 172)Google Scholar. Hence, Whitaker did not hold ‘the Church of Rome to have been pure, godly Christian for 600 years’. (A certain book … by William Rainolds, 31.) On the contrary, ‘the mystery of iniquity which in papistry is fully finished began to work in the Apostles age and so continued still forward in the fathers day until it came to this height and perfection in the kingdom of popery’.(ibid., 140–1).

19 Thus Whitake could roundly inform Rainolds that ‘Our religion is not like yours consisting in outward show of gestures, garments and behaviour; so that our external ornaments may be changed without any alteration or change in our doctrine’. ( , Whitaker, An Answer to a certain book by William Rainolds, 13Google Scholar.)

20 For this see note 2.

21 Answer to Campion (Stock), 44–5

100 , Whitaker, A Disputation of Holy Scripture, 5.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 20–1: for a parallel point see Ad Nicolai Sanderi Demonstrationes …, 32; the papists repudiated Christ by repudiating his status as the only priest and mediator between God and man and elevating the pope into a rival position. Similarly, they were not satisfied with the righteousness and merit bought for mankind by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but attempted to substitute their own spurious notions of merit and righteousness (ibid., 112–4).

24 Whitaker, W., Adversus Thomas Stapletoni Defensionem, Cambridge594. Dedicatory Epistle.Google Scholar

25 , Whitaker, A Disputation of Holy Scripture, 16–17.Google Scholar

26 Whitaker, A certain book … by Mr William Rainoldi, Dedicatory epistle to Burghley.

27 , Whitaker, A Disputation of Holy Scripture, 16.Google Scholar

28 Wiener, C. Z., ‘The Beleagured Isle. A Study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism’, Past and Present, 51 (1971) 27–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 This tension was implicit in the very severe doctrine of predestination held by Whitaker and the other Cambridge Calvinists. For Whitaker's view of the double decree and his response to the accusation that such a charge made God the author of sin, see Answer to Campion (Stock), 191 and 193–6. For his opinion at the end of his life (which remained unchanged), see the sermon preached before the earl of Essex in 1594 cited in note 2.

30 The concept of assurance played a considerable part in Whitaker's anti-papal position as that spiritual apprehension of the truths of right doctrine, vouchsafed to the individual through the workings of the Spirit, attached to the Word, both as preached and read. (For the role of the spirit invalidating the authority of the scripture to the individual see, A Disputation of Holy Smpture, 415.) More particularly, this leads, in the case of the elect, to that sense of one's own election and salvation experienced by every true believer. (For this see Answer to Campion (Stock), 234 or Praelectiones de ecdesia, 464.) Whitaker also stressed the role of works as a central sign of a true justifying faith. (A certain book … by William Rainoldi, 111.) As in so much else, all these elements in the late sixteenth-century, Protestant-Puritan world-view were integrated into a dynamic whole by William Perkins, who presented the production of good works and the examination of the conscience as the means by which the individual could validate his status as a true believer and hence experience that sense of assurance necessary to true belief.

31 For these points see notes 5 and 14. Not all Protestants held that the fall of Antichrist as prophesied by Paul could not finally occur until the Second Coming. For instance, a group of London ministers wrote in February 1588–9 of the spiritual downfall of Antichrist which was to take place ‘in the hearts and consciences of men’. It was a parallel process to the destruction of sin in the heart of the individual by the Word of God. Like that process, it was to be brought about by preaching, and hence they interpreted the Pauline phrase ‘the brightness of his coming’ as a reference not to Christ's second corning but the ‘second flourishing of the gospel’. This prophecy concerning the spiritual downfall of Antichrist had already been fulfilled, they argued, and hence Protestants could reasonably expect it to be followed by the temporal fall of Babylon, to be completed before Christ's second coming. (CUL MS Hh. vi 10 fo. 21f.)The document concerned probably emanated from the London presbyterian classis and was occasioned by Sir Francis Drake's voyage against the papists of 1589. Although Whitaker's more moderate view (which dated the fall of Antichrist after the Second Coming) was the more common approach in the sixteenth century, the paper is of interest in showing the radical purposes to which the doctrine could be put. See note 44 below.

32 BL Lansdowne MSS, vol. 69 no. 54. fo. 123f. Even the London ministers who held the fall of Antichrist to be imminent retained this element of tension. For, they argued, the war between England and the pope was a war to the death and if the English failed to embrace fully the mission to which God had called them, in his wrath he could well use the papists as a scourge to punish his undutiful servants just as he had employed the Philistines to destroy the similarly unfaithful and cowardly Saul. Even in the midst of the most optimistic prognoses assurance was balanced by fear, confidence by anxiety. (CUL MS Hh. VI. 10 fo. 44v-45r.)

33 Whitaker, W., Ad Rationes Decem … Responsio, London 1583Google Scholar. (The original edition of his book against Campion), Dedicatory epistle to Burghley 4.

34 Cambridge University Registry (hereafter cited as CUR) Guard books, vol. 93, no. 6 (a list o 18 complaints against Digby).

35 ‘Publica infamia it suspitio papismi which is maiora cimina (ibid., complaint no. I).

36 Ibid., complaints no. 2, 3, 4 and 10

37 BL Lansdowne MSS vol. 57, no. 78, section headed ‘Causes considered in proceeding against Mr Digby …’. Complaints no. and 11.

38 CUR Guard books vol. 93. no.6. Digby's reply to charge no. I.

39 BL Haleian MSS 7039 fo. 157r-v Whitaker to Bughley, February 1587–8.

40 Robert Some had put forward an identical view of the nature of the Church and he too attributed the central role in preserving the unity and validating the integrity of the Church to doctrine. ‘The unity of the church consisteth not in bodily dwelling together … nor in the same outward ceremonies … but in assured consent of doctrine or faith.’ (See his A Godly Treatise of the Church, London 1588, Sig. C8r.)Google Scholar But there was another sense in which the unity, even the existence, of the Church was dependent on doctrine, particularly that of predestination. For, by concentrating on the invisible Church and equating it with the elect, Whitaker and Some were basing the entire existence and reality of the Church on their own ‘Calvinist’ view of predestination. Any attempt to modify or weaken that view undermined not only the basis on which the individual should found his own salvation but their entire view of the Church—hence the extremity of their reaction in 595 when their Calvinist opinions (which they had hitherto assumed to represent the official doctrinal position of the English Church) were challenged. (For this see Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge 1958Google Scholar; and see my thesis, cit. n.3, fora slightly different account).

41 BL Haleian MS 7039 fo. 161.

42 BL Lasdowne MSS, vol. 57.

43 BL Harleian MS 7039 fo. 157. no. 72 fo. 161.

44 For the account of these disputes upon which these statements are based see my thesis.

45 TCC, B/4/9 fos. 17–21. Heads to Whitgift dated 13 June 1595.

46 Ibid fos. 1–5. Whitgift to the Heads, dated 19 june 1595.

47 , Strype, John Whitgift, III, 165–70 and 439–40Google Scholar

48 On this see CUL MS Hh, VI. 10 for the lengthy deliberations of a group of London ministers (probably Field's London classis) on the rights and wrongs of a forward policy against Spain in 1588–9. This attempted to set the planned voyage of Drake and Norris to restore Don Antonio, the king of Portugal, in the context of a general Protestant policy, designed to destroy Rome and the temporal power of Antichrist for good. As such it represented a remarkable arrogation of authority over the conduct of national polity and revealed a complete disregard for Whitgifts careful distinction between the temporal and spiritual spheres.

49 See Coolidge, J. S., The Pauline Renaissance in England, Oxford 1970.Google Scholar

50 For Mutton's career and attitudes see my ‘Matthew Hutton—a puritan bishop?’, History, Ixiv (1979), 182–204Google Scholar.

51 For instance see CUL MS Hh, 10 fo. 30r.

100 See Tyacke, N. R. N., ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter Revolution’, in Russell, C. (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War, London 1973Google Scholar. By collapsing the mainstream of seventeenth-century puitanism into this Calvinist consensus, Dr Tyacke has perhaps deprived it of much of its life and spiritual dynamism. This is a tendency which this paper seeks to correct by examining the Protestant image of Rome and its relation to the central spiritual dynamic of puritan religion.

51 For Pym's remark see Commons Debates 1625) (Camden Society n.s. vi, 1873). 50Google Scholar. In enumerating the offences committed by Richard Montague, Pym mentioned his ‘slighting those famous divines who have been great light in this church, Calvin, Beza, Perkins, Whitaker’. (I owe this reference to Mr Conrad Russell.) John Bogerman, president of the Synod of Dort had cited Whitaker in almost the same way. Listing the famous divines repudiated by the Remonstrants he mentioned ‘Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, Bcza, Marlorat, Zanchius, Piscato, Perkins and Whitaker. Those venerable men; those noble lights of the church; those happy souls whose memory is blessed both by God and man.’ (Cited in Harrison, A. W.The Beginnings of Arminianism, London 1926, 324Google Scholar. The close resemblance between the two passages illustrates perfectly the international solidarity of the godly cause in the face of both popery and heresy. Pym's association of the names and authorities of English and foreign divines as ‘great lights of this church’ paralleled almost exactly the attitude of the Cambridge Heads thirty years before in their stand against Barrett.