extensive survey of sixteenth-century literature, including some of the controversialists, for his Oxford history, and who devoted a page or two to Jewel, only mentions Harding (giving him the Christian name of John) as Jewel’s opponent without a word on his prose. Even Catholic scholars, specialists on recusant history, oddly neglect him. Yet in his own day he was hailed by fellow Catholics as a kind of Caesar, when his Answer to Jewel’s Challenge first appeared. As the Puritan Laurence Humphrey recalled in 1584, “Hardingi liber a multis emitur, recipitur. Hardingus quasi alter Caesar proclamans Veni, vidi, vici, cum suis triumphat, sed ante victoriam.” (Iesuitismi Confutatio) In the following decade the Cambridge doctor Gabriel Harvey saw in his word-combat with Jewel an English parallel to the classical contest between Aeschines and Demosthenes. (Pierces Supererogation) Even a cursory perusal of his writings should suffice to explain both the enthusiasm with which they were welcomed by his fellow Catholics and the admiration which they elicited from later generations of Protestants if only for his vigorous prose. Even Jewel had to admit the beauty of his eloquence and the majesty of his words, though attributing them to the devil as an angel of light.
What, I wonder, is the reason for this strange neglect of so eminent an author? One is, no doubt, that he was fighting on the losing side. The Catholics indeed managed to survive and even to flourish, in spite of the increasing persecution under Elizabeth I and James I, but because of this persecution they came to prize the memory rather of their martyrs than their writers. New opponents arose, calling for new forms of defence, and so the older controversialists fell out of fashion and were no longer read This was even the case with the first and most revered of Catholic controversialists, Sir Thomas More, whose writings against Tyndale were no longer read by Elizabethan Catholics, though they continued to prize his devotional works, while his Utopia remained in high esteem on either side. Unfortunately, Harding wrote nothing save in response to Jewel, and when Jewel died in 1571 Harding also passed away the following year.
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,”
