The apology of the Church of England, and an epistle to one Seignior Scipio…

Fuller is barren in his Relations of those times, the Bishop lived after his Consecration, tho he afforded me some good helps: Dr. Burnett has continued his History but a little way in Queen Elizabeths time, and Dr. Heylyn ended his with the beginning of the Year 1566. which was about Five Years before the death of Bishop Jewel, and I have neither time nor leisure, nor Interest to search the Records of those ⟨image 4⟩times, and compare the Editions of Books and other things by which this Life might have been put into a better Method, as to the timing of things.

And besides all this, it were perhaps indecent to put a long Life before two such small Tractates as I am to entertain my Reader with; but yet I hope the Life, such as it is, will give some light to the Discourses, and raise a venerable Idea of this good Bishop in the Readers mind, which were the things I chiefly aimed at in the Writing of it.

As to the Pieces, the first of these the Apology was written in Latin in the beginning of the Year 1562. or the latter end of the foregoing Year, and was occasioned by Pope Pius the Fourth, his calling the Council of Trent, and sending his Nuncio Martiningo to invite the Queen to it, and the interposition of most of the greatest Princes of Christendom, who wrote to the Queen to entertain the Nuncio and submit to the Council. Whereupon it was thought but reasonable ⟨image 5⟩to give the World an account of what we had done in the preceding Parliament, and the reasons of it, and to retort the many Accusations brought against our Church by the Papists. And therefore it was but reasonable that it should be in Latin, that being the most common Language, and understood by the Learned Men of all Nations, and accordingly it found entertainment in all places, and was read in them. Which is more perhaps than can be said of any other Book written for our Church since the Reformation.