Andrew Willet And The “Synopsis Papismi”

By Randall J. Pederson

Scholarly essays, articles, and monographs on the Elizabethan (1558 –1603) and Jacobean (1603 –1625) eras continue to flourish and fascinate scholars, unmatched by other periods in English history, with the possible exception of the English Revolution (c. 1642-1651) and the death of Charles I. [1] It is not difficult to imagine why the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages are so popular; after all, the “golden age” of Elizabethan life was riddled with rumors of conspiracy and espionage, the threat of civil powers foreign and domestic, the ever-present problem of succession, and the ever-fanciful conflicts of religion and vice. [2] The Jacobean age fares similar with the rise of English Arminianism, disputes over predestination, church life, rival interpretations of Scripture, Spanish politics, contrasting ecclesiological visions, and, of course, the dominant personalities of the period. [3]

Of all the difficulties in English life, few are as intriguing as early modern anti-popery polemics. These profound and virulent attacks on the validity of the papacy and of the Roman Catholic Church shed light as to how early modern Protestants conceived and defined themselves. What some scholars would define as a “pathological hatred” of the Roman church was fueled by several factors, not least of which were wars with Spain, threat to national security, welfare of souls and the ever-persistent idea that the pope was Antichrist — a conviction of prelate and puritan alike. [4]

Anti-popery was further intensified by the cultural and political sensitivities of both eras, as fears of Catholic queens and kings were promoted with popular Protestant martyrologies, such as John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), which presented a cohesive narrative for those Protestants experiencing turmoil and social unrest. [5] Further, the “Catholic problem” of the 1580s worsened when Jesuits entered England and began proselytizing efforts; though small in number their influence was great. [6] Other reasons include the emergence of crypto-Catholicism, the arguments of Roman apologists, and the rise of militant Catholic rebels. [7] Elizabeth’s Act against Popish Recusants (1593) is but one example of political measures to curb Catholic digression. [8] Or, as Lord Burghley (1520 –1598) put it: “The state would never be in safety, where there was toleration of two religions. For there is no enmity so great as that of religion, and they that differ in the service of God can never agree in the service of their country.” [9]

Ever since Henry VIII freed the English from the pope’s authority, the pursuit of reformation had begun in degrees and measures away from what was perceived as Catholic superstition. The Henrican reforms were but precursors for the later and more radical reformist wings in the church. Freedom from Rome’s tyranny, political and spiritual, was a prized English possession, as the many anti-papal pamphlets published throughout the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries attest. [10] The resurgence of some of these tracts further attests to their popularity and the lingering English distaste for popery. [11] The troubles of the Jacobean church are well known as wars of religious ideology, especially in the rise of Arminianism, what radical Protestants dubbed “spawn of the papist.” [12] Peter Lake noted that “the catholic threat was never merely political in the narrow invasion-, plot- and sedition-centered sense of the term. It was ideological, and thus for English protestants, at least, in constituting and constructing this sphere, in mobilising and associating all these different senses of the public together, the notion of ‘popery’ was crucial.” [13] Several recent studies have explored this churchly crisis in some depth. [14] Collinson noted, “The confutation of Catholicism became a major industry in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the life work of such university men as John Rainolds in Oxford and William Fulke and William Whitacre in Cambridge.” [15] Still, many personalities remain enigmatic; it is difficult for historians to place Elizabethan and Jacobean attitudes to life, politics, and religion; thorny debates over the origins and definitions of Puritanism are one example of this confusion. [16]

No history of Elizabethan or Jacobean religion can ignore the political, cultural, social, and ideological atmosphere of the time, nor can it gloss over turbulent religious factors, the milieu of which centered on the great Roman crisis in the British church, a crisis not merely of politics, as in the threat of Philip’s Armada (1588), the “anathemas” of a distant pope, or the proposed marriage of Prince Charles to a Catholic princess, but a crisis of creed. Threats of Roman Catholicism were not new to the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, but they were nevertheless persistent. [17]

While there were many personalities staving the Romish tide, such as Cambridge fellow William Whitaker (1547-1595), whose Disputatio de Sacra Scriptura (1588) received critical praise, one person in particular, intertwined in Elizabethan and Jacobean politics and crises in religion, was clergyman Andrew Willet (1561/2-1621), whose Synopsis papismi (1592) went through no less than five editions and was influential well into the eighteenth century. [18] Anthony Milton writes, “The Synopsis was a famous and much-read guide to religious controversies: clearly laid out and easy to read, it yet commanded a scholarly reputation of sufficient importance to be cited in university determinations in England, and read in Latin translation abroad by respectful Calvinist and Lutheran divines alike.” [19] Willet, a famed controversialist by his late twenties, was versed in a wide array of theological literature and history; he was, as Patrick Collinson noted, “one of the most learned of early seventeenth-century Calvinists.” [20] Richard A. Muller recently commented on Willet’s mastery of the original languages, the Pentateuch, and model exegesis. [21] Willet was well acquainted with the most prominent Catholic writers of his time. He had read the Catholic writings of Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), whom Willet considered Rome’s stoutest champion, and directed his Synopsis papismi against them. [22]

This article will examine Willet’s Synopsis papismi, the tenor of its argument, and its contributions to the copious anti-popery literature of the day. In short, it will consider why Willet was so vehement in his anti-popery polemics, especially since modern revisionists are apt to note that “the relations between Catholics and Protestants in [England] were less tense than the wilder rhetoric of anti-popery would have led us to believe.” [23] By looking at the Synopsis papismi, modern readers can gain insight into late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Protestantism, its method and excesses, and learn how moderate Puritans conceived of themselves during a robust and formative time in British history. [24] Even a cursory glance at the Synopsis papismi (and the rhetoric of anti-popery) shows that the Reformed consciousness of this time was that of an ancient, biblical faith that conceived itself in consonance with the ancient “catholic” faith. The Romanists were the innovators of doctrine; or, more so the revivers of ancient heresy. [25] Further, the Synopsis papismi evolved over time to address certain cultural and religious crises in the English church, as the rise of Laudian divines; this shift is crucial in the evolution of seventeenth-century anti-popery. [26]

Willet’s Life And Work

Andrew Willet was one of the most able and prolific of the Puritan exegetes. He was born at Ely, the son of Thomas Willet (1511?–1598), the rector of Barley, Hertfordshire. He studied at the college in Ely before going to Cambridge, where on February 2, 1577, he was admitted to Peterhouse. The same year he transferred to Christ’s College, where the quintessential Puritan, William Perkins (1558 –1602), and the moderate Laurence Chaderton (c. 1536 –1640) were fellows. [27] Keith L. Sprunger comments, “Entering Christ’s college meant entering the stronghold of radical Puritanism at Cambridge.” [28]

Willet graduated BA from Christ’s College in 1581 and MA in 1584. As a fellow of Christ’s, he moved in Puritan circles and in 1588 published a collection of sacred poems and emblems, Sacrorum Emblematum centuria una, dedicated to the famous Cambridge clergy, including William Whitaker and Laurance Chaderton. [29] Both of these divines would prove influential in the development of Willet’s thought. Undoubtedly, Willet’s formative years in education stressed the prominence of divine grace in election, the falsity of the Roman church, its doctrines, and its role in the apocalyptic end-time. Still, Willet’s ecclesiastical affiliation remained strongly Episcopal; though in later years he pleaded on behalf of the Presbyterians, he never himself embraced the Presbyterian form of church government. [30]

Willet served several posts, at Bourn and Fen Drayton, Cambridgeshire, before acquiring his father’s prebendal stall at Ely, in 1587. The following year he left his fellowship on marrying Jacobine Goad, daughter of the provost of King’s College (with whom he had eighteen children [31]), and being presented to the rectory of Childerdley in Cambridgeshire. Throughout the following years he gave lectures at both Ely Cathedral and at St. Paul’s in London, which elevated Willet’s reputation as a skilled controversialist. In 1591 he proceeded BD and in 1601 DD. In 1599 he obtained the living of Barley where he remained until his death. [32]

From 1607 onwards Willet retired to the life of a private commentator, based largely on the suggestion of Richard Bancroft (1544 –1610); Willet complied but only in part; for the rest of his life his commentaries were used as a springboard for political comment, however nuanced and subtle. [33] In fact, civil unrest moved Willet to petition King James I in 1603 that “God hath a great worke to be perfected by your hands;” and to intercede on behalf of the nonconformists and urge suppression of books “maintaining offensive doctrine, too much declining to poperie.” [34]

Several biographers (Peter Smith, Thomas Fuller, Erasmus Middleton, Benjamin Brook, and Anthony Milton) have noted Willet’s precisionist life. [35] Smith, Willet’s first biographer, had known Willet and visited on several occasions. The rigorousness of the family was something of a marvel; signs and postings littered the walls, giving delinquent children forebodings of what was to come. Willet died shortly after a fall from his horse in December 1621. [36]

The Synopsis Papismi

As a religious controversialist, Willet’s reputation rests largely upon the Synopsis papismi, his classic anti-Romish tract that covered such topics as the nature and authority of the Scriptures, papal succession, the prerogative power of popes, ceremonies of the church, angels, transubstantiation, predestination, and a general framework for refuting popish heresies. [37] The first edition of this seminal work was published in a 600-page quarto edition in 1592; by the time of the fifth edition, in 1634, the work had swelled to over 1300-pages folio.

In the first edition of the Synopsis papismi, Willet addressed “three hundreds of popish errors,” which became 400 in the second edition (1594) and 500 in the third (1600). In the fourth edition Willet expands on certain particulars of Catholic practice, such as “popish equivocating”; he also expands his discussion of justification by faith to include Christ’s passive and active obedience. He further incorporates “the consent of the East and South Churches, and the reformed Churches in the west.” The fifth edition (1634) is the same as the fourth with the addition of an extensive “Life of Andrew Willet, Doctor of Divinity” by Peter Smith, who may have been Willet’s son-in-law. [38] The increasing size of Willet’s work was due to several factors: the good reception of the first edition, the continued Catholic tides that buffeted English Protestantism (seen in the publication of Romanist tracts), [39] and the rise of English Arminianism, which was seen as a concession to Roman Catholicism. Further, there was a need for a lay manual of this type, all the standard ones being printed in Latin.

As to the scope of Willet’s work, he states, “My purpose is not to set down all the heresies, which impugne the Christian faith, but onely those which are maintained by the Church of Rome this day; who are the chief troublers & disquieters of the peace of our Church.” His attempt is not to reproduce other well-known works of the time, as that of William Whitaker in Cambridge or Edward Reynolds in Oxford, but to “briefly set downe the grounds of Poperie…collected…out of Bellarmine, the stoutest champion of their side, our English Rhemistes, Eckius, Canisius, and other Papistes, as also out of the late Chapter of Trent, for it deserueth not the name of a Councell.” Further, Willet proposes to include an “antidotum,” or “counter-poyson” with arguments from both sides closely analyzed and places of Scripture annexed and of course “adding also throughout the iudgment of Augustine, who of all the fathers, is most plentifull in these matters.” [40]

There are three benefits that Willet proposes for the reading of his Synopsis: first, readers will gain knowledge of “all popish errors”; second, readers will learn the principle objections Roman Catholics argue and how to defend against such errors; and third, the chief places of Scripture, which either speak for or against them, are expounded and opened. [41] Willet here proposes a similar benefit and methodology that can be found in his commentaries or “hexaplas,” which ultimately rest on Reformed biblical exegesis. His book is divided into what he calls “centuries,” each containing one hundred popish errors; each subsequent edition included more centuries than prior editions.

The first edition of Synopsis papismi (1594) was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth “our dread lady.” Willet heaps elaborate praise on her calling and duty as the English “Deborah, to iudge Israel, an Esther to deliuer the Church.” [42] Throughout the dedication, Willet appeals to the Queen’s sense of identity as the English leader of Christ’s church with the specific mission of guarding against heresy and upholding the true faith: “The Lord hath made you a wall and a hedge to his vineyard to keepe out the wild boare: a goodly tree to giue shade to the beasts of the field, & succour to the soules of the aire, a nurse to the people of God, to carry them in your bosome, as the nurse beareth the sucking child.”

The threat of papacy is addressed as the undoing of monarchial power in matters of religion: “the Papists fret and storme, and cut your Maiestie very short, saying, that the Prince ought neither to giue voice in counsel for matters of religion, nor make Ecclesiastical lawes.” [43] Yet, Willet urges Elizabeth that the whole church salutes her from all parts of the world:

We haue blessed you out of the house of God, & do encourage you to go forward, gird thy sword to thy thigh: prosper thou with thine honor, ride on, because of the word of truth God hath giuen into your hand a two edged sword: with one edge it defendeth the Church from false religion; with the other, the commonwealth from oppression. [44]

These two themes, of false religion and oppression, are crucial in understanding Willet’s polemic against the Roman Catholic or, as Willet called it, “pseudo-catholike” religion of the day. Willet’s own sense of his work was that of a guide to religious controversy “that men not learned, might in one volume finde all the controuersies of religion, which their leisure would not suffer them to collect them selues.” [45] In closing the dedication, Willet notes, “it is the truth, the ancient Catholike Apostolike faith, which we vnder your leading and protection do profess. As for your enemies, they shal be as the dust before the wind, and as the clay in the streetes, but your crowne shal flourish, your horne shal be exalted.” [46] It is evident in these few examples that Willet conceived of the crown as the upholder of true religion, and further that the English church was a representative of that religion, a theme that would continue throughout the Synopsis papismi’s many editions. As with many other Reformed controversialists of the day, Willet urged anti-popery as the main vocation of the Church of England. [47]

In the “Preface to the Reader,” Willet charges the papists (he calls them papists because their religion hangs “on the sleeve of the pope”) as enemies of the English commonwealth and heretics whose fancied doctrines “haue in the purer ages of the Church been condemned for heresies.” [48] The roll-call of these ancient heretics include: Marcellina, who claimed to have an authentic image of Jesus and worshipped it; Heracleonites, who anointed the dying with oil and balm; Cajani, who believed that Judas’s sin benefited mankind; Pepuzians, who admitted women as priests; Angelics, because they worshipped angels; Friers Flaggelants, because they traveled on bare feet; Priscilianists, for making the Apocryphal books of equal weight with those canonical; Marcus, who claimed that Christ was an apparition and did not suffer in body or soul; Anthropomorphites, because they thought of God after the fashion of a man; [49] Abilians, who thought it prudent to be wed but never made use of their wives; Pelagians, who believed that man can believe of his own free will, unaided by grace; and the Manichees, whose corrupt notions of “flesh” are mimicked by the papists in the Mass. [50]

Willet conceived of the “popish heresy” as a conglomerate of ancient heresies but also an entity entirely its own; its essence of that of innovator in reviving and perpetuating doctrines that the ancient counsels had condemned. Notions that the Protestant or Reformed churches were innovators in doctrine, which Catholic apologists had attested since the beginning, Willet rejects; it is not the prelate but the papist who is the true innovator. Further, Protestantism was founded upon apostolic teaching and ancient authority; for Willet, “A full exposition of patristic bible commentaries…would be highly efficacious in ensuring the ultimate downfall of popery, as well as serving towards a more general Protestant edification.” [51]

An elaborate and detailed analysis of the Synopsis papismi would require a dissertation, especially to trace its progress and changes throughout its many editions; it therefore is not possible to discuss every facet of Willet’s argument or thought but it is reasonable and prudent to provide either an overview of the whole work or a more defined discussion of certain doctrinal particulars. Given the complexity of Willet’s thought, and its progression from the first edition of the Synopsis in 1593 to its mature expression in 1634, I have chosen the latter and the topics of choice are delimited to the Sacred Scriptures and predestination, two hot topics in early seventeenth-century Catholic-Protestant and inter-Protestant dialogue. Another absorbing issue, a study in its own right, would be to trace sixteenth- and seventeenth-century attitudes on the persona of the Antichrist in anti-popery literature. For Willet, one needed only to prove the assertion that the pope was Antichrist to make all other discussions irrelevant. [52]

The Sacred Scriptures

The first general controversy that Willet addresses concerns the prophetic office of Christ as doctor and teacher (i.e. the Sacred Scriptures), “this great and most famous controuersie betweene vs and our aduersaries.” [53] Willet delineates his discussion of the sacred text into seven questions: first, concerning the canonical text, what books are to be received into the canon and which ones are to be rejected; second, concerning the authentic edition of the text (whether Hebrew, Greek, or Latin); third, whether the Scriptures ought to be translated into the common language (and whether church services should be in the vulgar tongue as well); fourth, whether the Scriptures are authorized by the church or known of themselves; fifth, concerning the perspicuity and plainness of the text, whether the commoner can understand it; sixth, concerning the interpretation of the Scriptures (whether there are diverse senses, who is qualified to exegete it, and what means serve to that end); and seventh, concerning the perfection of the Scriptures, whether or not Scripture alone is sufficient for the salvation of souls. [54] Throughout the editions of the Synopsis papismi, this section does not change, possibly due to either its initial thoroughness or perhaps because of the many extant disputations on Scripture available to early seventeenth-century religionists. [55]

On the canonical question, Willet asserts:

…our aduersaries the Papistes, that holding all those bookes to be Scripture, which we do acknowledge, doe adde vnto them other bookes which are not canonicall: so that they offend not as other heretikes, in denying any part of Scripture, but, which is as bad in adding vnto it, for both these are accursed. Reuel. 22:18. [56]

Those books added to the canonical text are the apocryphal texts, which Protestants have historically repudiated, although allowing for their proper use in the life of the church; or, as Willet states: “they may be read for example of life, and may haue other profitable vse. But the Canonicall Scripture onely hath this priuiledge to giue rules of faith, and thereupon it hath the name, that we may be bold to beleeue and ground our faith vpon the canonicall & holy Scripture, which is the onely word of God.” [57]

The second general question pertains to the authenticity and most-approved texts, whether Greek and Hebrew or the Latin Vulgate. Willet states that the Greek and Hebrew are the most antique but notes that the papists argue for the Vulgate in matters of sermons, readings, disputations, and controversies and that “the vulgare Latine translation should be taken for authentike before the Hebrue or Greeke, and that no man should presume vpon any occasion to reiect it, or appeale from it.” [58] Willet answers that the Hebrew, being the most ancient and mother of the rest, should supersede all later texts, including the Septuagint, Chaldean, and multiple Latin translations. As to the New Testament, though the Syriac is quite ancient, Greek was the language of the apostles and evangelists and therefore is to be preferred; the Latin text of the New Testament, opined Willet, “we are able to proue it to be verie corrupt and faultie and therefore not authentike.” [59]

Third, once preference for the Latin text is supplanted, need for vulgar translations, in the language of the people, becomes evident; or, as Willet argues,

We do beleeue and hold that it is requisite, expedient and necessarie for the Scriptures to be vttered and set forth in the vulgare and common speech, and that none vpon any occasion ought to be prohibited the reading thereof for knowledge and instructions sake: and that Christian Magistrates ought to prouide, that the people may haue the Scriptures in their mother & known toung. Wherefore great wrong was offered to the people of England that diuerse 100. yeares, till king Henrie the eight could not be suffred to haue the Scriptures in English. And how I pray you did the Papistes storme, when as Tindals translation came forth? Some affirming that it was impossible to haue the Scriptures translated into English, some that it would make the people heretikes: others that it would cause them to rebel. Fox. Pag. 117. col 1. What fowle and shamefull slaunders were these? [60]

The fourth question that Willet discusses pertains to the authority of the Scriptures and the derivativeness of that authority, whether from the church or from itself. For the papist, argues Willet, the Scriptures receive authentication from the church; earlier papists, such as Johann Eck (1486-1543), had argued that “the Scripture should be of no more credite then Aesopes Fables, without the approbation of the Church;” later papists, such as Bellarmine, “being ashamed of their forefathers ignorance, they say that the Scriptures in them selues are perfect, sufficient, authenticall, but that to vs it appeareth not so, neither are we bound to take them for Scripture without the authoritie of the Church: so Canus, Bellarmin. Stapleton: so that, (say they) in respect of vs the Church hath absolute authoritie to determine, which is Scripture, which not.” [61] Willet answers in classic Protestant fashion that the church’s attestation of the Scripture is valuable but not definitive; rather, chiefly, “because the spirit of God doth so teach vs, and the Scriptures them selues do testifie for them selues: so that everie man is bound to acknowledge the Scripture, though there were no publike approbation of the Church.” [62]

The fifth question pertains to the perspicuity and plainness of the Scriptures; whereas the papists argue that the texts are full of difficulties (“all hard, and doubtfull, and vncertaine”), Protestants attest to the plain sense of the text, allowing for difficult passages, such as some things in Paul to which Peter attests, but nevertheless the whole force of the Scripture can be obtained by the simple. [63] Counter to Catholic claims, Willet argues:

We do not hold that the scripture is euery where so plaine and euident, that it need no interpretation, as our aduersaries do slaunder vs, and therefore here they do fight with their own shadow…We confesse, that the Lord in the Scriptures hath tempered hard things and easie together, that we might be excercised in the Scriptures, and might knocke & labour by prayer and studie, for the opening of the sense: and that there might be order kept in the Church, some to be hearers, some teachers & expounders, by whose diligent search and trauell, the harder places may be opened to the people. [64]

For Willet, Luther’s distinction between the res Dei and the res Scriptura is correct; one cannot know or comprehend the depth of God’s mysteries in himself but those things that are opened in Scripture are plain in their sense. [65] The sixth question that Willet poses has to do with the different senses of Scripture and he criticizes the medieval notion that Scripture can have multiple senses or meanings in the same place (the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical); one place of Scripture can have but one sense. [66] This is not to say, however, that there are not different applications, which for Willet are not different senses but diverse applications of the one sense. [67]

As to who is qualified to interpret Scripture, Willet allows for the laity but also cautions that certain places are harder than others; ultimately, however, it is the Spirit of God who is the interpreter of Scripture in its true sense and meaning. Protestants need not “expect a generall Councell, or go vp to Rome…or trouble the Popes grauitie with euery question.”

The Lord hath shewed vs a more easie and ready way: see that we neede not ascend to heauen or compasse the earth or passé the Alpes: but the word of God is amongst vs, the scriptures themselues and the spirite of God opening our harts do teach vs how to vnderstand them: the interpretation of Scripture is not assigned to any succession of pastors, or tyed to any place or persons. [68]

Of the means and methods employed in interpreting Scripture, Willet argues a fourfold method: first, one must consult the original languages, Hebrew and Greek, in order to bring clarity to difficult passages; second, one must consider the scope of the text in its immediate context; third, one should compare individual texts and places with other texts that speak to the same issue; and fourth, one must consider the analogy and proportion of faith, which “is nothing els but the summe & grounds of Religion gathered out of scripture, such as are conteined in the Creede, the Lordes Prayer, the ten Commandements, and in our whole Catechisme.” [69] Willet cautions against swerving from this rule of faith or, as he puts it, “impugne any principle of Religion”; as an example of this impugning Willet cites the Catholic understanding of the mass, which would have Christ’s flesh on earth while the biblical witness clearly asserts the contrary. [70] Those who are not able to take this course for understanding Scripture “shall do well to seeke helpe of learned and godly expositors, or to consult with their Pastors and Ministers.” [71]

Further, the Scriptures are necessary to learn the way of salvation; the reading, preaching, and understanding of Scripture are the principle means that God uses to beget faith in people. Willet’s adherence to classic Reformed orthodoxy is evident throughout his discussion of Scripture and his reliance on the standard commentators of the day are equally evident; of all the printed defenses of Protestantism available in the late sixteenth century, Willet’s chief supporters are Whitaker, Fulk, and Augustine.

The Predestination Of The Saints

The subject of predestination was hotly contested in the early seventeenth century, which is not surprising since historians have often regarded predestination as the central motif of Calvinism. [72] Willet’s discussion of the predestination of the saints offers nothing new or innovative other than its general progression from a supralapsarian to a sublapsarian scheme throughout its editions. Predestination, for Willet, is included broadly under “such questions and controversies as are mooved concerning the benefits of our redemption, purchased vnto vs by the death of Christ” and specifically as “the seventeenth controversie,” which consists of questions and debates surrounding predestination, vocation (or “calling”), and justification. [73] Concerning predestination, Willet poses these questions: first, whether predestination is double (i.e. the “wicked to condemnation, as of the elect to salvation”); second, whether election is of mere grace; and third, whether it is certain and unchangeable.

The papists charge, according to Willet, that “God…is not the cause of any mans reprobation or damnation…He intendeth no mans damnation directly or absolutely, but in respect of their demerits.” Their support is 1 Timothy 2:4, “God would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” Therefore the papist concludes that “the perishing or damnation of none must be imputed to God”; man’s eternal damnation, then, is the result not of divine decree but of man’s free will. Willet’s answer to this question, which changes from the first edition of the Synopsis papismi to the fifth is that

No man must impute his damnation to God, because the wicked are justly punished for their sins, without any respect had vnto the secret counsel of God: yet it is certain, that God, to set forth his glory, as he hath made some the vessels of honor, so others are ordained to be vessels of wrath, without any respect had to their workes, either good or euill. And this notwithstanding standeth with the iustice of God, to saue some, and reiect others: for he might iustly condemne all to eternall death: Now if notwithstanding he haue mercy of some, his iustice in the condemnation of the rest is not to be complained of but his mercy to be extolled in sauing of some. [74]

For Willet, God would indeed have all men to be saved, that is, “all sortes, or all kindes of men,” which he gleans from Augustine’s Enchirid; further, it may be said that God desires all to be saved in that he provides the outward means of salvation to all, as his Word and sacraments. [75] Willet argues from Romans 9:22 that

As God hath prepared some vessels vnto glorie, so also, some are ordained to wrath. And that the counsel of God is most iust herein: for as the Potter may dispose of the clay, as it seemeth best to himselfe, to make of it a vessel of honor or of dishonor at his pleasure: so the Lord hath as great right to deale with his creature. And seeing all things ought to be subdued to the glory of God, which set foorth in the destruction of the rebellious, as in the election of the faythfull: it was necessary and requisite, that the Lord should get vnto himselfe both wayes a glorious name: therefore he saith, Rom. 9:17. That God had set vp Pharao, to shew his power in him. [76]

Willet further notes, gleaned from Augustine, that the wicked are only foreknown in their sins, not predestinate; their punishment, however, is predestinate. This qualification serves to dismantle the charge against double predestinarians that God is the author of sin.

As noted before, Willet’s revision and expansion of this issue in the 1634 edition softens the supralapsarian overtones of the first edition. Willet’s revision addresses the issue of reprobation with greater detail:

Concerning the decree of reprobation, our sentence is this: first, that as eternall salvation is from the beginning ordained for the elect, so eternall destruction is decreed for the reprobate: for we cannot but affirme, that God both our first Creator, and last Judge, did both fore-see and appoint the end of every creature. Secondly, God doth reject the wicked two ways, consilio, in his eternal counsel, and facto, by the execution of his counsel and decree, which shall bee in their actuall damnation: his counsel or decree of rejection is also two-fold, it is either…the absolute decree in passing by or not choosing some, but leaving them in their own nature…[and] the decree of reprobation issuing out of Gods prescience and fore-knowledge: who as he did fore-see in the beginning the obstinancie and wickedness of men, so hee preordained in his justice the same to bee punished. [77]

The second issue, pertaining to the freeness of God’s predestinating acts, Willet answers:

God indeede electeth all that shall be saued, not with any condition on their behalfe, but on his owne behalfe: for vnto them, whome hee chooseth, he will giue grace to obey, will to be believe in him, and to do that he appointeth…. He hath chosen vs, that we should be holy, not because he saw we should be holy, but to the end that we might be holy…the mercie of God is the onely ground of our election…there is then no respect to be had to our workes. [78]

The freeness of God’s election is not contingent on one’s works; rather, good works flow out of God’s free election.

The third issue deals with the assurance of predestination, which has been the focus of several recent scholarly studies. [79] For Willet, the papist denied the possibility of assurance for the greater mass of humanity on the grounds that only the recipient of special, divine revelation could attain to it; this subjective assurance was different from what the Reformed tradition had historically endorsed. For Willet, assurance of predestination was not a “false illusion, and presumption” but reposes in the promises of God.

We doe not teach men to walke securely, or presume of their election. But we protest vnto them, that seeing men are predestinate vnto good workes, that vnless they be careful to lead an holy life, they haue no part in predestination: yet wee teach men notwithstanding, assuredly to beleeue the promises of God made to all those that beleeue to be saued. And this confidence doth very well agree with the feare of God. [80]

It is not just a cleaving to the promises but “an assurance that upon the word of God, that through faith in God, and walking in that way which God hath appointed vs, we shall undoubtedly come in the end to eternal life.” This assurance is as certain as one’s predestination. Willet’s position in the Synopsis papismi places greater emphasis on the cleaving to the promise than in the subjective probing of one’s eternal estate through marks and motions of the Spirit. This objectivism, some have argued, is more harmonious with the earlier Reformed tradition than the later; regardless of differences or progressions in the development of assurance the emphasis is one that urged individuals to hope in God and to despair of oneself. [81]

Other topics of note in the Synopsis papismi are discussions of the church, councils, bishop of Rome (pope as Antichrist), clergy, monks and friars, civil magistrate, angels, mass, relics, images, prayers to saints, sacraments, merit and justification, and the end times. Regarding justification, Willet argues that the chief error of the papist is his fusing of justification with sanctification; or living in the Spirit with walking in the Spirit. This free justification is God’s gift of grace by faith only by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, not by degrees but once and for all. [82]

Conclusion

The religious and cultural climate of Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was hotly polemical. Inter-Protestant debates and Protestant-Catholic divides were part and parcel to the rhetoric, vocabulary, and literary culture of the Post-Reformation. Of all the anti-popery polemicists, biblical expositor and disputant Andrew Willet was undoubtedly one of the most learned and popular. An arch-enemy of English papists, Willet’s Synopsis papismi, a magnificent compilation of “popish” heresies, served a growing need in the Post-Reformation church, to engage the commoner in the affairs of academics and to further plant anti-Catholic seeds that would become national consciousness.

An example of “moderate” Puritanism, Willet shows us how non-Laudian churchmen tried to diffuse the Catholic problem, both in political address and literary endeavors. His success is evident in the popularity of his work and its reception in academic and lay circles. Contemporary developments in the crises of religion shaped the development of the Synopsis papismi as well as Willet’s own self-identity. Ravages of the popish anti-Christ, infiltrations of anti-Christ’s seed into England, and concern for the true catholic and apostolic church were all part and parcel to Willet’s battle at the end of the world.

Notes

1. The sheer number of monographs on Elizabethan church life and politics is staggering. One of the most entertaining, an examination of book shops, printers, pulpits, and so on, is Peter Lake’s The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Another provocative work, which explores the impact of religious expression on laity, is Peter Kaufman’s Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection (Champion: University of Illinois Press, 1996).
2. Another obvious factor for modern historians is that the Elizabethanism enveloped the best years of William Shakespeare’s life. See Jeffrey Knap, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theatre in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
3. See Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603 –1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) for a thorough description of how rival biblical interpretations are at the center of much Jacobean churchly dispute.
4. Susan Doran and Christopher Durston, Princes, Pastors, and People: The Church and Tradition in England, 1529-1689 (Oxford: Routledge, 1991), 66. See also Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 75, where Lake discusses the unity anti-papal polemic fostered between moderate and radical puritans.
5. Rodney L. Peterson, Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of  “Two Witnesses” in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 180. Or, as John Spurr aptly put it, “John Foxe, the author of the Acts and Monuments of the English martyrs, peddled a version of this Christian history that identified the pope with Antichrist and argued that the countdown to Armageddon had begun…. Foxe’s book was officially required to be on display in every parish church and his brand of apocalyptic and millenarian thinking became a major component of English Protestantism” (The Post-Reformation, 1603-1714 [Harlow: Pearson, 2006], 16-17).
6. Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Religion 1558-1603 (New York: Routledge, 1993), 55.
7. The most famous incident of Catholic rebellion is Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up parliament in 1605 and so displace Protestant rule in England. This aggressive act caused severe repercussions on Catholic dissidents and no doubt shaped Protestant fears of Catholicism for centuries afterward. As Daniel Woolf wrote, “What makes Guy Fawkes…prominent…in English consciousness is not just the gun powder plotter’s historicity but also his identification with a powerful public mythology of the divine preservation of English Protestantism from popery” (The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500-1730 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 299). For an interesting epilogue on Catholic–Protestant disputes of the eighteenth century, see Michael Wheeler, The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8. G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 437ff.
9. Quoted in Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History, 1509-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 149.
10. J. R. Jones once commented, “Anti-popery was the strongest, most widespread and most persistent ideology in the life and thought of seventeenth-century Britain” (The Revolution of 1688 in England [London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972], 75). See also Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685-1772 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005), 299– 323; and Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 55-76. In 1594, Andrew Willet wrote, “Romane Bishops haue nothing to doe with English people: the one doth not traffique with the other: at the least, though they will haue to deale with vs, we will none of their merchandise, none of their stuffe” (Synopsis papismi, “To the Reader”).
11. See Robert Harris, A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 208, where he notes, “Two other notable features of the output of London’s presses during the ’45 were the reprinting of classic anti-popery polemic, and the remarkable number of sermons published.”
12. Nicholas Tyacke was the first historian to suggest that the emergence of Arminianism in England weakened the consensual Calvinist thread that eventuated in the English Civil Wars. See Nicholas Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution,” in Conrad Russell, ed., The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973), 119– 43; Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590 –1640 (Oxford, 1987). This view has been contested by Peter White who argues that there was no common Calvinistic thread in the early Jacobean period and that the Laudian enterprise was not a denial of predestinarian thinking. Cf. Peter White, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered: A Rejoinder,” Past and Present, no. 115 (May, 1987), 217– 229.
13. Lake, Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat, 262.
14. See, for example, Arthur F. Morotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2005); John D. Krugler, English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004); Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600 –1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Lake’s Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church.
15. Patrick Collinson, “English Reformations,” in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 36.
16. The best recent discussion of defining Puritanism is Peter Lake’s “Defining Puritanism — Again?,” in F. J. Bremer, Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 3-29. It is easy to conceive categories that are historically “neat” but have no real usefulness in doing history; “Puritanism,” at times, has fit such a description. Karl Gunther recently posed a reanalysis of Puritanism’s origins in “Origins of English Puritanism,” History Compass (Vol. 4 [2]), 235-240.
17. On Catholic resistance in England see Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Person’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580 -1610 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007) and Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
18. Andrew Willet, Synopsis papismi, that is, A General View of Papistry (London, 1592). In the eighteenth century, Cotton Mather (1663-1728) wrote, “To encounter the Romanists you will be admirably furnished in Willet’s Synopsis Papismi.” Quoted in S. Austin Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. III (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1871), 2732.
19. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 13.
20. Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: The Hambledon Press, 1994), 201.
21. Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 156.
22. Concerning Bellarmine’s role in the formation of Willet’s Synopsis, Milton writes, “If his general opponent in this work was the Church of Rome, Willet’s particular adversary was Cardinal Bellarmine, Rome’s most impressive champion, who had published his voluminous Disputationes during the 1590s. These continued to represent the most important single defense of Roman Catholic doctrine throughout the early Stuart period, and all subsequent controversies were indebted to Bellarmine’s works for laying out the structure of their argument. It was a frequent jibe of later Protestant polemicists that their Romanist opponents were merely copying Bellarmine’s arguments” (Catholic and Reformed, 15).
23. Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550 –1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 305.
24. Historians disagree as to Willet’s precise affiliation. Anthony Milton has no problem seeing Willet as a product of the “moderate puritan tradition” whereas Charles Prior is more cautious in his language. Cf. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 13; Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 312.
25. Anthony Milton has explored this idea in some depth in Catholic and Reformed, 173-228.
26. Milton’s thesis in Catholic and Reformed is that the Laudian divines reshaped anti-popery, pushing the Church of England into a different, non-polarized direction, as in the Laudian refusal to equate the pope as Antichrist (Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 529-46).
27. Edmund Sears Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas, 1558 –1794 (Bobs-Merrill, 1965), 35. For William Perkins, see Ian Breward, “The Life and Theology of William Perkins, 1558 –1602” (Ph.D. diss., Manchester, 1963); for Chaderton, see Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, 1-15; 25– 54.
28. Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 11.
29. C. W. R. D. Moseley notes the daring quality of this work in his review: “Willet’s book, undoubtedly religious, cannot, at that time of acute controversy, avoid being also political. It seems to fish in troubled waters: to include English translations of his emblems, more than a few of which discuss the stewardship of princes and the responsibilities of pastors, is to seek a readership not only of the educated at a time when the power game of factions was dangerous” (The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 26 [1996], 267– 68).
30. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 93– 127.
31. For which Willet earned the reputation of being the most libidinous Puritan minister. Robert V. Snucker, “Elizabethan Birth Control and Puritan Attitudes,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring, 1975): 666.
32. Anthony Milton, “Willet, Andrew (1561/2 –1621)” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 93-96.
33. For example, Willet endorsed a modest, highly qualified endorsement of resistance theory in his Harmonie upon the First Booke of Samuel (1607) and later in his Hexapla on Romans (1611), following partly the thought of David Pareus. In essence, Willet remarked that tyrants could be resisted in matters of self-defense, though he denied that princes could be excommunicated. See Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 10-11.
34. Synopsis papismi (1603), sig. A4v; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 20.
35. See Peter Smith, “The Life and Death of Andrew Willet, Doctor of Divinitie,” in Synopsis papismi (London, 1634); Thomas Fuller, Abel Redevivus: Or, The Dead Yet Speaking (London: William Tegg, 1867), 314 –30; Erasmus Middleton, Evangelical Biography, vol. 2 (London, 1816), 395 –99; Benjamin Brook, The Lives of the Puritans, vol. 2 (London, 1813), 284 –88; Milton, “Willet, Andrew,” 93 –96.
36. Smith summarized Willet’s character at the time of his death: “He was 59 yeares of age, but of a strong and able body, and an athleticall constitution: he was of a faire, fresh, ruddy complexion, temperate in his diet, fasting often: he was laborious in his studies, but without defatigation; and that times of intermission, especially at his table, verie cheerfull and merrie” (Smith, op. cit).
37. Willet also published a sequel or supplement to the Synopsis papismi called Tetrastylon papismi (1599), which confuted the four main pillars of papistry: their slanders, blasphemies, loose arguments, and contradictions.
38. Allibone, Critical Dictionary, 2732.
39. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein notes, “Furthermore, in England, after the Anglicans gained the upper hand, Catholic printers proved as skillful as their Puritan counterparts in handling problems posed by the surreptitious printing and the clandestine marketing of books” (The Printing Press as an Agent of Change [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 354).
40. Willet, Synopsis papismi, sig. B3.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., sig. A3.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., sig. A4.
47. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 31.
48. Willet, Synopsis papismi, sig. B1– 2.
49. Willet writes, “Do not our Rhemists favour strongly of this heresie, which allow the Image of God to be pictured like an old man with gray haires in their Churches?”
50. Willet, Synopsis papismi, sig. C.
51. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 15.
52. As with most seventeenth-century anti-popery writers, the consideration of the pope (or the long procession of popes) as the Antichrist was crucial in their rejection of popery. Willet writes, “This question pincheth our audersaries very sore, that wee should touch their head so neere, as to make him Antichrist. For this being once knowne, wee neede not labour much about other matters: for Antichrist with all his doctrine must not be heard, but abhorred of the Church” (Willet, Synopsis papismi, 182).
53. Ibid., 1.
54. Ibid., 1– 2.
55. The most popular anti-papist of this period was William Whitaker, whose Disputationes received a wide and scholarly audience. Willet’s Synopsis papismi, which quotes Whitaker extensively, appears to be a bridge between scholarly and lay communities. For a thorough analysis of Whitaker’s influence, see Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, 93 –115.
56. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 2.
57. Ibid., 5. Willet’s assessment is in harmony with the Belgic Confession (1561), Article 6, which states, “The church may certainly read these books and learn from them as far as they agree with the canonical books. But they do not have such power and virtue that one could confirm from their testimony any point of faith or of the Christian religion. Much less can they detract from the authority of the other holy books.”
58. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 13.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 17.
61. Ibid., 20– 21.
62. Ibid., 22.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 24.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., 26.
67. Ibid., 26-27.
68. Ibid., 29.
69. Ibid., 32.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., 33.
72. Brian Cummings, The Literary History of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 282.
73. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 284.
74. Ibid., 553-554.
75. Ibid., 554.
76. Ibid.
77. Willet, Synopsis papismi (1634), 920.
78. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 555.
79. The best modern study is Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Randall C. Zachman has also written a helpful work entitled The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005).
80. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 557.
81. I totally reject the notion of “Calvin against the Calvinists” on the issue of assurance; rather, the changing circumstances of the later Reformation in England pushed Reformed theologians and pastors to deal with this specific issue of assurance in a more nuanced manner. See Michael P. Winship, “Weak Christians, Backsliders, and Carnal Gospelers: Assurance of Salvation and the Pastoral Origins of Puritan Practical Divinity in the 1580s,” Church History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), 462-81; Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvinism, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation.
82. Willet, Synopsis papismi, 591– 93.