His primary appeal to the Church of England as catholic and apostolic is its conformity to Scripture and to the early Church. From Jewel s point of view, old is good, and the Roman Catholics are the innovators, even though they sit in the ancient seats. Whereof the one doth warrantize unto us their faith, the other their love, till they fall away and forsake either the one or the other or both. And then it is no injury to term them as they are. When they separate themselves, they are autokatakritoi , not judged by us, but by their own doings.
Men do separate themselves either by heresy, schism, or apostasy.
If they loose the bond of faith, which then they are justly supposed to do when they frowardly oppugn any principal point of Christian doctrine, this is to separate themselves by heresy. If they break the bond of unity, whereby the body of the Church is coupled and knit in one, as they do which wilfully forsake all external communion with saints in holy exercises purely and orderly established in the Church, this is to separate themselves by schism. If they willingly cast off and utterly forsake both profession of Christ and communion with Christians, taking their leave of all religion, this is to separate themselves by plain apostasy. . . . Here I must advertize all men that have the testimony of God s holy fear within their breasts, to consider how unkindly and injuriously our own countrymen and brethren have dealt with us by the space of four and twenty years, as if we were the men of whom St Jude here speaketh, never ceasing to charge us, some with schism, some with heresy, some with plain and manifest apostasy, as if we had clean separated ourselves from Christ, utterly forsaken God, quite abjured heaven, and trampled all truth and all religion under our feet. To others, by whom we are accused for schism and heresy, we have often made our reasonable and in the sight of God, I trust, allowable answers.