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C l a s s i c A p o l o g e t i c s
Campion's "Brag"
By Edmund Campion
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 9
 September 1994 
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ENEMIES of Edmund Campion (1540-1581)
disparagingly referred to his apologia as "Campion's Brag,"
the title by which his "Challenge to the Privy Council"
is most commonly known today. It is perhaps the earliest defense of
the faith to appear in English during the Reformation. (See the profile
of Camption on page 39.)
To the Right Honourable, the Lords of Her Majesty's
Privy Council:
Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being
sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm,
my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought
it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world,
I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.
Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain
what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance,
I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring
your good lordships to give it your reading, for to know my cause.
This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which
otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay
into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent that the whole
matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood
and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly,
truly and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.
i. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest
of the Catholic Church, and through the great mercy of God vowed now
these eight years into the religion [religious order] of the Society
of Jesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under
the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility
of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity.
ii. At the voice of our General, which is to me a
warrant from heaven and oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague
to Rome (where our General Father is always resident) and from Rome
to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part
of Christendom or Heatheness, had I been thereto assigned.
iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel,
to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners,
to confute errors--in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul
vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are
abused.
iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by
our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state
or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation,
and from which I gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.
v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility,
and under your correction, three sorts of indifferent and quiet audiences:
the first, before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion,
so far as it toucheth the common weal and your nobilities: the second,
whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen
men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of
our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable--Scriptures, councils,
Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons: the third, before the
lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith
by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.
vi. I would be loath to speak anything that might
sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a
dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's
foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage
in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his
gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence
so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant,
nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever
they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of
grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation.
I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every
of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that
in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they
shall be.
vii. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the
Queen my Sovereign Lady with notable gifts of nature, learning, and
princely education, I do verily trust that--if her Highness would
vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference
as, in the second part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to
a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter such manifest
and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these
controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people
shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful
to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equity.
viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness'
Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important,
when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully,
which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded,
will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded,
how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against
us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls
that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it
is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best
blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are
lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose
posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and
sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give
you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes.
And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league--all
the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach
all the practice of England--cheerfully to carry the cross you
shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have
a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments,
or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise
is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted:
So it must be restored.
ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours
can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you
good, shall be rewarded with rigour. I have no more to say but to
recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts,
who send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment,
to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries
shall be forgotten.
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