Christian Duty and Difference: Crypto Catholics and the Bloody Question

1602. London England. A 'crypto-catholic' is sitting in worn chair, his face haggard and tired, his eyes staring out into the darkness-straining to see his questioners. The chair squeaks as its occupant lifts his hand to wipe away the sweat on his brow. The air is saturated with 'the bloody question,' as the chair's occupant wages an internal war trying to decide whether he will be a 'recusant', thereby facing execution, or recount his faith and live. The tension in the space between the questioned and the questioners is palpable, and very representative of the atmosphere that enveloped the English nation during this time as each respective religion-Puritanism, Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and Catholicism-struggled to find a cure for the religious tension and discord that ran rampant in 15^th century England.

Richard Hooker in "A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown," very aptly describes this theological tension and discord between the religions as a disease. Stating that although all preach that salvation is through Christ, "we disagree about the nature of the very essence of the medicine whereby Christ cureth our disease; about the manner of applying it." [1] In fact this disease affected not only relations between Protestants and Catholics but also relations within these prospective groups. William Perkins gives us evidence of this malady within the Protestant groups citing in his "Cases of Conscience" that it is imperative "to discover the cure of the dangerousest sore that can be, the wound of the Spirit" [2]. The Archpriest Controversy provides us evidence of the infectious ailment infiltrating the Catholic ranks as well. And everyone, as Hooker already mentioned, had their own medicine to cure it.