‘NON FUGIMUS SED FUGAMUR’: CHANGING VIEWS OF THE FLIGHT FROM ROME

As we have seen, Jacobean writers across the whole doctrinal spectrum agreed on the importance of Revelation 18.4 (the flight from Babylon). Not only was it seen as a text which justified separation from the Church of Rome, but it was also interpreted as a divine command which could not be ignored. This was a point argued, not just by moderate puritans such as Willet and Bernard, but also by Calvinist conformists such as Powel, Hakewill and Bedell. Even an avant-garde conformist such as Andrewes argued that the Roman Church was Babylon. It did not exhaust the possible lines of defence, however. When William Bedell confronted the issue of what authority the Protestants had for leaving Rome, he resorted first to the familiar passage from Revelation. This was a justification which was sufficient in itself. But this did not mean that other arguments could not be made, and Bedell chose to buttress his position further by deciding to settle the argument ‘at the Bar of Reason out of the common Principles of Christian Doctrine’. Romanists could always quibble about whether the papal monarchy was Babylon and therefore, said Bedell, ‘let us for the present set aside the Mystical Arguments from this place, and all other Prophetical Circumstances’.Similarly, Anthony Wotton's popular Runne from Rome, which dealt specifically with the separation from Rome, bore the text of Revelation 18.4 on its title-page, but avoided discussing the issue of Antichrist because (as Wotton explained) it was a long controversy which had already been sufficiently disputed elsewhere.