St. Paul and the Polemicists: The Robert Parsons–Thomas Morton Exchanges, 1606–10

The author examines St. Paul’s prominent place in the polemical exchanges between the English Jesuit Robert Parsons and the Protestant cleric Thomas Morton during the controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance that followed the Gunpowder Plot’s failure in 1605. The most important topics were the relative supremacy of kingly and papal authority and the use of equivocation in the taking of oaths. While Parsons and Morton could each find some basis of claiming St. Paul as an authority, Parsons proved to be much more successful in this regard, thereby depriving English Protestants like Morton of an important source of support for the Jacobean establishment.