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While Bernard held a position fundamentally opposed to Catholicism throughout his career, his works took a distinctly anti-Catholic focus during only one relatively brief period, c. 1617–29, with a shift c. 1622 in the tone and content of these publications. Chapter 5 first analyses what we know of Bernard’s foundational beliefs about the danger of Catholicism, and then proceeds to contextualise and historicise this amplification, shift, and de-amplification in his published rhetoric about Catholics. It identifies several factors in Bernard’s parish and diocesan contexts, as well as national and international developments, that influenced this trajectory. In particular, it highlights an uptick in his eschatologically centred anti-Catholic writing under Bishop Lake; his shift to a rather less heady eschatological view from c. 1622; and how his 1626 Rhemes Against Rome was intended not only as an anti-Catholic response to John Heigham’s attack on Protestantism, but also as a puritan counterpoint to Richard Montagu’s anti-Calvinist response to Heigham. Subsequently, it discusses several factors related to a growing de-emphasis of overt anti-Catholic rhetoric – until, that is, a 1641 publication directed to Parliament. In all this, the chapter demonstrates ways that different publications – and sometimes, the same publication – could target different audiences with different sorts of messages that nevertheless complemented one another, in view of various theological aims and ecclesio-political contexts.
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