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Questions respecting their

of the mass as commonly celebrated in the age preceding the Reformation.

There are some expressions also in this correspondence, authority. which although not easily reconcileable with Hooper's previous language, intimate that Articles tendered by him to the Worcester clergy had been either positively sanctioned by the King, or were at least in plain accordance with another Formulary which could claim the royal sanction, and which Hooper and his brethren had previously subscribed. Such passages1 have prompted the idea that after the Articles were remitted by Cranmer to the privy council in May, 1552, the King had by some private act2 encouraged all the well-affected prelates to urge that manifesto on the notice of the clergy, with a view to ascertain their willingness in the matter of subscription. Yet we must remember, on the contrary, that quite as early as the autumn of 1549, archbishop Cranmer had made use of such a series, and in 1551 allusion had been also made by Hooper to a series which he designated his Articles. If therefore, we be justified in thinking that these documents were substantially the same, and cognate

Pontificibus et ab aliis ejusdem notæ
hominibus inventa et excogitata est :'
Art. XVIII. fol. 188 b.

1 Hooper (or, as some suspected,
Harley or Jewel) began his confuta-
tion of Joliffe in the following terms:
'Quod serius quam pro vestra ex-
pectatione, ad ea quæ in Articulos re-
gios scripsistis responderim,' etc. fol.
6 b.; and again: 'Quid hic de regis
majestate, qui mihi author fuit, ut
hæc suis omnibus, tam qui in clero
sunt, quam qui in promiscua multi-
tudine proponerem, suspicamini, aliis
divinandum relinquo. Me vero, mei-
que loci et ordinis alios, qui his jam
pridem subscripsimus, quo ingenio
aipéσews nota liberetis non video,
postquam hos articulos, quos verbo
veritatis freti approbavimus, sacræ
Scripturæ, analogiæ fidei, et ecclesiæ
determinationi vestra censura adver-

santur.' fol. 7 b. It is clear also from Joliffe's statement, that the royal authority was pleaded by those who enforced subscription (fol. 5): but Gardiner in his Replication (fol. 8 b) implies that no such authority had been brought to bear, except indirectly and in terrorem.

Soames, Reform. III. 651.

3 The truth appears to be, that whatever was the precise complexion of Cranmer's Articles of 1549, the series in Hooper's Visitation-Book was nothing but a popular English form of the original draft of the XLII. Articles, enlarged by ritual and other injunctions for the guidance of his clergy, and modified in different ways. Not a few of his extreme statements, which remind us of his sojourn in Switzerland, are softened down in the authorized Ar

also with the test of doctrine offered to the prebendaries of Worcester in 1552, it follows that a draft of the Articles, afterwards published by supreme authority, was already in the hands of the reforming prelates, and enforced by them upon the clergy of their several dioceses.

ber.

Be this, however, as it may, there is not evidence Their num enough to warrant the conclusion of archbishop Laurence, that the number of the Articles, as originally compiled. at Lambeth, did not exceed nineteen, or that the primate in the first instance had composed little or nothing more than a condemnation of Romish errors1.' It is obvious from an extant copy, that the English series of bishop Hooper had amounted to no less than fifty Articles; and if some only of these last were openly refuted by the prebendaries of Worcester, the true reason might have been that the remainder were considered far less open to attack, or even such as the objectors had no scruple in subscribing.

were an

And this inference is supported by the testimony of Why so few the work itself; for in the argument' prefixed by Joliffe, swered. he admits that while some of the many Articles' were heretical and impious, others entitled to the name of 'catholic' had been artfully interspersed, in order that the simple and incautious might the more easily be led astray 2. In such a case, it is quite evident that we can hope to recover the Articles of 1553, from records of the Worcester disputation, so far only as those Articles had proved distasteful to the party who opposed the reformationmovement; and accordingly on noting down the subjects which were handled in the longer of these series, but omitted in the shorter, we shall find that they relate to questions where disciples of the 'old' and 'new learning,' were generally agreed, and therefore were not likely to

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provoke discussion in the champions of the 'Romish' tenets. For example, it has been remarked as somewhat singular, that the first Article of 1553, relating to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, has no equivalent definition in the notice of the controversy between Hooper and the Worcester clergymen; and yet the presence of such Article in the series he submitted to them, has been placed, as it would seem, beyond all reasonable doubt. In the True Copy of Bishop Hooper's Visitation-Book, there is an order to the following effect: 'That they faithfully teach and instruct the people committed unto their charge, that there is but one God, everlasting, incorporate, almighty, wise and good, Maker and Conserver of heaven and earth, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also He will be called upon by us. And albeit there be but one God in essence and unity in the Godhead, nevertheless in the same unity there be Three distinct Persons',' &c. Fresh corroboration may also be derived from the first Article in Joliffe's publication. That article was chiefly aimed against the errors not of Romanizers but of Anabaptists, as we gather from a great contemporary work2, the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, in which it reappears; yet as the closing observation was intended to glance off at the scholastic dogma of repeated oblations of our blessed Lord in the sacrament of the altar, it was so far made the object of attack in the production of the

1 Art. II.

2 The Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (ed. Cardwell, 1850) was in process of construction at the same time with the Articles, and was the work of nearly the same hands. On this account it often forms an excellent commentary on the Articles themselves (see Hardwick's Reform. p. 233, n. 7). The section, 'de Hæresibus' contains a strong denunciation of those phases of misbelief, which at that time existed in the Church of England: 'quarum præsens pestis in perniciem religionis nostrorum temporum, adhuc

incubat.' (c. 3). In c. 5, among other false opinions of the Anabaptists reprobated by the compilers, there is one identical with that which comes out first in the Worcester controversy (cf. above, p. 79): 'Qui errores omnes sacrarum Scripturarum authoritate sic corrigendi sunt, ut Christus meliore natura Deus sempiternus accipiatur, et quidem æqualis sit Dei Patris; humana vero corpus habeat ex tempore factum, neque sæpius quam semel, neque ex alia materia quam ex Mariæ virginis vera et sola substantia.'

Worcester prebendaries: and to this alone are we most probably indebted for the preservation there of all the Article.

whom were

directed?

But while the theory of archbishop Laurence, both as Against to the number and nature of the original draft, is shewn the Articles to be untenable, it is suggestive of important investigations into the history of the Articles, and more especially of one investigation, which has not been hitherto pursued with the minuteness it deserves. What reasons chiefly weighed with the Reformers in selecting the particular subjects handled by them in the Articles of 1553? On what principle may we explain the introduction of this point, or the omission of that? Did they intend us to conclude that their new code of doctrine was put forward as a system of theology? Or did they mean it to express the judgment of the English Church on a variety of sacred topics strongly controverted, in that age, within the limits of her jurisdiction?

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dence on this

The internal evidence afforded in the solving of these Internal eviquestions may be stated very briefly. In the title of the subject. English Articles', as published by Grafton, in 1553, they are said to have been constructed with reference to 'certain matters of religion;' and in all the copies, to have aimed at the establishment of a godly concord and the avoiding of controversies' agitated at the time. Two Articles (the eighth and thirty-seventh) repudiate errors of the Anabaptists on original sin and a community of goods. Four others (from the thirty-ninth to the forty-second) are levelled at as many forms of misbelief relating to the resurrection, the sleep of the soul, the theory of a millennium, and the ultimate recovery of all human beings. The eighteenth places its anathema on those who dared to rob

1 This translation, according to Dr Cardwell, was probably made concurrently with the original Articles, and under the same direction. Synod. I. 18.

2 In the Epilogue of the Reformatio Legum, where many of the Articles re-appear in a somewhat

different form, attention is distinctly
confined to the heresies then known
to be in course of propagation.
'Posset magna colluvies aliarum
hæresum accumulari, sed hoc tempore
illas nominare solum voluimus, quæ
potissimum hisce nostris temporibus
per Ecclesiam diffunduntur.' p. 22.

Evidence from the history of the times.

the Gospel of its claim to absolute supremacy. While the twelfth and thirteenth reject 'the doctrine of the schoolmen1,' touching human merit and works of supererogation; and the twenty-third their doctrine touching purgatory, indulgences, and other figments which were strenuously defended in all quarters by the anti-reformation party.

With regard to the remainder of the XLII. Articles, though now impossible to speak with equal certainty, it is not difficult to trace the circumstances which produced them in contemporaneous annals of the English Church?. As in the case of the Augsburg Confession, which those Articles have followed not unfrequently, the authors had an eye in the first instance to existing dangers and emergencies. In other words, their formulary was constructed so as to repel not one but many different classes of critics and assailants. While protesting vigorously against the over-drawn distinctions and the over-learned figments of the orthodox' schoolman, they endeavoured also to impose a curb on the licentiousness of private speculation, which was hitherto imperfectly kept under by the pressure

1 This phrase was exchanged in the Articles of 1563 for 'the Romish doctrine;' the council of Trent having in the mean while spoken out distinctly and adopted as portions of the Christian faith a number of opinions, which had been long floating in the Church at large, and advocated by scholastics. It should be remembered that the sittings of the council had commenced in Dec. 1545: they continued till 1547: after an interruption of four years they were resumed in May, 1551; but before the business of the synod was completed a very long suspension intervened, extending as far as Jan. 18, 1562. The various decrees were finally confirmed by a papal bull, bearing date Jan. 6, 1564. In several letters of Reformers we observe the interest with which they

were watching the contemporary disputations at Trent, especially in the course of the eventful year, 1551: e. g. Cranmer's Works, I. 346, 349.

This was certainly the view of Cranmer when he requested the continental reformers to take part in such a compilation: and Calvin understood him in this sense, as we read in a letter which he addressed to the Archbishop, while the English Articles were in progress. He there says that the doctors were invited, ut ex diversis ecclesiis, quæ puram Evangelii doctrinam amplexi sunt, convenirent precipui quique doctores, ac ex puro Dei verbo certam de singulis capitibus hodie controversis ac dilucidam ad posteros confessionem ederent.' Cranmer's Works, I. 347.

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