the 'writ de Excommunicato capiendo' (5 Eliz. c. 23), and some others, being of little permanent interest.
The concurrent Convocation was one which has been considered to have done very important work. Its work was to revise the Forty-two Articles of Edward VI., and re-enact them in their revised form. The changes made in them would appear to most persons in the present day to have been but slight, and to have consisted mainly in the omission of some few dogmatic statements upon obscure theological questions, such as the mode of our Lord's descent into hell, or the condition of the soul in its intermediate state—i.e., between death and resurrection. It is, however, often difficult for men of one generation to sympathise with the difficulties and doubts of those of another, and the whole of Christian theology in the sixteenth century had been thrown, as it were, into the caldron whence the most eccentric and dangerous opinions had come forth, which, so long as it was considered that opinions as well as actions came within the province of government, no Government could, in some cases, avoid taking notice of; and if it took notice of opinion in one case, it was not always easy to avoid doing so in another, where the practical results were not equally important. Hence we must not be surprised to meet with enactments, and, still more frequently, propositions for enactments, which to modern eyes appear at once trifling and inquisitorial. But though the revision and republication of the Articles was the principal work actually accomplished by this Convocation, it had a vast deal more brought before it which it did not accomplish, partly from the wide differences of opinion existing among its members, and partly, apparently, also because a somewhat abrupt prorogation, simultaneous or thereabout with that of
