to the Reformation, their opponents for a time regained the asi'endoncy. These articles asserted the doctrine of transubstantiation, declared com- munion in both kinds not to be necessary, con- demned the marriage of priests, enjoined the continued observance of vows of chastity, and sanctioned private masses and auricular confes- sion. Severe penalties were appointed for writ- ing or spealcing against them, and for abstaining from confession or the sacrament at the accus- tomed times, for priests failing to put away their wives, and for persons writing or s])eaking against the doctrine of transubstantiation. Arch- bishop Cranmer vainly opposed the act in the House of Lords : the King was resolute to have it passed. Its severity was mitigated by a sub- sequent act of his reign (1544), and it was trans- gressed with impunity even bv ecclesiastical dignitaries, until it was repealed in the first year of Edward VI. The text of The Six Articles" Act is given in Gee, Docinncnts llliif:t)-iitire of the Hist oil/ of the English Church (London, 1806).
ARTICLES, The Thirty-nine. The articles
of religion agreed upon by the archbishops and
bislio])s of botli provinces and the whole clergy
of the Church of England, in the convocation
held at London in the fourtli year of Elizabeth,
15C2, under Archlnshop ParUer. To have a clear
view of the history of these important articles,
we must go back to the pronuilgation of the
original ones, 42 in number, in the reign of Ed-
ward VI. The council appointed bv the will of
Henry VIII. to conduct the government during
the King's minority, was for the most part favor-
ably disposed toward the reformed opinions, and
the management of Church affairs deolved al-
most entirely upon Archbishop Cranmer. In the
year 1540 an act of Parliament was passed, em-
powering the King to appoint a commission of 32
persons to revise the ecclesiastical laws. Under
this act a commission of 8 bishops, 8 divines, 8
civilians, and 8 lawyers (among whom were
Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, Coverdale, Scory, Peter
Martyr, and Justice Hales) was appointed in
1551, and one of its first acts was to draw up a
code of articles of faitli. These were 42 in num-
ber, and were set forth by the King's autliority
in 1558. Strype and Burnet make it appear that
these 42 articles wi're agreed upon in the convo-
cation that was sitting in 1552, but this was not
the case. To these articles was prefixed the
catechism, and there is no doubt of Cranmer hav-
ing had the principal hand in their composition;
for he owned before Queen llai'v's ccunmission
that they were his doing. I'.ut inmiediately after
their publication Edward died, and one of the
first acts of the convocation summoned with the
Parliament in the first year of Queen Mary was
to declare that these 42 articles had not been set
forth by the agreement of that house, and that
they did not agree thereto. In 1558 Elizabeth
succeeded her sister. In 155!) Parker was in-
stalled in the See of Canterbury, and immedi-
ately the other vacant sees were filled. And
now came a fresh oiiportunity of drawing up
some articles of faith which might serve as a
test of orthodoxy in the Reformed Church. Par-
ker applied himself to this work, and. for the
purpose, revised the 42 articles of King Edward,
rejecting 4 of them entirely, and introducing 4
new ones, viz., the 5th, 12th, 2tlth, and 30th as
they now stand, and altering more or less 17
others.
This draft Parker laid before the convo-
cation which met in I5G2, where further altera-
tions were made; and the 30th, 40th, and 42d
of King Edward's, which treated of the resurrec-
tion, the intermediate state, and the doctrine of
the final salvation of all men, were finally reject-
ed. The 41st of King Edward's, which con-
demned the Millenarians, was one of the four
which Parker omitted. Thus the articles were
reduced to 30. They were drawn up and ratified
in Latin, but when the.y were printed, as was
done both in Latin and English, the 29th was
omitted, and so the number was further reduced
to 38. From these 38 there was a further omis-
sion, viz., of the first half of the 20th article,
which declares that "the Church hath power to
decree rites and ceremonies, and hath autliority
, in controversies of faith." As all the records of
convocation perished in the great fire of liiGG, it
is very dillicult to ascertain how these omissions
arose. However, in 1571, the articles once
more under^vent revision. Archliisliop Parker and Bishop Jewell made a few trifling alterations ; and the 20th being restored, the convocation, which was then sitting, ratified them both in Latin and in English, and an act of Parliament was passed in that year compelling the clergy to subscribe "such of them as onl}- concern the confession of the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the Sacraments."
There still, however, remained some difllculty as to which was the authorized copy, some of the copies being printed with, and others without, the disputed clause of the 20th: but this was finally settled by the canons passed in the convocation" of 1004, which left the articles as they now stand. "His Majesty's declaration," which precedes them, and directs that
they shall be interpreted "in their literal and
grammatical sense," was prefixed by Charles I.
in 1028.
It may be interesting to know from what other sources the Thirty-nine Articles are derived. Some of them, as the 1st, 2d, 25th, and 31st, agree not only in their doctrine, but in most of their wording with the Confession of Augsburg. The Oth and Kith are clearly due to the same so|>rce. And others, such as' the 10th, 20tli, 25tli, and 34th, resemble, both in doctrine and verbally, certain articles drawn up by a commission appointed by Henry VIII. and annotated by the King's own hand. The 11th article, on Justification, is ascribed, to Cranmer, but the latter part of it existed only in the articles of 1552. The 17th, on Predestination, may be traced to the writings of Luther and ilelanchthon. The fact is that they bear everv mark of lieiiig a compromise, designed to be agreeable to the contending parties, Lutheran as ell as Calvinist, in the Church of England at the time; and it is well to remember that they are not a creed, but a formula intended to test the sufficient loyalty of the clergy and other oflice-holders. Each party in the Church of England, even to the most advanced High Churchmen of the present day, has been able to (irove its agreement with the teaching of the articles— to its own satisfaction, at least. Controversy as to the sense in which subscription is made to them wa.s vigorous all through the Nineteenth Century, the acute dialectic minds of a Newman on one side and a Jowett on the other having been exercised in proving that they might be signed in a sense other than the animus ijnponcntis, or the mind of the authority which
