2-The Thirty-nine Articles

Part two.

Background to the Thirty-nine Articles drawn from the following source. For those wish an email with pdf.files on Hardwick's work, let me know. reformationtoday@yahoo.com. No cost.

We draw attention to this fact. Whenever any article is posted on the Articles or the Reformation at www.virtueonline.org, the claques, happy handwavers, enthusiasts and other ignoramuses go quiet.

A History of the Articles of Religion: To which is added a Series of Documents from A.D. 1536 to A.D. 1615; Together with Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Author: Charles Hardwick (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, S.W. Corner Chestnut and Eighth Streets, 1852). Hardwick published this from St. Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge, 19 Mar 1851.

Also, the publication of the New Testament and the Primitive Fathers “gradually” convinced the serious scholars of the errors and “deadly weeds which had mingled with its growth, and during the torpor of the Middle Ages.” [1] This century could be called a “period of fermentation.”

Another factor throughout this period was the greed, avarice, and grand possessions of the Roman Church. This was duly noted by the laity who were not fools; this is like the avarice and grand possessions of the false teachers and false prophets in charismania-land. We think of Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Kenneth Copeland, Pat Roberts, Joyce Meyer, Paula White, and Benny Hinn, for starters, TV-heroes of the modern blank-heads who, like the Renaissance Popes, had turned their message to a great profit.

The gullible—including leaders, then as now—tolerated it while the discerning, laity and Churchmen included, criticized it. John Wycliffe, of the late thirteenth century, is one representative calling upon the church to change; the strength of these feelings was wide and deep for elect and honest Churchmen.

The fifteenth century had inherent forces at work for reform and that the highest authorities in the Church and State saw the “virulence of the disease by which Western Christendom was afflicted.”[2]

Questions had been forced to the fore by several things.

First, the bold movements in Bohemia with Jan Huss and others were at work as were the efforts of the Lollards in England, though repressed on both fronts. In addition to these bolder movements, there was also a quest among more conservative elements for a “gradual restoration of discipline of moral, to a reorganization of the ecclesiastical system fast dying and decomposing, and ultimately to the recovery of the Primitive Faith, which is embodied in our English Service-Books and The Articles of Religion.”[3]

Some striking examples are set forth.

The Council of Pisa was assembled on 25 March 1409. The Great Schism had lasted thirty year, since 1378. No measures, ecclesiastical, political or military had brought the rivalries of the Avignon and Roman papacies to a resolution, aided and abetted by the pride, obstinancy, nepotism and greed of the dueling factions.[4] The Council of Pisa was designed to bring peace and establish order. The eyes, attention and hopes of Western Christendom centred on this Council.

Attendees at the Cathedral of Pisa, Italy: 4 patriarchs, 22 cardinals, 80 bishops, proxy clergy representing 100 absent bishops, 41 priors and generals of religious orders, 300 doctors of theology or canon law, as well as ambassadors from all the Christian kingdoms. Following the admission of testimonials and affidavits, the rival Popes were declared “contumacious” by this numerous and august body of medieval leaders.
Things heated up when the Patriarch of Alexandria, Simon de Cramaud, addressed the assembly about the rival Popes:

"Benedict XIII and Gregory XII" are recognised as schismatics, the approvers and makers of schism, notorious heretics, guilty of perjury and violation of solemn promises, and openly scandalizing the universal Church. In consequence, they are declared unworthy of the Sovereign Pontificate, and are ipso facto deposed from their functions and dignities, and even driven out of the Church. It is forbidded to them henceforward to consider themselves to be Sovereign Pontiffs and all proceedings and promotions made by them are annulled. The Holy See is declared vacant and the faithful are set free from their promise of obedience."[5]

This met with applause, the singing of the Te Deum, with the order for a solemn procession and the Feast of Corpus Christi. The members signed the decree deposing the Avignon and Roman Popes.[6] How's that for Rome's vaunted claims of "unity?"

The Council through the College of Cardinals elected the new Pope, Alexander V. The election was expected. It was announced throughout Christendom and was joyously received.

This Council itself would set up additional questions: How could Cardinals, appointing by anafractuous, dueling Popes convene with apostolic authority? Ergo, was their decision canonically valid? Can a General Council overturn Papal decrees? Ultimately, Vatican One would solve that one.

Suffice it to suffice, for our purposes here. The fifteenth century was turbulent and reform was in the air.

We continue to discuss the antecedents to the Thirty-nine Articles as discussed previously and in antecedents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. If we take the generational perspective of the 2nd commandment, we can see that generational sins were visited by divine judgment on “our” Church. New leaders arose, under the divine blessing, to cleanse her and restore Christ and His Sovereign Word above and to His Bride. It still is “our” Church as the True Catholic and Reformed Church.[7]

We were discussing the Council of Pisa, convoked 25 March 1409 on account of the Papal schism, one Pope operating in Rome and the other in Avignon, France, replete with their own dueling appointments to cardinal-ships and bishoprics with their competing claims to apostolic succession. This creates an insurmountable problem for Romanists with their claim to offer, solitarily, apostolic succession to whom they appoint; that’s an internal issue to them we need not worry about since apostolic succession is measured against the sovereign standard of the apostolic record and message. Does Rome just make it up as she goes?

However, in the disastrous conflict of our church, twenty-two cardinals who called it “pledged themselves that whoever was elected Pope, the council should not be dissolved until it had commended a purification of the Church, `both heads and numbers.[8] Their choice fell unanimously upon Peter of Candia (Alexander V) and one of the first promises which he made after his election betoken the willingness of the pontiff `to forward the work of Reformation.’”[9] However, Hardwick tells us that other issues arose between the sessions, and it judged wise to postpone discussion of abuses until a convocation of a future synod.

A reformation of “heads and numbers” is the language of Reform.

We turn our attention from the Council of Pisa to another opportunity for Reformation at the Council of Constance of date 5 November 1414, five years after the former. One of the purposes of this council was “the Reformation of the Church.”[10] The issues were the healing of the factions, the reestablishment of the Papacy, and the extirpation of heretics. We bring some observations about this Council of Constance, meeting variously from 5 November 1414 to 22 April 1418. Forty-five sessions were held for three reasons: end the

Papal schism, reform Church government and life, and repress heresies (e.g. Huss, Wycliffe).[11] How thoroughly modern.

It is not an overstatement to say that chaos, machinations, resolutions, broken promises, excommunications, canonical changes and unedifying factions characterized this period, as previously asserted.

Part two ended.

[1] Hardwick, 16.
[2] Hardwick, op.cit., 9.
[3] Hardwick, op.cit., 9.
[4] The Avignon Palace in France has a cool basement in more than one sense of the word. Very large. Very cool in terms of temperature. And very “cool” since it was large enough for all the money and taxes they collected. The cash was kept on the premise. The Pope also had a secret stairwell to his chambers for late night trysts with local ladies, a rather un-Petrine thing to have. The papal chambers have various graffiti markings through the centuries since them. I observed one dated 1648.
[5] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12112b.htm of date 19 Jul 2009.
[6] We do well to remind ourselves that Roman apologists will often crow about the unity of the see of Rome. The Great Schism and the numerous and repeated inter-mural hostilities between various orders characterized the period. Where possible, unity was enforced by the interdict, inquisition, and outright murders, e.g. the Lollards and Waldensians.
[7] Rome’s historic impenitence disqualifies it from being called the Catholic Church. We refer readers to Bishop Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England. In the light of centuries of denial of the Biblical Gospel and unlike weak, modern Protestants in our day, we must with the Reformers call her an Anti-Christ, a counterfeit of the True Church.
[8] An interesting footnote occurs in our Hardwick text, p. 9, footnote 3, to wit, “In the fourteenth century, before the time of Hus, Mattias von Janow, confessor to the emperor Charle IV, had pressed the importance of commencing a reformation.” [emphasis added]. The footnoted source is Guerike, Kirchen-geschicte, I.774, Halle, 1843. It’s just one more piece in the puzzle of the fifteenth century which we are saying was profoundly troubled. Here we find a comment about the fourteenth century, the age of John Wycliffe.
[9] Hardwick, op.cit., 9. We regret we do not have access to two earlier sources here. First, Lenfant, Histoire du Concile de Pise, I. 290, Amsterdam 1724. The second important paper, a primary source, is a paper drawn up by a Church of England man, Richard Ulverston, as a memorial for the Bishop of Salisbury from this council. Von der Hardt, Council. Contstant, I. 1226
[10] First, Lenfant, Histoire du Concile de Constance, I, 46, 373, Amsterdam, 1727 as cited by Hardwick, op.cit., 10. Somehow we have never heard any Romanist say there were fifteen century Reformers interested in the “Reformation of the Church.” The usual line speaks of the historic unity, not divisions.
[11] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04288a.htm of date 22 July 2009. John Wyclife was condemned in early 1413.