Charles Hardwick. "History of the Articles." Chapter One, 1-13. "The English Reformation"

Charles Hardwick. "History of the Articles." Chapter One, 1-13. "The English Reformation." An history of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England. This is a fair, sane, balanced, and documented history.

We regret that we must exclude the footnotes since they do not translate cleanly and readably in this venue. We refer you to the original, which is free and downloadable at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ucEPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR13&dq=thirty-nine+articles+hardwick&lr=&as_brr=1&output=text

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I

THE REFORMATION.
General cry for Reformation in the fifteenth century ... ... 2
Guiding principle of the English Reformation ... ... 3
Antiquity and catholicity of the principle ... ... ... 4
Papal Supremacy—its growth, excesses, and synodical abolition 5—7
Reasons for resisting it, from contemporary sources ... 7—10
Restorative aim of the Reformers ... ... ... ... 10
(1) English ... ... ... ... ... 11 (note)
(2) Lutheran ... ... ... ... 11, 12

ARTICLES OF RELIGION.

CHAPTER I.
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.

The Articles are a distinct production of the sixteenth' century. They were constructed step by step amid the heavings of those mighty controversies, which enlivened and convulsed the Church of England at the time of the Reformation. The original design of the compilers will be, therefore, ascertained exactly in proportion to the clearness of our view as to the leading character of the event which brought them into being.

This, indeed, is not the place for entering on the details of a question so momentous and so complicated; but no history of the Articles can be regarded as complete, which does not lead us backward to the standing-ground of the compilers, and enable us from thence to estimate the special fitness of that manifesto as one permanent expression of English orthodoxy.

Now that ' reformation' of some kind or other had been long the passionate cry in almost every province of the Western Church is patent and indisputable. Those writers who are loudest in denouncing the Lutheran movement (as Bellarmine and Bossuet and Mohler) have been driven to confess that in the age immediately preceding, the whole system of the Church was grievously out of joint. 'According to the testimony of those who were then alive, there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in the ecclesiastical judgments ; in morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in divine things no reverence; religion was almost extinct.' Examples of the prevalent disorganisation could be multiplied indefinitely. They formed the staple of gravamina and reformanda which were pressed on the attention of successive popes and kings, of parliaments, of councils, and of diets. They gave birth to ' Reformation-colleges,' like that of Constance, and ' select committees' of cardinals and other prelates, such as that appointed by pope Paul III. in 1538, ' De emendanda Ecclesia;' and although it must be granted that the acts of these reformers do not often penetrate below the surface, there can be no doubt that in the honest sifting and corrections of ' disciplinary abuses,' they were sometimes touching more or less directly on higher and deeper points, with which the outward blemish or excrescence was vitally connected. In addition to such milder efforts emanating from the chief authorities in church and state, there was no lack of earnest individuals, friars, clerics, monks and laymen, who contended that a reformation, to be really efficacious, must commence with deeds of daring, not to say of violence—with rooting up the aftergrowths of error, that had smothered, or at least obscured, the genuine dogmas of the Gospel. Such was the prevailing spirit of the Wycliffites in England, yet the movement they originated here and also in Bohemia issued in comparative failure. Many of their principles were vitiated from the first by feverish, wild, or revolutionary ideas: and hence it was that when the Reformation of this Church and country was accomplished, the promoters of it took their stand upon a very different basis.

How then did the Church of England, in the sixteenth century, meet the urgent clamour of the age, and enter on the reformation of abuses? She revived the ancient theory of national independence, as distinguished from the modern theory of papal universalism.

Her guiding principle was this :—A national Church, and therefore the 'Ecclesia Anglicana,' through the medium of its representative synods, acting under royal licence, has authority from Christ Himself to extirpate abuses, whether of doctrine or of discipline, of ritual or of polity, existing within its own jurisdiction; nay, is absolutely bound by its allegiance to Christ and by regard to the well-being of the people committed to its charge, to vindicate and re-affirm the truths of Christianity, as once for all delivered to the saints and current in the Early Church.

The nature of the jurisdiction which prescribed all future changes in our own ecclesiastical system had been indicated by the Preamble to Stat. 24° Hen. VIII. c. 12 (a.d. 1532—3), which proved the harbinger of Reformation. There it is declared, on the authority of ' sundrie olde autentike histories and cronicles,' that this realm of England is an empire made up of spiritualty and temporally, and that it has been the custom when any cause ' of the Lawe Devine;' or 'of spirituall lernyng,' came in question, to have such controversy decided ' by that parte of the said bodye politike called the spiritualtie, nowe beyng were entirely on the side of Medisevalism. ' The Lutheran revolution, he writes (Liv. vI. c. x), 'produced no innovation, in regard to discipline, ecclesiastical orders or dogma, that had not been perseveringly proposed long before; so that the success of Luther, after the failure of premature reformers, was mainly due to the ripeness of the time : a confirmation of which is found in the rapid and easy propagation of the decisive explosion. Usually called the Englishe Churche, which alwaies hath been reputed, and also founde, of that sorte that both for knowlege, integritie, and sufficiencie of nombre, it hath ben alwaies thought, and is also at this houre, sufficiente and mete of itselffe, without the intermedlying of any exterior personne or personnes, to declare and determyne all suche doubtes and to administre all suche offices and dueties as to their romes [rooms] spirituall doth apperteyne.'

Nor in asserting this great principle of national independence did our legislators overstep the powers which had been claimed and exercised by the domestic synods of the best and purest ages. Till the founding and consolidation of the papal monarchy such bodies had been always held not only competent but morally responsible for the correction of all heresies and errors which sprang up in a particular Church. ' This right of provincial synods, that they might decree in causes of faith, and in cases of reformation, where corruptions had crept into the sacraments of Christ, was practised much above a thousand years ago by many, both national and provincial synods. For the council at Rome under pope Sylvester, anno 324, condemned Photinus and Sabellius (and their heresies were of a high nature against the faith). The council of Gangra about the same time [between 325 and 380] condemned Eustathius for his condemning of marriage as unlawful. The first council at Carthage, being a provincial, condemned rebaptization, much about the year 348. The provincial council at Aquileia, in the year 381, in which St. Ambrose was present, condemned Palladius and Secundinus for embracing the Arian heresy. The second council of Carthage handled and decreed the belief and preaching of the Trinity; and this a little after the year 424. The council of Milevis in Africa, in which St. Augustine was present, condemned the whole course of the heresy of Pelagius, that great and bewitching heresy, in the year 416. The second council of Orange, a provincial too, handled the great controversies about grace and freewill, and set the Church right in them in the year 444 [529]. The third council of Toledo (a national one), in the year 589, determined many things against the Arian heresy, about the very prime articles of faith, under fourteen several anathemas. The fourth council of Toledo did not only handle matters of faith, for the reformation of that people, but even added also some things to the Creed which were not expressly delivered in former creeds. Nay, the bishops did not only practise this to condemn heresies in national and provincial synods, and so reform these several places and the Church itself by parts, but they did openly challenge this as their right and due, and that without any leave asked of the see of Rome ; for in this fourth council of Toledo they decree, ' That if there happen a cause of faith to be settled, a general, that is, a national synod of all Spain and Galicia shall be held thereon; and this in the year 643 : where you see it was then Catholic doctrine in all Spain that a national synod might be a competent judge in a cause of faith. And I would fain know what article of faith doth more concern all Christians in general, than that of Filioque?—and yet the Church of Rome herself made that addition to the Creed without a general council. . . . And if this were practised so often and in so many places, why may not a national council of the Church of England do the like? '

The earliest triumph which these principles achieved on their resuscitation in the sixteenth century was the absolute repudiation of the ultra-papal claims. Originally independent of the Latin Church, this country had been gradually reduced into a state of bondage. Roman modes of thought so largely intermingled in our Anglo-Saxon Christianity had overpowered the influences exerted for a time by the surviving British Church and by the missionaries out of Ireland; till at length the deepest deference, not to say servility, had been manifested by the king, the clergy, and the people, in their dealings with the court of Rome. Anterior to the Norman Conquest the predominant feeling might be one of gratitude and filial reverence,—such indeed as we can trace at present in the language of our brethren in America while reviewing their relations to the Church of England: but as soon as ever the pretensions of the papacy had grown into the towering shape which they assumed in Hildebrand and his successors, the demeanour of the English was considerably altered, and in speaking of the Roman pontiffs they betrayed from time to time the workings of that ardent nationality which issued in the Reformation. From the period of the troubles of archbishop Anselm—when 'the king and his nobles, the bishops also, and others of inferior rank, were so indignant as to assert that rather than surrender the privileges of their forefathers, they would depart from the Roman Church—until the closing struggle in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, the encroachments of the pontiff had been calling up a spirit of determined opposition; and in cases even where his interference might be salutary, and as such was cordially desired by the great body of the nation, it is quite impossible to watch the temper of the English parliament,2 without discovering many a trace of that profound exasperation which eventually repelled all foreign intermeddling, and gave freedom to the English Church.

The usurpations of the papacy consisted in the main of these particulars:

(1) A judicial power in matters ecclesiastical, or cases of appeal.

(2) The right of granting licences and dispensations.

(3) The liberty of sending legates into England and through them of overruling the domestic synods.

(4) The power of granting investiture to bishops, of confirming their elections, and dispensing the church-patronage.

'5) The privilege of receiving the first-fruits, the tenths of English benefices, and goods of clergymen who died intestate.

We have no concern at present with the motives of the English monarch in whose reign this country was relieved from foreign usurpations. What is really important to us is the fact thalHlenry manifested no desire, in re-asserting his prerogative, to suppress or supersede the action of the English spiritualty. It was the Church herself, canonically represented, that came forward to resolve the arduous questions mooted in this country. All of them were severally examined on their own distinctive merits, just as similar controversies were discussed and settled by the Church of earlier times. In 1534, for instance, after statutes pointing in the same direction had been carried in the parliament, it was deliberated in the two provincial synods of Canterbury and York, Whether the bishop of Borne has in Holy Scripture any greater jurisdiction, within the kingdom of England, than any other foreign bishop ?— and the question was then answered in the negative with scarcely one dissentient voice. This judgment was again corroborated by the English universities, after five weeks of deliberation, and was echoed by cathedral chapters and conventual bodies; so that, with the almost solitary exception of Fisher, bishop of Rochester, the verdicts of the several church-authorities were adverse to the old 'pretensions of the Roman pontiff.

The general grounds on which this memorable judgment had been based, are stated in the following extracts from contemporary documents. They prove, what is elsewhere apparent, that the English prelates and divines were instigated by no spirit of ecclesiastical revolution, but proceeded to their task deliberately, in armour they had drawn from their familiar converse with Christian antiquity.

I believe that these particular Churches, in what place of the world soever they be congregated, be the very parts, portions, or members of this Catholic and Universal Church. And that between them there is indeed no difference in superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, neither that any one of them is head or sovereign over the other; but that they be all equal in power and dignity, and be all grounded and builded upon one foundation.

'And therefore I do believe that the Church of Rome is not, nor cannot worthily be called the Catholic Church, but only a particular member thereof, and cannot challenge or vindicate of right, and by the Word of God, to be head of this Universal Church, or to have any superiority over the other Churches of Christ which be in England, France, Spain, or in any other realm, but that they be all free from any subjection unto the said Church of Rome, or unto the minister or bishop of the same. And I believe also that the said Church of Rome, with all the other particular Churches in the world, compacted and united together, do make and constitute but one Catholic Church or body .... And therefore I protest and acknowledge that ; in my heart I abhor and detest all heresies and schisms .' whereby the true interpretation and sense of Scripture is or may be perverted. And do promise, by the help of God, to endure unto my life's end in the right profession of faith and doctrine of the Catholic Church.'

If it be urged that the rejection of the papal claims is made to turn almost exclusively upon a theory of the Church, another extract from the same book will bring before us the historical reasons which had weight among the members of the English synod:

'As for the bishop of Rome, it was many hundred' years after Christ before he could acquire or get any primacy or governance above any other bishops, out of his province in Italy. Sith the which tune he hath ever usurped more and more. And though some part of his power was given unto him by the consent of the emperors, kings, and princes, and by the consent also of the clergy in general councils assembled; yet surely he attained the most part thereof by marvellous subtilty and craft, and specially by colluding with great kings and princes; sometime training them into his devotion by pretence and colour of holiness and sanctimony, and sometime constraining them by force and tyranny: whereby the said bishops of Rome aspired and arose at length unto such greatness in strength and authority, that they presumed and took upon them to be heads, and to put laws by their own authority, not only unto all other bishops within Christendom, but also unto the emperors, kings, and other the princes and lords of the world, and that under the pretence of the authority committed unto them by the Gospel: wherein the said bishops of Rome do not only abuse and pervert the true sense and meaning of Christ's Word, but they do also clean contrary to the use and custom of the primitive Church, and also do manifestly violate as well the holy canons made in the Church immediately after the time of the Apostles, as also the decrees and constitutions made in that behalf by the holy fathers of the Catholic Church, assembled in the first general Councils: and finally they do transgress their own profession, made in their creation. For all the bishops of Rome always, when they be consecrated and made bishops of that see, do make a solemn profession and vow, that they shall inviolably observe and keep all the ordinances made in the eight first general Councils, among the which it is specially provided and enacted, that all causes shall be finished and determined within the province where the same be begun, and that by the bishops of the same province; and that no bishop shall exercise any jurisdiction out of his own diocese or province. And divers such other canons were then made and confirmed by the said Councils, to repress and take away out of the Church all such primacy and jurisdiction over kings and bishops, as the bishops of. Rome pretend now to have over the same. And we find that divers good fathers, bishops of Rome, did greatly reprove, yea and abhor, (as a thing clean- contrary to the Gospel, and the decrees of the Church,) that any bishop of Rome or elsewhere, should presume, usurp, or take upon him the title and name of 'the universal bishop,' or of 'the head of all priests,' or of 'the highest priest,' or any such like title. For confirmation whereof, it is out of all doubt, that there is no mention made, neither in Scripture, neither in the writings of any authentical doctor or author of the Church, being within the time of the apostles, that Christ did ever make or institute any distinction or difference to be in the pre-eminence of power, order, or jurisdiction between the apostles themselves, or between the bishops themselves ; but that they were all equal in power, order, authority and jurisdiction. And that there is now, and sith the time of the apostles, any such diversity or difference among the bishops, it was devised by the ancient fathers of the primitive Church, for the conservation of good order and unity of the Catholic Church; and that either by the consent and authority, or else at the least by the permission and sufferance of the princes and civil powers for the time ruling.'

This subject, when resumed soon after in the ' Necessary Doctrine for any Christian Man' (1543), was handled in precisely the same fashion, and elucidated by still further references to history and canon-law.

It is impossible indeed to study the productions of the early Reformers without feeling that their aim had never been to found a novel Church or system of their own, but rather to re-edify and re-invigorate the system of their fathers which was rapidly falling to decay. They did not wish to break away in a schismatic temper from the rest of Christendom, but only to extinguish the unlawful jurisdiction of a proud and bold usurper, and, by following in the footsteps of the primitive Church, to rescue for their nation many a pure and evangelic element of faith, of feeling, and of ritual, which had long been deadened or distorted in the speculations of the leading schoolmen.3 As these points have been so frequently insisted on with reference to the Church of England, the production here of further evidence
is deemed superfluous i1 but the reader may be interested to observe that the same principle of reverence for the primitive faith was no less definitely advocated in a foreign document, drawn up by certain of the Lutheran states, (March 5, 1537) and rendered into English: 'For the sklannder is moost fals,' they write, ' which our aduersaries do oftentymes cast forth, that errours somtyme condemned are scattred abrode and olde heresyes renewed of our men; and therfore they denye that ther is any nede of tryall. Nother is it onye harde thynge to refute this sklaunder, our Confession2 once shewed fourth. For thys pure doctryne of the Gospel whiche we haue embraced is, wythout doute, euen the verye consents of the catholyke Church of Christ: as the testimonies of the olde Church and of holye fathers do euydentlye declare. For we do not receaue or approue any wycked opynions, or such as fyghte with. the consent of the holy fathers; yee rather in many artiklea we do renew the teachynges of the old synodes and fathers, which the latter ago had put out of the way, and for them had geuen forth other false and conterfette doctrynes, wyth the which cure aduersaryes do shamefully fyghte wyth the judgementes of the fathers and authoryte of the synodes.'