circulation. It was not easy to conceive a more sober document than the one above recited, for the clergy were simply required to perform a most obvious duty in abstaining from all attempts to torture the Articles of Religion into non-natural acceptations; yet so crooked Effects of its was the age to whom this order was addressed, that it served only to embitter and inflame the passions it was anxiously striving to appease1. A large body of the Calvinistic clergy, in and about London, lost no time in preparing a petition to the King, in which they deprecated the restraints he had imposed upon the saving doctrines of God's free grace in election and perseverance.' They alleged that the Declaration had placed them in a most painful dilemma, for that they must henceforward incur the displeasure of the King if they attacked 'the Pelagian and Arminian heresies,' or, on the other hand, must provoke a still heavier indignation by neglecting to make known the whole observed for the time to come. Heylin, ubi sup. Part III. ch. xxii. § 12. 1 The following passage from a 'Declaration' of the king on the dissolution of parliament (March 10, 1628), is a strong proof of his personal earnestness in this matter: 'Having taken a strict and exact survey of our government, both in the Church and commonwealth, and what things were most fit and necessary to be reformed, We found, in the first place, that much exception had been taken at a book, entitled, Appello Cæsarem, or, An Appeal to Cæsar, and published in the year 1625, by Richard Montague, then bachelor of Divinity, and now bishop of Chichester; and because it did open the way to those schisms and divisions, which have since ensued in the Church, We did, for remedy and redress thereof, 6 counsel of God'. In the House of Commons also, where the puritanical party was now predominant, and where it was solemnly averred that the suppression of Popery and Arminianism' was the very foremost duty, a debate3 on the royal Declaration had resulted in the following vow: We the Commons in parliament assembled do claim, protest, and avow for truth, the sense of the Articles of Religion which were established by parliament in the thirteenth year of our late Queen Elizabeth, which by the publick act of the Church of England, and by the general and currant expositions of the writers of our Church, have been delivered unto us. And we reject the sense of the Jesuites and Arminians, and all others, wherein they differ from us.' How fatal these protestations are to the plea that the Articles were manifestly framed on the Calvinistic hypothesis, it is almost needless to remark; for as the royal Declaration did no more than restrict the teaching of the clergy to a plain and literal interpretation of that Formulary, the outcry which was now raised against a principle so clear was the fullest admission of the ground which Montague and the rest had taken, when they urged that the Calvinism' of the Articles can be proved by none of the laws which have ordinarily obtained in the construction of legal or of other documents1. 1 Collier, II. 746, 747. 2 Rushworth, 1. 652. 3 The speeches of Rous and Prynne are full of the most vehement denunciations of Arminianism. Ibid. 645, 647. The latter asserts it to be the duty of a parliament to establish true religion and to punish false, declaring its superiority above the Convocation of Canterbury, which is but provincial and cannot bind the whole kingdom, and adding, with respect to York, that 'it is distant and cannot do any thing to bind us or the laws.' Ibid. 649, 650. 4 See the remarks of Dr Waterland on this subject: Works, II. 350. CHAPTER X. OBJECTIONS TO THE ARTICLES AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. THE jection to the Articles, 1562. HE earliest example of antipathy to the Articles Earliest obof 1562 was the result of the numerous scruples which began to be urged in the reign of Elizabeth, touching the rites and ceremonies of the Church. Though some of the Puritans were able to reconcile their rejection of the defiled robes of Antichrist' with the acceptance of the thirty-fourth article on ecclesiastical Traditions',' it was felt by the majority as a harsh and unwarranted restriction, which they might piously struggle to remove. Accordingly the bill 'for ministers of the Church to be of sound religion,' which passed in 1571, was so ambiguously worded by its promoters in the house of Commons as to relieve some of the puritanical clergy (at least in their own opinion) from the necessity of subscribing to any other Articles, except those which only concern the confession of the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments"," The Admo Parliament, Yet even this apparent relaxation did not conci- nitions to liate the licentiousness of party-spirit, which was now 1572, diffusing itself on all sides, among the mass of the English people. The 'Admonitions to the Parliament' in 1572 were bold and acrimonious manifestations of the same growing discontent. Stimulated by an epistle from Beza, which is appended to the first 'Admoni 1 See above, pp. 111, 112. Some, however, more consistently objected to the Article in question, and as early as the Covocation of 1562, proposed that the censure of those who disconform may be softened, and let down to a gentler dis like.' Collier, II. 486. 2 Neal, Hist. of the Puritans, 1. 267, 268, Lond. 1732; Blackburne, Works, v. 23, Camb. 1804, and below, pp. 217-220. The Parliament of 1610 urged this distinction on behalf of the Puritans. Neal, 11. 83. opposed to the doctrine as well as discipline tion,' the Non-conformists began to insist more impatiently than ever upon 'purity of discipline,' understanding, in the first instance, the subversion of the hierarchy, which was regarded as the cheefe cause of backewardnesse, and of all breache and dissention'.' But their zeal was not suffered to expire in its denunciation of the bishops, and of antichristian rites.' 'Remoue Homylies, Articles, Iniunctions,' was the undiscriminating clamour of the self-same faction, and that prescripte Order of seruice made out of the masse-booke".' Some writers, indeed, have contended that the Puritans, while agitating for their conceived disciof the Church. pline, never moved any quarrel against the doctrine of our Church3;' but nothing can be more certain than that the authors of the two Admonitions to Parliament took a very different ground, affirming, with as much of sagacity as of malice, that the righte gouernment of the Church cannot be seperated from the doctrine1.' They positively argued that in addition to its ritual deformities, the Prayer-Book was 'full of corruptions5,' that in the Ordinal there was at least one paragraph which they never hesitated to condemn as 'manifest blasphemy;' and for this very reason some of them had refused to subscribe in the course of the previous year, when summoned before the high Commissioners. It is true that the Articles of Religion, excepting so far as they involved an approval of the other Formularies of the Church, appear to have been in a less degree obnoxious to the Nonconformists in the reign of Elizabeth. They were of the Puri- sometimes not unwilling to avow", "For the Articles concerning the substance of doctrine, vsing a godly The reserve tans on ac cepting the Articles. 1 'To the godly readers,' A. 3 Bp Carleton, Examination 4 First Admonition, C. 6 See the passage at length and remarks upon it in Whitgift's 'Answere to a certen Libell intituled, "An Admonition to the Parliament,"' Lond. 1573, 298, 299. interpretation in a poynte or two, which are eyther too sparely or else too darkely set downe, we were and are ready, according to duetie, to subscribe vnto them." But the reserve accompanying this statement may not unreasonably excite our suspicion, that even with respect to the particular document thus arbitrarily chosen for approval, the Puritans had secret misgivings, lest here also they should be stoong with the tayle of Antichristian infection.' And on turning to other portions of the same manifestos, there is satisfactory proof that such scruples existed in the authors. of the second Admonition. After a severe invective on episcopacy, for its persecuting and intolerant spirit, they proceed to enumerate additional grievances, equally needing reformation: 'I praye you are they not starke naught, yea, and so are diuers of them, not onely for their bribing and corruption, and their arrogancie, their tyrannie, but for flat heresie in the sacrament, and some bee suspected of the heresy of Pelagius. For the first, that is, concerning the sacrament, Their positive the bishops are notoriously knowne which erre in it, Article xvI. and for free-will not onely they are suspected, but others also. And in deede the booke of the Articles of Christian religion speaketh very daungerously of falling from grace, which is to be reformed, bicause it too muche enclineth to their erroure'.' objection to The disaffection implied in language of this kind went on gradually deepening its hold upon the people in proportion as the principles imported from Geneva were more and more consciously developed. In 1587, appeared A Defence of the Government established in the Church of England by John Bridges, deane of Sarum,' who is occupied in vindicating the Articles no less than the other Formularies of Faith from the same unquiet spirits. They had ventured to speake Denunciation against diuers grosse and palpable errors that had in 1587. escaped the bishops,' in the compilation of the Book of Articles; alleging, it would seem, by way of ex 1 Seconde Admonition to the 2 1301, 1302, Lond. 1587. Parliament, A.D. 1572, 43. of the Articles |