The zeal of to qualifie it that it were better to be omitted altogether'.' Bancroft was himself raised to the primacy of England very early in the following century, and before that time had been distinguished by his zeal in reducing the lawlessness of the Non-conformists. He was president of the Convocation which assembled on the 20th of March, 1603, and in which the Articles of Religion all and singular,' were subscribed 'by the byshops and the whole cleargy of the province of Canterbury.' This formal recognition had doubtless been suggested by the prevalent hostility to the Articles, as well as to the other Formularies of the Church2, on the part of the puritan body; and the Subscription same cause would operate in the proposition of Banin the Canons croft, to engraft the disciplinary injunctions of archbishop Whitgift3, upon the new code of Canons, which were solemnly confirmed at this period, under the great seal of England. The absolute order for subscription which this code embodied, resulted in the secession of a large number of the Non-conformists, entitled brethren of the second separation,' and in the further embittering of those who adhered to the communion of the Church, against the whole ecclesiastical system. commanded of 1604. But the zeal of the English rulers, though too long dormant or perverted, was now prompting them to undertake a more extensive plan for repairing its 1 Survey of the Pretended Holy Discipline, 249. Lond. 1593. 2 At the Hampton-Court Conference just before, the leader of the Puritans had contended that 'subscription was a great impeachment to a learned ministry, and therefore entreated it might not be exacted as heretofore.' Cardwell's Hist. of Confer. 193. To subscribe according to the statutes of the realm, namely, to the Articles and the King's supremacy they were not unwilling.' The Prayer-Book was the great stumbling-block. 3 See above, p. 222. and cf. Canon XXXVI. which enjoins subscription to the Articles universally on all as well at ordination as at institution to a benefice. The best Account of the Subscription of the Convocation to the Articles in 1604,' is given by the late Archdeacon Todd in App. iv. of his 'Declarations of our Reformers on Original Sin,' &c. Lond. 1818. to the many breaches'. The Universities, which had long Extended been the nursery of puritanism, were henceforth in- Universities. cluded under the operation of the test provided by the Canons of 1604. It is true that the officers of Cambridge adopted a similar method of ascertaining the orthodoxy of their graduates, as early as the reign of Edward; but his death, as we have noticed, put an end to the agitation which this question was exciting, and it does not seem to have been afterwards mooted there until the reign of James I2. At Oxford, however, a decree of Convocation, in 1573, commanded that each candidate for the future, before taking his degree, should subscribe the Articles of Religion; and in 1576, a further law extended the application of the test to every person above the age of sixteen, upon entering his name at any College or Hall. In the year 16163 the powers of both the Universities were enlarged by directions from King James, enjoining that all who were admitted to degrees should subscribe the three Articles of the 36th Canon; but in the case of Cambridge, it was resolved by the Grand Committee for Religion,' (Jan. 19, 1649), that the regulation for exacting subscription from the students was against the law and liberty of the subject, and ought not to be pressed in future upon any one whatever1. Restoration subscription. Yet notwithstanding the disuse into which it Effect of the had fallen, during the gloomy interval that elapsed to re-establish from this period to the Restoration of Charles II., it was now imposed upon the clergy with a greater 1 e. g. Bancroft inquires in 1605, and Abbott in 1616, whether any impugn the Articles (Cardwell's Docum. Ann. II. 103, 221). 2 Some of the following facts are drawn from a 'Summary View of the Laws relating to Subscriptions,' &c., 2nd ed. Lond. 1772. 3 Three years earlier the 4 Rushworth, Iv. 149. Subsequent attempts to remove it. stringency than ever. Conformity to the ritual of the Church was peremptorily ordered by Sheldon and his colleagues, and the 36th of the Jacobean Canons obeyed with unswerving punctuality. Among other proofs of the augmented vigilance, which it was thought necessary to exert in promoting the harmony of faith and worship, the Act of Uniformity, 13 and 14 Car. II., c. 14, requires every head of a college to 'subscribe unto the Nine and Thirty Articles of Religion, mentioned in the statute made in the thirteenth year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth....and declare his unfeigned assent and consent unto, and approbation of, the said Articles:' and in a subsequent proviso it enacts, that all such subscriptions shall be construed as extending to the Ordinal mentioned in the six and thirtieth Article, any thing in the said Article, or in any statute, act, or canon heretofore had or made, to the contrary thereof, in any wise notwithstanding.' The Act of Toleration, as we have seen already, restricted the number of the Articles which were offered to dissenting ministers,' but in the application of that Formulary to the Church, its effect has been altogether unimpaired from the period of the Restoration to the times in which we live. It should be remarked, however, that a large number of the English clergy, more especially in the middle of the last century, were loud in demanding emancipation from what they called the 'fetters of subscription.' The depriving of the Non-jurors very frequently involved the substitution of elements ill-according with the primitive temper of the Prayer-Book, or with the unhesitating voice of the other Formularies in behalf of dogmatic truth. The controversies also, which broke out at the same period, were the means of confining the attention of the rest to their own immediate wants; and in proportion as the study of patristic literature decayed, there grew up a school of Arian and Socinian clergy, absolutely denying the necessity of faith in the fundamental doctrines of the Church, or striving to reduce the credenda of the Gospel to the lowest possible number. Still it is painful to record, that most of these writers were not unwilling, in the first instance, to undergo the formality, as they deemed it, of subscribing the Articles of Religion, either as a step on the way to ordination or to the honours and emoluments of office. They alleged that 'these Articles may conscientiously be subscribed in any sense in which they themselves, by their own. interpretation, could reconcile them to Scripture, without regard to the meaning and intention, either of the persons who first compiled or who now imposed them1.' But the hollowness of their principle was speedily acknowledged, and many of them afterwards resorted to a scheme for demolishing every oath and declaration, which had the power of questioning their fitness for the work of their sacred callings. Headed The moveby the unscrupulous but very talented author of the headed by 'Confessional,' they affirmed that the doctrines of the Christian religion cannot possibly be made clearer by human compilations or Articles of faith; that to demand a full and undoubted assent to propositions, in themselves very doubtful and obscure, is to tyrannize over the understanding of subscribers; that external conformity in the use of an established Liturgy without the aid of Articles of Religion, or any test of doctrine whatsoever, is security enough for the decencies of public worship, and also for the peaceful continuation of the present Church-establishment 2. 1 Waterland, Case of Arian Subscription, Works, II. 264, 265. 2 See these arguments soberly stated in a Letter to the Members of the Honourable House of Commons,' by a Christian Whig, Lond. 1772. The Arian character of the movement is peculiarly manifest in 'Reasons ment of 1771, Blackburne. Defeated by Commons. While the press was teeming with publications in behalf of these bold and suicidal measures, the disaffection took a more formidable shape under the guidance of the same Blackburne, who had been the instrument in rousing the general agitation. In 1771, he published his Proposals for an Application to Parliament, for relief in the matter of subscription to the Liturgy and Thirty-nine Articles of the Established Church of England';' and as the way had been already opened in some of his earlier productions, there was no lack of learned and conscientious clergy' to aid him in his present undertaking. A petition was accordingly prepared and introduced into the House of Commons, Feb. 6, 1772. It set out by affirming the undoubted right of Protestants to interpret Scripture for themselves;' it complained of the violence habitually done to this principle by the exaction of assent to Articles and Confessions of faith drawn up by fallible men;' and after enlarging upon other grievances, submitted the cause of the petitioners, 'under God, to the wisdom and justice of a British parliament, and the piety of a Protestant king.' Happily, however, for the nation as well as for the the House of Church, this feverish effort of the Arianizing party to escape from the consequences of the obligations to which it had willingly submitted, was condemned in the House of Commons. By whatever motives they were influenced, whether by 'disinclination to religious changes,' or 'by the fashion of the times1,' or by a clearer anticipation of the fruits of this measure than some of its infatuated authors, they repelled the petition on the threshold, by a majority of 217 to 71, leaving Blackburne to utter his regret in a series of acrimonious Reflections' on the fate of his darling project. 1 Works, vii. 1, seqq. Camb. 1804. 2 See it at length; ibid. 15, seqq. an advocate of the measure), 4. Lond. 1772. 4 Blackburne, Reflections on the Fate of a Petition, &c. 3 A Letter to a Bishop, (by Works, vII. 37. |