High repute of St Augustine among the Reformers Influence of Calvin, and his school His system divergent from that of St Augustine 'Calvinism' embraced by many of the Marian exiles Yet not engrafted on the Anglican Formularies Admonitions to the Parliament (1572) Puritans opposed to the general doctrine of the Church And in some measure to the Articles . Bolder denunciation of the Articles (1587) Dissatisfaction betrayed by the Lambeth and Irish Articles Proceedings of Convocation on the same subject Resistance of the Non-Conformists Laxity of other prelates repaired by Whitgift (1584) Fresh laxity, and complaints of Bancroft thereon HISTORY OF THE ARTICLES OF RELIGION. CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. THE HE 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. sity of a re Now that'reformation' of some kind or other had been Felt neces long the passionate cry in almost every province of the formation. Western Church is patent and indisputable. Those writers who are loudest in denouncing the Lutheran movement (as Bellarmine and Bossuet and Möhler) 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, H. A. 1 |