RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Thietmar Thirty-Nine Articles
Times (1885-87). Since 1888 he has been one of the editors of The Christian, and has written Titles of the Psalms (London, 1904) and Old Testament Problems: Critical Studies in the Psalms and Isaiah (1907).
THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES, THE.
Earliest Attempts to Formulate an English Creed (§ 1).
The Forty-two Articles (§ 2).
Formulation and Adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles (§ 3).
Content and Character of the Articles (§ 4).
Interpretation (§5).
The Protestant Episcopal Church (§6).
The Thirty-nine Articles differ from the more elaborate confessions of the sixteenth century in form, but agree with them in spirit. As compared with the later canons of the synod of Dort and the Westminster Confession, they are more genial in tone and lack the metaphysi. Earliest ical element so prominent in the latter. Attempt to The Ten Articles of 1536 (q.v.), and the Formulate Six Articles of 1539 (q.v.) issued in an English the reign of Henry VIII., prepared Creed. the way for a final statement of doctrinal controversies. King Henry VIII. was hardly a Protestant, but he advanced the English Reformation by abolishing the jurisdiction of the pope in England and pronouncing his authority to be no greater than that of any other bishop, as well as by suppressing a large number of English monasteries and sequestrating their revenues. The positive Reformation was first fairly introduced during the reign of Edward VI. (1547-53) under the lead of Archbishop Cranmer. Cranmer at first entertained the noble but premature project of framing an Evangelical catholic creed, in which all the Reformed churches could agree in opposition to the Church of Rome, then holding the Council of Trent, and he invited the surviving continental Reformers — Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger — to London for the purpose. Calvin was willing to cross ten seas for such a work of Christian union, and so replied to Cranmer in 1552 (the correspondence is in Cranmer's Works, Parker Society ed., ii., 430-433, 1846). But political events prevented the conference,' and so the formulation of the doctrinal consensus of the Reformed churches.
Failing in this scheme, Cranmer framed, with the
aid of his fellow Reformers, the Forty-two Articles
of Religion for the English reformed church. As
early as 1549 he had drawn up a series
2. The of articles which were submitted to
Forty-two licentiates before licensure. These he
Articles, revised and the council submitted them
to a commission consisting of Grindal,
Home, John Knox, and others for examination.
They were completed in their final form Nov., 1552,
and published in 1553 by " royal authority." The
title-page states also that they had the official
sanction of convocation. But Cranmer stated at a
later time that this was not true (cf. Dixon, 514
sqq.; J. Gairdner, A History of the English Church
from Henry VIII to Mary, p. 311, London, 1903).
The reestablishment of the papacy under the short
reign of Mary (1553-58) set them aside.
Under Elizabeth (1558-1603) the Articles were
XL— 27
reduced to thirty-nine, and brought into the form which they have retained ever since in the Church of England. The Latin edition was prepared under the supervision of Archbishop Parker, with the aid of Bishop Cox of Ely (one of the Marian exiles) and Bishop Guest of Rochester, approved by convocation, and published by the royal 3. Formula- press, 1563, but with art. xxix. stricken tion and out by Elizabeth. The English edi-
Adoption of tion, slightly differing from the Latin,
the Thirty- and containing the omitted art. xxix., nine Articles, was adopted by the two convocations in 1571, and issued under the editorial care of Bishop Jewel of Salisbury the same year. Seven of the forty-two articles were omitted (those bearing on the descent of Christ into Hades, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Millenarians, the sleep of the soul after death, etc.). Four new articles concerned the procession of the Holy Spirit, the administration of the cup to the laity, the failure of the unworthy to partake of Christ's body in the Lord's Supper, and a list of homilies. They were made binding on all ministers and teachers of religion, and students in the universities, but subscription was not always enforced with rigor. The Non-conformists, who had objections to the political articles, complained bitterly. The Act of Uniformity (see Uniformity, Acts of) under Charles II. (1662) imposed greater stringency than ever; but the Toleration Act (q.v.) of William and Mary gave some relief by exempting dissenting ministers from subscribing to arts, xxxiv., xxxvi., and a portion of xxvii. Subsequent attempts to relax or abolish subscription resulted at last in the University Tests Act of 1871, which exempts all students and graduates in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, except divinity students, fellows, professors, and heads of colleges, from subscription, and throws these institutions open to Dissenters.
The Thirty-nine Articles are among the most important doctrinal formulas of the Reformation period. They cover nearly all the heads of the Christian faith, especially those which were then under dispute with the Roman Catholics. They affirm (1) the catholic doctrines of the
4. Content Trinity and incarnation, and the three and Charac- early creeds — the Apostles', Nicene,
ter of the and Athanasian; and (2) the Protes- Articles. tant doctrines on the authority of the Scriptures, " justification by faith only," the distinction between the visible and invisible Church, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. In common with other Protestant formularies, they condemn the doctrine of supererogatory works, purgatory, the worship of relics, the invocation of saints, clerical celibacy, the adoration of the host, and the mass. The errancy of general councils is affirmed. The bishop of Rome is declared " to have no jurisdiction in England." They are borrowed, in part, from Lutheran standards; namely, the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Wurttemberg Confession (1552); but on the sacraments, especially the much-disputed doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, they follow the Swiss reformers, Bullinger and Calvin. The
Thirty-Nine Articles Thoburn