God's law are they compelled to abstain from matrimony"), XXXIII. (On “ Traditions of the Church"), XXXV. ("Of the Book of Prayers and ceremonies of the Church of England"), XXXVI. (" The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England")

2. On the other hand it is probable that to a still greater extent the Articles were conditioned by the errors of the Anabaptists, who were rapidly bringing the whole Reformation movement into serious discredit by their wild extravagances and the utter defiance and repudiation of all authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, of which they were guilty. These fanatics took their name from their practice of re-baptizing those who joined them, having been previously baptized in infancy. But their errors were far from being confined to the single point of the rejection of infant baptism. Indeed, it is hard to find a heresy or erroneous opinion which may not be laid to the charge of some among them. How serious was the danger, and what was the character of the false teaching which they were propagating in this country, may be seen from a letter written by Bishop Hooper shortly before the preparation of the Forty-Two Articles:

"The Anabaptists flock to the place, and give me much trouble with their opinions respecting the incarnation of our Lord; for they deny altogether that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, according to the flesh. They contend that a man who is reconciled to God is without sin, and free from all stain of concupiscence, and that nothing of the old Adam remains in his nature; and a man, they say, who is thus regenerate cannot sin. They add that all hope of pardon is taken away from those who, after having received the Holy Ghost, fall into sin. They maintain a fatal necessity, and that beyond and beside that will of His, which He has revealed to us in the Scriptures, God hath another will, by

which he altogether acts under some kind of necessity. Although I am unable to satisfy their obstinacy, yet the Lord by His word shuts their mouths, and their heresies are more and more detested by the people. How dangerously our England is afflicted by heresies of this kind, God only knows; I am unable indeed from sorrow of heart to express to your piety. There are some who deny that man is endued with a soul different from that of a beast, and subject to decay. Alas, not only are these heresies reviving among us, which were formerly dead and buried, but new ones are springing up every day. There are such libertines and wretches, who are daring enough in their conventicles not only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world, but also to call that blessed seed a mischievous fellow, and deceiver of the world. On the other hand, a great portion of the kingdom so adheres to the popish faction, as altogether to set at nought God and the lawful authority of the magistrates; so that I am greatly afraid of a rebellion and civil discord." 1

To the same effect another of Bullinger's correspondents, Martin Micronius, writes on August 14, 1551:

"We have not only to contend with the Papists, who are almost everywhere ashamed of their errors, but much more with the Sectaries and Epicureans and pseudo-Evangelicals. In addition to the ancient errors respecting pædo-baptism, the incarnation of Christ, the authority of the magistrate, the lawfulness of an oath, the property and community of goods, and the like, new ones are rising up every day, with which we have to contend. The chief opponents, however, of Christ's divinity are the Arians, who are now beginning to shake our churches with greater violence than ever 1Original letters (Parker Society), p. 65. The letter is dated June 25,

as they deny the conception of Christ by the Virgin." As a safeguard against the errors of fanatics, such as those thus described, even more perhaps than against the errors of medievalists, it was found necessary to issue the Articles. Although the Anabaptists are actually mentioned by name in but two of the Articles, namely, VIII. (On original sin), and XXXVII. (“ Christian men's goods are not common "), they are undoubtedly the persons alluded to in Article VI ("They are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises"), XIV., XV. ("They are to be condemned which say they can no more sin as long as they live here, etc."), XVIII. (“They also are to be had accursed and abhorred that presume to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, etc. "), XIX. ("They are not to be hearkened unto, who affirm that Holy Scripture is given only to the weak, etc."). In each of these articles there is evidently a definite set of persons contemplated who were propagating the views condemned; and in each case we find that the objectionable tenet was one which was maintained by some among the Anabaptists. Further, Anabaptist opinions account for the language of Article XXIV. ("It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering in the congregation, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same,"), XXVII. ("The wickedness of the ministers doeth not away the effectual operation of God's ordinances "), XXVIII. ("The custom of the Church to christen young children is to be commended, and in any wise to be retained in the Church "), XXXII. ("Excommunicate persons are to be avoided "), XXXIII. ("Whosoever through his private judgment willingly and purposely doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the 1Ibid. p. 574. Both letters are quoted in Hardwick, p. 88 seq.

word of God, and be ordained, and approved by common. authority, ought to be rebuked openly (that others may fear to do the like), as one that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of weak brethren "), XXXVI. (“The civil magistrate is ordained and allowed of God; wherefore we must obey him, not only for fear of punishment, but also for conscience sake. The civil laws may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences. It is lawful for Christians, at the commandment of the magistrate, to wear weapons, and to serve in lawful wars "), XXXVIII. ("Christian men may take an oath "), XXXIX. (“The resurrection of the dead is not yet brought to pass "), XL. ("The souls of them that depart this life do neither die with their bodies, nor sleep idly "), XLI. ("Heretics called Millenarii ") XLII. (“ All men shall not be saved at the length"). And even in those articles which might be thought to be less directly polemical, such as I. to IV., and VII. (On the Creeds), there can really be no doubt that the danger of Anabaptism was present to the compilers. It was owing to the spread of the errors of these fanatics that it became absolutely necessary to re-state the fundamental articles of the faith, and the Church's adherence to the traditional Creeds of Christendom, for many of the Anabaptists "abandoned every semblance of belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and so passed over to the Arian and Socinian schools, then rising up in Switzerland, in Italy, and in Poland."1

This brief review of the object and contents of the Forty-Two Articles will be sufficient to show that in the first instance the document must have been merely intended to be a provisional and temporary one. Every line of it bears witness to this. The idea that

1 1 Hardwick, p. 86.

it would be maintained as a permanent test of orthodoxy cannot have ever occurred to its authors. For such a purpose it is singularly ill-suited. Many of the articles are purely negative, condemning in trenchant terms some existing error, but not attempting to define the positive truth opposed to it. Our review will also indicate how utterly mistaken is the notion that the Articles were mainly, if not exclusively, designed as a safeguard against Rome, for we have seen that, although a considerable number of the Articles do condemn Roman and medieval errors, yet a far larger number are directed against the teaching of the Anabaptists, and denounce false doctrines in terms to which the most ardent Romanist could not take exception.

(c.) The Sources of the Forty-two Articles.

When the Anglican formulary of 1553 is compared with the Confession of Augsburg (1530), it is immediately apparent that the later document is indebted to the earlier one. The similarity between some of the Articles is so marked that the Lutheran Confession may be unhesitatingly set down as their ultimate source. But it is tolerably certain that the debt is only indirect, nor is there any reason to think that the Augsburg Confession itself was actually used by Cranmer and his colleagues in the preparation of the English Articles. The clauses common to both are all found also in the Thirteen Articles of 1538, and other language in the Forty-Two Articles is also traced to this document, and not to Augsburg. Even so, the debt to Lutheranism is but a limited one. The correspondence of language is confined almost entirely to Articles I., II., XXIII., XXVI., XXVII., XXXII., i.e. to the Articles on the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Sacraments, and Traditions of the Church. On the burning question of justification and all kindred subjects, where correspondence might well be looked for,