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suffered pains for their sins a certain time appointed by God's justice.'

The Thirty-nine Articles, having been finally settled, were enforced upon the Clergy by an Act entitled, characteristically enough, A Bill for the Ministers of the Church to be of Sound Religion. Subscription to the Articles was further required by an Act of 1571,1 and yet more rigorously in 1583.

There was a significant attempt, in the year 1595, to add to the document what were known as the Lambeth Articles, strongly Calvinistic, composed by Dr. Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and submitted through Whitgift, then Archbishop of Canterbury, with a synod of prelates convened by him, as a counteraction to the growing theological liberalism of the day. These Articles, nine in number, affirm in the strongest terms the predestination of some to life, the reprobation of others to death, and the certainty of final perseverance wherever justifying grace is given; adding that 'saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not communicated to

1 See the Act (13 Eliz. cap. 12) in Documents Illustrative of English Church History, p. 477.

2 See Appendix, Note 11: The Lambeth Articles (original Latin).

all men, by which they may be saved if they will.' Queen Elizabeth, however, would have none of them; and nine years afterwards, when the Hampton Court Conference of Divines petitioned King James to allow their adoption, his Majesty absolutely refused. In fact, the British Solomon seems to have been afraid of anything that looked like extreme Calvinism, as is curiously illustrated by a letter of his to Archbishop Abbot, Whitgift's successor, charging him to circulate a number of 'Directions to Preachers' among the clergy of his province. One of these Directions is: That no preacher of what title soever, under the degree of a bishop, or dean at least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, or of the universality, efficacy, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace; but leave those themes to be handled by learned men, and that moderately and modestly, by way of use and application rather than by way of positive doctrine; as being fitter for the schools and universities than for simple auditories.' 1 At the same time, the ruling powers

:

1 'Directions concerning Preachers' in Documents before quoted, p. 516.

were sufficiently resolved that the older Articles should be upheld and believed, as appears in the Declaration of King Charles the First (1628) drawn up by Laud, then newly appointed Bishop of London, and still to be read in the English Prayer-Book at the beginning of the Articles; although generally, I must say, in very small, shamefaced type:

The Articles of the Church of England (which have been allowed and authorised heretofore, and which Our Clergy generally have subscribed unto) do contain the true Doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's Word; which We do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all Our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said Articles; which to that end We command to be new printed, and this Our Declaration to be published therewith.

There is much more to the same purpose, all equally instructive. No doubt it may be saidit has been said that such injunctions could never have been literally meant. It is too absurd to ask all men to believe, in this implicit way, some hundreds of propositions, without 'the least difference' therefrom. Yes; it is no doubt absurd -the very crown and climax of all absurdities— but that alone is no reason why it should not have

been committed by such a monarch as Charles Stuart and such a prelate as William Laud.

In the meantime the Scottish Church was putting forth its several Confessions, marked, I think, by a deeper insight into Divine Truth, and by the assertion of a broader religious freedom than their English brethren had yet attained. The first of these Confessions dates from 1560: 'the banner,' says Edward Irving, 'of the Church in all her wrestlings and conflicts.' Well does the great preacher describe this manifesto of the faith, which at every point exhibits the intellectual insight, the commanding intellectual power, and the burning enthusiasm of John Knox. 'The document,' says Irving, 'consisteth of twenty-five articles, and is written in a most honest, straightforward, manly style, without compliment or flattery, without affectation of logical precision and learned accuracy, as if it came fresh from the heart of laborious workmen, all the day long busy with the preaching of the Truth, and sitting down at night to embody the heads of what was continually taught. There is a freshness of life about it which no frequency of reading wears off.'

It will suffice to notice here two striking points about this Confession. One is, that it disclaims. Divine authority for any fixed form of Church Government or Worship. Practically, as we know, the Scottish Church was Presbyterian; yet this did not lead to the unchurching of Christian societies of differently constituted form and pattern. We have been accustomed to think of our Scottish brethren as rigid and unbending in all ecclesiastical Yet this is what they say in 1560:—

matters.

In the Church, as in the House of God, it becometh all things to be done decently and in order: not that we think that one policy and one order of ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places; for, as ceremonies such as men have prescribed are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed when they rather foster superstition than edify the Church using the same.

The next point is more significant still; and it will be remembered that the words I am now about to quote very nearly accord with the language of one of the Swiss Confessions. Whether thence derived, or whether original, it deserves to be specially noted :

any

'We protest,' say these Scotchmen of 1560, 'that if one will note in this our Confession any Articles or sentence repugnant to God's Holy Word, that it would please him

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