and the Latin and English adjusted as nearly as possible. Fourthly, That the Articles thus prepared in both languages were published the same year, and by the royal authority. Fifthly, Subscription was required the same year to the English Articles, called the Articles of 1562, by the famous Act of the 13th of Elizabeth.

These things considered, I might justly say, with Bishop Burnet, that the Latin and English are both equally authentical. Thus much, however, I may certainly infer, that if in any places the English version be ambiguous, where the Latin original is clear and determinate, the Latin ought to fix the more doubtful sense of the other (as also vice versa), it being evident that the Convocation, Queen, and Parliament, intended the same sense in both.”1

4. THE ROYAL DECLARATION.

Since 1571 no change whatever has been made in the text of the Thirty-Nine Articles. But, as they stand in modern prayer-books, there is prefixed to them a document entitled "His Majesty's Declaration," of which some account must now be given.

By the time of the accession of Charles the First (1625), the school of churchmen, of which Bishop Andrewes is the best and most famous representative,2 had begun to rise into power. The publication of the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker may be

1 "Supplement to the Case of Arian Subscription Considered," Works, vol. ii. p. 316; quoted in Hardwick, p. 156.

* On the position of Andrewes and his school, see Dean Church's essay on Andrewes, in Masters in English Theology, p. 88 seq.

The first four books of the Ecclesiastical Polity were published in 1593, and the fifth came out by itself in 1597; the three remaining books were published posthumously, as they were incomplete when Hooker died in 1600.

said to mark the beginnings of the reaction against the dominant Calvinism of the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. Since then the position of the "Arminian "1 party had become much more definite. Instead of merely standing upon the defensive, they were beginning to carry the war into the enemy's country, and attack the interpretation which the Calvinistic party, with an entire disregard of history, had fastened upon the Articles and formularies of the Church. The attention of the country in general was called to the subject by the appearance of Richard Montague's New Gag for an Old Goose in 1622. Montague was at this time a simple parish priest, and his work was intended as a reply to a Roman attack upon the Church of England, entitled The Gag for the New Gospel, which assumed that the popular Calvinistic theology of the day truly represented the accepted doctrine of the Church of England. To this position Montague offered an uncompromising opposition, and, "as far as the matter of his volume is concerned," it may be described as "a temperate exposition of the reasons which were leading an increasing body of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome and Geneva alike." Complaints of the book were raised in the House of Commons, and the matter was referred to Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Montague was summoned to Lambeth, and admonished; but instead of yielding to the primate's advice, returned home to follow up his first work by a second, the famous Appello Cæsarem, in which he "indicated more fiercely than before his claim to be the true exponent of the doctrine

"2

It is difficult to know by what term to describe the party. "High Churchmen" is an anachronism, as the word had not yet come into use. "Arminian" was the term (most unfairly) applied to them by their opponents. It is therefore employed in the text.

2 S. R. Gardiner, History of England, vol. v. p. 352.

of the Church." 1 The book was scarcely completed before James I. died, and thus it appeared in 1625 with a dedication to his successor. Once more complaints

were raised in the House of Commons, and for a time Montague was committed to custody. Shortly after his release, however, he was appointed Bishop of Chichester (August 1628), and now, though the Puritan Abbot was still Archbishop of Canterbury, yet with Laud already Bishop of London, and daily rising in the royal favour, it was manifest to all that the supremacy of the Calvinistic party was seriously endangered. While the storm raised by the publication of the Appello Cæsarem was still raging, Cosin, Prebendary (and afterwards Bishop) of Durham, had in 1627 published his Devotions. This was a manual of prayer, containing offices for the Hours, which had been prepared, probably at the request of the King himself, for the use of members of the English Church. It was at once made the subject of a violent attack by William Prynne, who boldly demanded that, for the future, no man should be allowed to speak or write against the Calvinistic doctrines, and that the conclusions of the (Calvinistic) Synod of Dort should be offered as a test to every clergyman in England. Those who refused to subscribe were to be at once excluded from holding any ecclesiastical office. This was a definite challenge to the Church party, and was immediately accepted by them as such. Two years before, in 1626, a royal proclamation for the peace of the Church had been drawn up, in the hope of putting an end to the unseemly controversies which were raging. In some of the towns where this was distributed, it seems to have had some effect. Accordingly Laud now advised Charles to follow it up by a second proclamation, which should 1S. R. Gardiner, History of England, vol. v. p. 354.

2 Cf. Hardwick, p. 200.

be prefixed to a reprint of the Thirty-Nine Articles. This was at once done,1 and the document thus issued, which is probably from the pen of Laud himself, has kept its place prefixed to the Articles to the present day. Its object was to allay the violent disputes by which the Church was torn asunder. And in order to effect this, his Majesty was made to express his will, that "in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years, in different times and places, exercised the Church of Christ... all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as they be generally set forth to us in the Holy Scripture, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of England according to them. And that no man hereafter shall either print or preach to draw the article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof; and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense.”

Simultaneously with the publication of this declaration a proclamation was issued, calling in Montague's Appello Cæsarem, in order that men might "no more trouble themselves with these unnecessary questions, the first occasion being taken away." But, in spite of this proof of earnestness and good faith, the indignation of the Puritan and Calvinistic party among the clergy and in the House of Commons knew no bounds. Some of the clergy at once addressed a petition to the King, complaining that he had placed them in a grave dilemma, for they must either disobey him by attacking the Pelagian and Arminian heresies, or else, on the other hand, "provoke the heavier indignation of the King of kings Himself by failing to make known the whole counsel 1 See the history in Gardiner, vol. vii. p. 21 seq.

of God," while the House of Commons, turned for the time into a theological debating society, solemnly adopted the following resolution :

"We, the Commons now in Parliament assembled, do claim, profess, and avow for truth, the sense of the Articles of religion which were established in Parliament in the reign of our late Queen Elizabeth, which by public acts of the Church of England, and by the general and concurrent exposition of the writers of our Church, have been delivered to us; and we do reject the sense of the Jesuits and Arminians. "1

Into the later history of the controversy there is no necessity to enter here. It is sufficient to point out how true is the remark of Archdeacon Hardwick that such protestations are utterly inconsistent with the pretext that the Articles were framed on a Calvinistic hypothesis, "for as the 'Declaration' aimed at nothing more than to confine the teaching of the clergy to those points which were suggested by a plain and literal exposition of the public formulary, the wild outcry raised against such principles of exegesis seemed to justify the argument which Montague and others were adopting, when they urged that Calvinism' is not accordant with the letter of the Articles, and cannot be deduced from them by any of the rules which judges commonly apply to the interpretation of a legal document." 2

5. PURITAN ATTEMPTS TO AMEND OR SUPPLEMENT THE ARTICLES.

The observation just quoted is very just, and, in order to confirm it, it will be well to pass briefly in review the attempts to supplement or amend the Articles which at various times proceeded from the Calvinistic party, who 1Gardiner, vol. vii. p. 41. Hardwick, p. 203.