Forbes: Introduction

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 Arti cle, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense.

” That if any public Reader in either of Our Univer sities, or any Head or Master of a College, or any other person respectively in either of them, shall affix any new sense to any Article, or shall publicly read, de termine, or hold any public Disputation, or suffer any such to be held either way, in either the Universities or Colleges respectively ; or if any Divine in the Uni versities shall preach or print anything either way, other than is already established in Convocation with Our Ro}‘al assent ; he or they, the offenders, shall be liable to Our displeasure, and the Church’s censure in Our Commission Ecclesiastical, as well as any other : and We will see there shall be due execution upon them/’

The ill-advised step of King James I. of sending deputies to the Synod of Dort, (a course very incon sistent in the friend of Montague and Andrewes, but caused partly by dislike of Vorstius, partly by political friendship for the Prince of Orange,) issued in the fiercest theological disturbance in England. Though the English delegates did what they could to mediate, their efforts were unavailing, and no sooner did they return home than the controversy began to rage. An active school, in all the energy of youth, maintained the tenets of Arminius, which drove the opposite party

Ill

into the wildest Calvinism. In vain did the King charge Archbishop Abbot to issue directions concern ing preachers. They were deliberately ignored. On the accession of Charles I., in concert with the Bishops, he issued the memorable proclamation of 1626, against ” the sharp and indiscreet handling of some of either party.” This did good in the Universities, but in the country the evil continued, wherefore it was deemed fit to issue a reprint of the Thirty-Nine Articles, with the Declaration which has ever since attached to them. It was resisted by the Calvinistic clergy, who saw in it a special condemnation of their teaching, and in the House of Commons, a debate on the Royal Declaration avowed the sense of the Articles, ” which, by the public act of the Church of England, and by the general and current expositions of the writers of our Church, have been delivered to us. And we reject the sense of Jesuits and Arminians, and all others, wherein they differ from us a.”

The Caroline Bishops knew very well what they were doing, so did the Puritans. No wonder that these latter sought to stigmatize the sense as Jesuiti call5 and Arminian. The instinct of Puritanism was naturally aroused, the Declaration was the enunciation of the Catholic sense of the Articles ; Tract XC. and the Eirenicon are legitimate outcomes of the King’s Declaration.

a Hardwick’s History of Articles of Religion, ed. 1859, p. 206. See, also, Sir John Elliot’s Speech, at p. 204, and Rushworth, i. 652.

b This could not allude to Santa Clara’s Book, which was not pub lished till 1634