The post brought to mind an August 1625 letter to the Earl of Buckingham from three bishops - Buckeridge of Rochester, Howson of Oxford, and Laud of St Davids - amidst the controversy surrounding Richard Montague, the avant-garde conformist cleric whose A New Gag for an Old Goose (an apologetic work responding to Roman claims) led to allegations of 'Arminianism'.
The Church of England ... when it was reformed from the superstitious opinions broached or maintained by the Church of Rome, refused the apparent and dangerous errors, and would not be too busy with every particular school-point. The cause why she held this moderation was, because she could not be able to preserve any unity amongst Christians, if men were forced to subscribe to curious particulars debated in the schools.
... the opinions which at this time trouble many men in the late work of Mr Montague, are, some of them, such as are expressly the resolved doctrine of the Church of England, and those he is bound to maintain. Some of them, such as are fit only for schools, are to be left at more liberty for learned men to abound in their own sense, so they keep themselves peaceable, and distract not the Church; and therefore, to many man subscribe to school-opinions may justly seem hard in the Church of Christ, and was one great fault of the Council of Trent.
The "moderation" of the ecclesia Anglicana, avoiding speculation on "curious particulars debated in the schools", served the peace and unity of the Church, a fundamental Laudian concern. Montague himself, responding to his Roman interlocutor's assertion that Protestants taught "That God, by his will & inevitable decree, hath ordained from all eternity, who shall be damned, and who saved", similarly insisted on the modesty of the teaching of the Articles:
The Church of England hath not taught it, doth not believe it, hath opposed it; wisely contenting herself with this ... Limitation, Art. 17. "We must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy scripture"; and not presuming to determine of When, How, Wherefore, or Whom; Secrets reserved to God alone.
Those who speculate beyond this, Montagu declares, do so "in curiosity, hath presumed far upon, and waded deep into the hidden Secrets of the Almighty".
The Laudian desire to avoid such speculative, school debates undermining the peace and unity of the Church was to find authoritative expression in His Majesty's Declaration, prefixed to the Articles in 1628. It condemned "unnecessary Disputations, Altercations, or Questions", and in the face of "curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years, in different times and places, exercised the Church of Christ", directed that "further curious search be laid aside" in favour of submitting to "the plain and full meaning" of the Articles in their "literal and grammatical sense".
Here we see the purpose of the "moderation", the modesty, of the Articles: to serve, in the words of the Declaration, "the Bond of Peace". As the title of the Articles of Religion states, their purpose is "for the establishment of consent", a purpose not served by requiring subscription to what the bishops termed "school opinions". This brings me back to Ben's article and his point that that Articles provide a "chastened but firm construal of orthodoxy". We might define this as a creedal, Augustinian, Reformed Catholic centre which because of its focus, modesty, and reserve has "value in preventing the sort of intra-Christian strife which inhibits the work of our collective sanctification" (a thoroughly Laudian insight).
In other words, those of us who contend for a much greater significance being afforded by contemporary Anglicanism to the Articles of Religion - partly as a response to the theological confusion which has afflicted Anglicanism in recent decades - also need to recognise and affirm the modesty and reserve of the Articles, their "moderation". They are not a vehicle for remaking Anglicanism in our own image. Rather, they can be a means of renewing the peace of Anglicanism around a centre of generous orthodoxy.
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A Note on His Majesty's Declaration
The Articles of Religion in the various post-distestablishment editions of the BCP (1878, 1926, 2004) in the Church of Ireland have not been printed with His Majesty's Declaration. This, however, does not mean that it is not an authoritative source for understanding the Articles in the Irish Church. The 1870 Preamble and Declaration states:The Church of Ireland doth receive and approve The Book of the Articles of Religion, commonly called the Thirty–nine Articles, received and approved by the archbishops and bishops and the rest of the clergy of Ireland in the synod holden in Dublin, A.D. 1634.
The Book of the Articles of Religion "received and approved" by the Church of Ireland in 1634 included His Majesty's Declaration under the title of the Articles and as part of the text. Thus, on the basis of the 1870 Declaration, His Majesty's Declaration remains part of the formularies which the Church of Ireland "doth receive and approve".
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