A Laudian account of the Articles of Religion

From the Laudian divine Peter Heylyn's Ecclesia restaurata, or, the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (1660), a description of the purpose of the Articles of Religion.  The fact that Heylyn was a robustly anti-Calvinist polemicist makes this description all the more significant in setting the Articles of Religion within the context of the confessions of the "other Protestant and Reformed Churches" and in recognising them as expressing the unity of Edward VI's Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement.

The Lutherans having published that famous Confession of their faith, which takes name from Ausbrge, at which City it was tendered to the consideration of Charls the 5th. and the Estates of the Empire there assembled, Anno 1530. In tract of time, all other Protestant and Reformed Churches followed that example; And this they did, partly to have a constant Rule amongst themselves, by which all private persons were to frame their judgments, and partly to declare that consent and harmony which was betwixt them and the rest of those National Churches, which had made an open separation from the Popes of Rome. Upon which grounds, the Prelates of the Church of England having concurred with the godly desires of King Edward the sixth, for framing one uniform Order to be used in God's publick Worship; and publishing certain pious and profitable Sermons in the English Toung for the instruction of the people, found a necessity of holding forth some publick Rule, to testifie as well their Orthodoxie in some points of Doctrine, as their abhorrency from the corruptions of the Church of Rome, and the extravagancies of the Anabaptists and other Sectaries. This gave the first occasion to the Articles of Religion published in the Reign of King Edward the sixth, Anno 1552. as also of the Review thereof by the Bishops and Clergy assembled in their Convocation under Queen Elizabeth, Anno 1562. which being compared with one another will appear most plainly, neither to be altogether the same, nor yet much different, the later being rather an explication of the former, where the former seemed to be obscure, or not expressed in such full and significant terms as they after were, than differing from them in such points, wherein they dissented from the Romanists and some modern Hereticks.