"The religion of this realm": the theological conviction of Conformity

Reading the Preface to Thomas Rogers's The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (1586) - a defence of the Articles of Religion - I was struck by the paragraph below, in which Rogers gives an account of his fidelity to the Articles.

Rogers was ordained early in the Elizabethan Settlement (probably 1568), and would become a chaplain to Archbishop Bancroft. That appointment alone should suggest something of his Conformist credentials. Add to this his willingness to challenge Thomas Cartwright from the pulpit, to oppose the Puritan understanding of the Sabbath, and to defend the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer, including kneeling to receive the Holy Sacrament, and we get a sense of his thoroughly Conformist commitments. This is also very evident in his account of the Articles of Religion, to which I will be returning in subsequent posts.

For now, however, we turn to his words describing his fidelity to the Articles, reminding us of the robust theological commitment which underpinned Conformity:

For myself, most reverend father in God, what my thoughts be of the religion in this realm at this instant professed, and of all these articles, if the premises do not, that which here followeth will sufficiently demonstrate. Twenty, yea, twenty-two years ago, voluntarily, of mine own accord, and altogether unconstrained, I published my subscription unto them: my faith is not either shaken or altered, but what it then was it still is; years have made those hairs of mine grey which were not; and time, much reading, and experience in theological conflicts and combats have bettered a great deal, but not altered one whit, my judgement, I thank God.

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