Ending 'the late unhappy confusions': St. Bartholomew's Day 1662 and the Articles of Religion

And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid that no person shall be or be received as a Lecturer or permitted suffered or allowed to preach as a Lecturer or to preach or read any Sermon or Lecture in any Church ... within this Realme ... unlesse he be first approved and thereunto licensed by the Archbishopp of the Province or Bishopp of the Diocesse ... and shall in presence of the same ... read the nine and thirty Articles of Religion mentioned in the Statute of the Thirteenth yeare of the late Queene Elizabeth with declaration of his unfeigned assent to the same.

When compared to the criticism of its other provisions, the restoration of the Articles of Religion by the 1662 Act of Uniformity is often overlooked. This is a significant mistake, both in terms of understanding how 1662 responded to "the late unhappy confusions" and how it established foundations for the unity and accord of the Church of England during the 'long 18th century'.

Alongside the Act of Uniformity, Parliament also re-established the Canons of 1604, with their subscriptions for those to be ordained, including to the Articles:

That he alloweth the Book of Articles of Religion agreed upon by the Archbishops, and Bishops of both Provinces, and the whole Clergy in the Convocation holden at London, in the Year of our Lord God, One thousand five hundred sixty and two: and that he acknowledgeth all and every the Articles therein contained, being in number Nine and thirty, besides the Ratification, to be agreeable to the Word of God.

In restoring the Articles, the 1662 Settlement was undoing and finally bringing to a close those various attempts to undermine the peace of the Church of England by requiring statements in addition to the Articles and, in particular, to Article XVII, 'Of Predestination and Election'. The Lambeth Articles of 1595 were central to such attempts. Elizabeth's sharp rebuke to Whitgift for convening a de facto synod without the consent of the Supreme Governor was amplified by her counsellors' advice to the Archbishop:

they might have consulted the Peace of the Church much better, if they had kept their Opinions to themselves.

Similarly, James VI/I refused the request proposed by Puritan representatives at Hampton Court for the Lambeth Articles to be added to the Book of the Articles of Religion. James declared that "when such questions rise amongst Schollers", "the quietest proceeding were, to determine them in the Universities", rather than "stuffe the Booke with all conclusions Theological". This same approach, refusing to go beyond the Articles, was also evident in Charles I's Declaration, prefixed to the Articles of Religion:

That therefore in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years, in different times and places, exercised the Church of Christ, We will, that 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 Scriptures, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of England according to them.

Central to this policy, maintained in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church, of the sufficiency of the Articles, was the fact that theological diversity within the English Church regarding predestination and election significantly pre-dated 'Laudianism'. This, for example, was clearly seen in the responses of Lancelot Andrewes and John Overall to the Lambeth Articles: Andrewes who became Bishop of Chichester in 1605 and Overall who became Bishop of Norwich in 1618. 

Likewise, the three bishops who in 1625 wrote to Buckingham in defence of Montagu, expressing their view that the Lambeth Articles and Dort had "no authority" in the Church of England, had all been appointed to the episcopacy during the reign of James: Buckeridge, 1611; Howson, 1619; Laud, 1621. They robustly reaffirmed the sufficiency of the Articles:

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 this moderation was, because she could not be able to preserve any unity among Christians, if men were forced to subscribe to curious particulars disputed in the schools.

It was this moderation and peace which was restored by the Articles of Religion in the 1662 Settlement: a moderation and peace which allowed for, but did not require, the view of predestination set forth by the Lambeth Articles. As Stephen Hampton has shown, the moderate Calvinist tradition continued in the Church of England post-1662. Gone, however, were the attempts to enforce a Calvinist account of predestination, beyond the cautious affirmations of Article XVII, attempts which had undermined the peace of the Church since the reign of Elizabeth.

Gone too was the Westminster Confession of Faith, the latest failed attempt to enforce a narrow Calvinist orthodoxy on the English Church. Its failure was quickly recognised, as it was never approved by Parliament and never published by authority in England. William Parker's early critique of the Westminster Confession enshrining the teaching of the Lambeth Articles highlighted how inappropriate it would for such "curious particulars" to be imposed on the national Church:

If Gods counsel herein be unsearchable, how came you to know it? ... But this caution of yours, you your selves have not very well observed and kept.

Simon Patrick likewise, and with considerable sarcasm, emphasised the difference between the moderation of the Articles and the "curious particulars" of the Westminster Confession:

there are some men it may be, are offended that the Church is so indulgent a Mother that will not unnecessarily impose upon the judgement or practise of her Children; they would have all things bound up, and nothing free; they would fain be adding some ciphers to their significant Articles she now prodounds, and instead of 39 would make 39000. & tis well if they would content themselves with ciphers, and not add falsityes to make up the tale: they have it may be, an ambition to out-do the Assemblies Confession.

In 1658, as Cromwell's grim usurpation began to draw to a close, the Laudian Bramhall read Richard Baxter declaring "I am grown to a very great confidence that most of our contentions about those [Arminian] points are more about words than matter". Here Bramhall saw confirmation of the utter folly of those decades when the peace of the Church of England had been assaulted by the disciples of "curious particulars":

Now our Arminian Controversies are avowed to have been but contentions about words. Now it is become a doubtful case, and deserving an if. whether we have any difference at all about Free-will or no. The wind is gotten into the other door, since we were prosecuted and decried as Pelagians, and enemies of Grace, because we maintained some old innocent Truths which the Church of England and the Catholick Church even taught her Sons, before Arminius was born. Some of their greatest Sticklers do owe a great account to God, and a great reparation to us, for those groundless calumnies, which they cast upon us at that time

Peace was indeed restored with the Articles of Religion. Conformity was now on the basis of recognising the wisdom of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I: the Articles were sufficient; the Lambeth Articles could be acceptable doctrinal views, but certainly not to be required of the Church's ministers; and "curious and unhappy differences" should not again become a cause for undermining the peace of Church and commonwealth.

And so restoring the Articles of Religion had a crucial role in ending "the late unhappy confusions". The wise, peaceable moderation of the Articles provided a comprehension which embraced both conformist Calvinists and that significant body of divines, bishops, clergy, and laity who agreed with the judgement of Andrewes:

It would be to much better purpose to teach our People plainly the Way to Salvation in things manifestly relating to a holy and a well-govern’d Life, than to trouble their Heads with the Secrets of Providence, and the hidden things of God: whereas an over-curious Inquiry into these Things does but turn Peoples Heads, and make them break out into Enthusiastick Frensies, and scarce ever tend to the Edification of strait and narrow Dispositions.

When in 1662 the Laudian John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, undertook his primary visitation of the diocese, he inquired of the clergy:

did he within two months after his induction publicly read in your Church upon some Sunday or Holiday, in the time of Divine Service, and in the audience of his parishioners, all the thirty-nine Articles of Religion set forth and established in the Church of England by authority? 

In the same year, the moderate Calvinist John Gauden, Bishop of Worcester, one of the Ussherian circle and a cleric who had conformed under the Cromwellian regime, was also undertaking the primary visitation of his diocese. He too asked of his clergy:

Did he within two moneths after his Induction publickly read in the Church, upon some Lords-day or other Holy-day, in the time of Divine Service, the 39. Articles of Religion established in the Church of England? Did he then and there publickly declare his assent thereunto?

It was happening in every diocese of the Church of England during the visitations of 1662. Calvinist, Laudian, and theologically moderate bishops were all alike ensuring that their clergy assented to the Articles of Religion, Articles which brought peace and unity to the Church, ending the confusions and deeply divisions inflicted by attempts to enforce on the English Church "every particular school-point" of the mystery of predestination. 

The extent to which assent to the Articles brought peace after "the late unhappy confusions" is indicated by how clergyman and divine Edward Welchman - one of the Reformed 'anti-Arminians' identified by Hampton - referred to Article XVII in his 1713 commentary on the Articles:

I would desire the Reader to observe, that only the Grace of Election is asserted in it, and that the Severity of Reprobation is left wholly untouch'd upon. And here I would advise him to stop, and to restrain his Curiosity. For the Doctrine of Predestination is a profound Abyss; in founding of which, it is but to little Purpose for young Men to busy themselves. Much less does it become Preachers to trouble their Auditors about these deep Mysteries.

Article XVII was sufficient; no more was required. Such was the peace which Elizabeth, James, and Charles upheld as Supreme Governors; the peace Andrewes and Overall, Laud and Bramhall defended; the peace violently overturned in the deluge of the 1640s; the peace restored by the Articles on Saint Bartholomew's Day 1662.