The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Church of England Articles allowed Universalism in 1563

Och well - I’d better get my act togther then :slight_smile:

Hi Drew – and all readers of this thread (I’m amazed at your perseverance! :laughing: ). I think I’m ready to set things down now – this is not an exact work of scholarship so there is no need for me to be scrupulous with referencing etc. – because I’d take forever to write it up and none of you would read it anyway!!! So I’ll keep things fairly informal - you are my audience , no one else is! However I think I can now sketch out my conclusions about the abrogation of the 42nd article from the fairly diligent research I have done; I think you can trust me about 95% of the time now (although I’m open to correction on matters of detail). I no longer think we require getting other academics, real academics, involved – for reasons that I will describe later. For those reading this thread for the first time – and with the staying power produced by a genuine interest in the subject matter – I refer you to an earlier post I made summarising the arguments of D.P. Walker in ‘The Decline of Hell’ as essential background reading; it’s very useful for you to grasp the meaning and the consequences of ‘magisterial Protestantism’ for example.
To begin I want to summarise the views of Anglican Clergymen in the past about the importance of the abrogation of the 42nd article for the Universalist cause (I’ve added to my earlier posts, but the stuff that I reproduce here it’s worth reading again to pick up the thread of a dormant argument)

The Abrogation of the 42nd

I have reflected on the context and meaning of the suppression of the 42nd Article a little more. The entry on the 39 Articles in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (p.1622) tells me that “Subscription to the 39 Articles has never been required of any but the clergy and until the nineteenth century, members of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. From 1865 the clergy were only required to affirm… them as agreeable to the Word of God and undertake not to teach in contradiction of them… Since 1975 they have been required simply to Articles as one of the historic formularies of the C of E which bear witness to the faith revealed in the scripture and set forth in the catholic creeds”.

It strikes me from all of this that through the centuries of the C of E’s existence, those who have been primarily concerned with pondering the meaning and implications of the Articles have been clergy and scholars. All will have been educated to some degree in the history of the Anglican Church and thus most will have know of the abrogation of the Forty Second Article from Edward IV’s Prayer Book. Yes, the 39 Articles do not positively allow the teaching of Universal Salvation but knowledge of the abrogation/suppression of the 42nd Article condemning universalism must have caused many Anglican clergy through the ages to pause for thought. And Drew, it is such an notable, striking thing to an Anglican who has embraced Universalism that I’m not surprised that others have arrived at the same conclusions as you in the past, and independent of each other (it’s almost a sort of ‘cloud of witness’)

First example I’ve found is from George Rust, formerly Dean of Conor and later Bishop of Dromore, and a younger associate of the Cambridge Platonists, in A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the chief of his opinions’ (published under a pseudonym in 1661)

**I would fain know why she (i.e. The Church of England) who in her 39 Articles does so punctually (i.e. exactly) follow the Articles agreed upon in King Edward’s Days, or with little variation, should wholly omit that Article which condemns the Restorers (i.e. the exponents) of this opinion, if she had thought it ought to be condemned’ **

Second example is Andrew Jukes from The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things, 1867. I’ve seen some conflicting versions of his story but the consensus appears to be that he was ordained in the Church of England but was suspended and left over disagreement with the authorities about Infant Baptism. He went on to found an independent church and was friendly with Darby of the Plymouth Brethren (decidedly not a Universalist) and Samuel Cox the Baptist Universalist. When he published ‘Restitution’ he lost a lot of his congregation in protest and eventually came back to the Church of England as an Anglo Catholic – although he never took holy orders again. In Restitution he wrote -

It ought not to be forgotten also, that our English Church , having in her original Forty-two Articles had a Forty-first, declaring of “Millenarians,” that they “cast themselves headlong into a Jewish dotage,” and a Forty-second, asserting, that “All men shall not be saved at length,” within a very few years, in Elizabeth 's reign, struck out both these Articles. Surely this is not without its significance. The Creeds, which are received both by East and West, not only make no mention whatever of endless punishment, but in their declaration of “the forgiveness of sins” seem to teach a very different doctrine.

Third example is Frederic William Farrar from ‘Eternal Hope: Five Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey. November and December, 1877’. Farrar was Dean of Westminster Abbey and although other Anglicans before him had expounded on the theme of Hopeful Universalism – notably Tillotson who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the late seventeenth century in a Christmas Day sermon preached to Queen Mary, the wife of William III –Farrar was the first to preach a hopeful (but not certain) Universalism to a wider public, and his sermons were published and sold out in five editions rapidly. He wrote/preached that –

For ten years indeed (1552 -1561) a Forty Second Article condemned Universalism; but for Universalism (that is ‘certain’ Universalism) I have not pleaded, and, more-over, even that Article was struck out with the consent of the Bishops and Clergy of both Houses and Provinces. TO say that it was struck out because the Anabaptists were no longer prominent is simply an unsupported conjecture. The conjecture may be true, but even if so I look on the elimination of the Article as distinctly overruled by a watchful Providence; since it is the province of the Church to decide only in matters of faith, and no church has a right to legislate in those matters of opinion on which wise and holy men have, in all ages, been content to differ, seeing that we have no indisputable voice of Revelation to guide our conclusions respecting them.
Fourth and last is the Rev. Professor Michael Screech – Anglican Priest and notable scholar of the Renaissance – writing in his ’Laughter at the Foot of the Cross’

**Some think of the Christian revelation as above all a deposit dutifully guarded by an infallible man, institution, or church. Others see the revelation of the fullness of Christ’s truth as primarily a winding road, leading members of a fallible church –however fitfully – towards a deepening understanding of divine truth, justice and mercy. Christian truth may be at any time revealed – in his own way and in his own choosing – by the risen Christ. Christ is the Logos, the Living Word, the very idea of right-reason. He approaches man and addresses him in ways he can understand. It may all seem very mundane. The Logos does not smother the personality of those whom he chooses to address, but he does expect to elicit a response. One response has been a quiet rejection – despite Fathers and Councils and encyclicals and synods – of the notion of a celestial Belsen where wretches suffer infinite and everlasting torment, partly in order to add to the joy of the elect. When in 1553 the church under Edward VI drew up the Forty-two Articles, the forty second read: All men shall not be saved at length. Edward died almost at once and those articles were immediately abrogated under Queen Mary. The forty second was never restored under Elizabeth. So the church left the universalism of Origen an open question. Origen (the favourite theologian of Erasmus) held that, in the end, all rational creatures will be saved: all mankind, and even all devils. The Church, by never restoring Edward’s forty second article, leaves the door of God’s redeeming power wide open: all of us may be eventually saved. If so there will be no human beings left in hell to laugh at…’ **

I note here the references; to Origen for whom Christ perceived in his fullness is Logos /Wisdom – i.e. that which will hold all things together in balance in the fullness of time; to Erasmus, the Christian Humanist and Catholic reformer who revered Origen above Augustine, and was a profound influence – at least in his rhetoric of moderation – on the English Reformers; and to the horrendous idea derived from Tertullian, that Farrar rightly termed the ‘damnable doctrine’, that the elect in heaven would enjoy great voyeuristic pleasure from watching and scoffing at the torments of the damned (Screech goes on to point out the sheer wickedness of the logical conclusion of Augustinian fundamentalists in all sections of the Church on this socre – that since un-baptised/unsaved babies are damned, the elect can also look forward to laughing at their torments. Finally Screech suggests that Fredric William Farrar should be remembered as a ‘Merciful Doctor’ of the Church.

All the best (and thanks for your patience)

Dick

So let’s start the rolling – you will note that in some arrears I have substantially revised my opinions since earlier posts due to my recent studies. I must say, in the light of recent scholarly research in to primary sources, that some of the conclusions drawn by the Marxist historian Christopher Hill in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies – especially in his essay on Universalism in ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ - now seem very dated. I note this because Louise Hickman cites him as a reliable source in ‘The World Turned Upside Down’; but it appears to me that he was often driven more by Marxist theory than attention to the evidence. Anyway, it’s a side issue – but his essay certainly did lead me up the garden path initially and I may have cause to refer to it later. (No offence is intended to Louise Hickman – studies in the secret history of universalism are still in their infancy which is why we all need to keep talking to each other)
The political context of the Thirty Nine Articles

With the death of the Catholic Queen Mary I (‘Bloody Mary’) her Protestant sister Elizabeth ascended the throne, lauded as the ‘new Deborah’ just as her little Protestant brother Edward who had ruled before Mary had been lauded as the ‘new Josiah’. Elizabeth was in a difficult situation and was not fully confident of her position until late in her reign after the defeat o the Spanish Armada when she finally became ‘Gloriana Virginia,’ the Virgin Queen beloved by her people. At first she had to play different parties off against each other in order to survive, and also take care not to offend continental Princes of various religious sympathies so as to keep open the prospect of a marriage match and build defensive alliances on the basis of this guessing game. She also had to cope with religious pluralism and the need to prevent the sectarian violence that was all too common on the Continent.

‘Bloody’ Mary had revived English Catholicism with persecuting zeal, but there was a lot of support for Mary, especially in the North of England, which had not waned – and Elisabeth was aware of this. It seems that Elizabeth – although she was not bothered about people having Catholic sensibilities in terms of liturgy and worship - hoped that old style Catholicism would die out within a generation; but she was too canny to force the issue

Under Edward the English Reformation had been chiefly influenced by the Lutheran tradition and by Christian Humanism (Elizabeth’s tutor Roger Ascham was a Christina Humanist and when she was young she had translated work by Erasmus from English into Latin); and it was with this broad tradition of moderate Protestantism that Elizabeth identified. However, during the persecutions of Mary, many English Protestants had fled to Geneva and returned as Calvinists. And they returned with the hope and zeal for complete Reform of the Church. Elizabeth had no time for them and made a habit of offending them by swearing ‘By God’s Soul!’ in their company. Of course they wanted the Church of England to be governed by elected committees of Elders independent of the monarch, which was anathema to Elizabeth who appointed her own bishops to govern the Church. Loathe them she might – but she also had to keep them on board.

In the 1530’s a group of millenarian Anabaptist had taken over Munster on the continent. For two years, from (1533-1535) it had been governed by their ‘Messianic King’ John of Leydon (a sort of David Koresh - of Waco fame - figure). He had imposed both communism and polygamy on the people and ruled with great cruelty, especially towards women who would not comply with polygamy, or who were found guilty of adultery. Whether it is appropriate to call these people Anabaptists is debatable; they had nothing in common with the mainstream Scriptural and Spiritual Anabaptist traditions – but perhaps mainstream Anabaptists learnt from the Munster example of the dangers of confusing the Kingdom of God with the Kingdoms of Men. The Messianic Kingdom of Munster was ended with enormous and revolting cruelty by a Catholic army that had found common cause with the Lutherans. The aftershock of Munster created fear in a generation of Magisterial Protestants, and persuaded them to sully all Anabaptists with the memory of the Messianic Kingdom. It seems that by Elizabeth’s time this fear was on the wane (indeed there is little evidence of their being many Anabaptists in England during her reign – more of this later),. Certainly the Anabaptist threat no longer seemed apriority with all of the other juggling that needed to be done to accommodate people in one Church of England.

This is the political situation in which the 39 articles were formulated and it is to these articles that I will address myself next.

I must say I am absolutely loving all this information!

As a result of this thread, I have also been looking into the Anglican (Episcopalian) church and while talking with many Episcopalian clergy on the subject, I have discovered that UR is something that is perfectly acceptable today to hold and MANY members/clergy have been believers in UR over the centuries. I have no references to establish that, I am strictly going by what I was told by some various clergy. Mind you, not all believe it and take UR as heresy. However from what I can tell (don’t quote me on this), UR as heresy is not something that is outright taught and is left open to the individual believer.

Sorry if this is repeating anything already said or obvious but again, thanks to this thread, I have learned quite allot!

Thank you. :smiley:

Two very helpful posts there Dick, thanks very much for piecing all this together. Its helpful to know why the anabaptists were seen as such a threat. Interested in your emphasis on Elizabeth I as a canny politician. Her faith was important to her to though, I think, and Matthew Parker (Bucer’s protegé?) a strong influence on her from her. Anyway, waiting for your next instalment with baited breath!

What a lovely and encouraging response :smiley: . I’ve been meaning to nail this one for some time. God willing – I’ll do it all this week with a few instalments each day. And keep up the encouragement and/or questions please to support me in this – and I’ll buy you all a beer one day!

1Cor1522 – what’s your actual name? That is so good to know that this is of benefit to you. Will come on later in the week to why the Creed Of Athanasius was dropped from the revised Prayer Book of the Episcopalian Church in 1801; it is very relevant to our theme and may also shed some light on why a section of the Episcopalian Church today is less likely to accommodate Universalism – although on the whole the Episcopalian Church is ultra-Liberal compared with the Anglican Church in the UK (but I for one don’t equate Universalism with Liberalism – no way; it can properly be a Conservative option too).

Ok Drew – we go for the white knuckle ride then? In the posts that immediately follow I will have cause to say more about Elizabeth’s faith – which was genuine, but not Universalist I think, at least not as you and I would think of Universalism (I’ve revised my picture of her slightly from the rose tinted vision I had of her at first – probably half remembered from ‘Look and Learn’ educational comics when I was a child!); of the influence of gentle, sweet tempered Matthew Parker – who may have been a Universalist (we can make a case for it but I think it is impossible to prove); and of the influence of Bucer, which was real, but I think more marginal than we originally assumed. Whatever, as early as Richard Hooker in the 1580s we have proper evidence of hopeful universalism from a key figure of the Anglican tradition. I think we will never know for certain exactly why the 42nd article was abrogated – for reasons I will explain - but along with Canon Frederic Farrar we can put it down to Divine Providence, and certainly see this Providence working itself out in the history of Anglicanism as it gradually became a fully tolerant and non-persecuting Church.

I don’t normally give my name out online out of old habit. However my name is Paul. I just use 1Cor1522 in reference to one of my fave passages in the Bible. :smiley:

Hi Paul -there are a lot of Paul’s in this world so you haven’t really blown your cover :laughing: Nice to have you along for the journey. Will do a couple more posts tomorrow (just working on one now).

All the best

Dick :smiley:

Before looking at the revision of the Forty Two Articles in any detail I will first respond to Drew’s questions in a brief ‘excursion’. (You’ve got me in pompous academic mode – and I’m loving it; so your mockery is appreciated! :laughing: ).
I am sure Elizabeth’s religious faith was genuine and heartfelt. Her manual of private devotions suggests that her private faith was pretty mainstream Protestant focussed on ‘Justification through Faith Alone’.

As someone primarily influenced by the Lutheran tradition – which retained a love of music and ritual -she loved fine Church music and encouraged the use of vestments. When she first came to power she had a large golden cross installed for adoration in her private chapel. An outcry ensued and it was removed only to be reinstated later.

It was her refusal to budge on the issues of vestments that got poor old Matthew Parker embroiled in a controversy that he would have preferred to avoid which gave him the posthumous nickname of ‘Nosey Parker’. You see the Reformed Calvinist Christians who were in the ascendancy refused to wear the vestment stipulated by Royal Decree in the Prayer Book. These vestments were fairly low key by High Catholic standards, but still too much for the Calvinists who wanted to wear the austere black Genevan gown. They argued that the wearing of vestments made the officiate at Communion into a Priest presiding at a real sacrifice – which was more than they could stomach. The reluctant Parker had to ensure that vestments were worn – hence his reputation for checking up and spying on clergy (there were some fines and brief imprisonments of a few clergy as a result, but nothing serious). He was a gentle man and his successor Archbishop Grindall was more assertive in standing up to the Queen about allowing flexibility to accommodate the Calvinists.

Elizabeth had frequent ‘run ins’ with the Calvinists – although she was happy to accommodate those who were loyal to the Church (a later Archbishop Whitgift, was thoroughly Calvinist in his theology, but was happy to bring sectarian Calvinists into line). She also obviously fell out with them, and would not budge, over the issue of elected committees of Elders replacing her appointed Bishops. IN addition she fell out with them over the issue of ‘Prophesyings’ – these were un-programmed interactive sermons that went against Royal decree –Elizabeth wanted her bishops to control the content of the clergy’s sermons.

Late in her reign when a Calvinist clique tried to revise/supplement the Thirty Nine Articles with Six Articles proclaiming the truth of Double Predestination as the bedrock of Anglican faith she was beside herself with rage – and the authors were banished from the realm. However, apart from fines and the occasional brief stays in prison it appears that the Calvinists were never really persecuted by her, and their persecution has been greatly exaggerated in Calvinists histories (perhaps they were just too powerful to persecute – I dunno). The same was true of the Brownists– a sect within Anglicanism that wanted more independence at a local level for parishes to hire and fire their clergy and became known as the Independents in the next century and later as the Congregationalists. They were subjected to fines and imprisonment but never put to death.

It seems that Elizabeth genuinely loved peace and was prepared to tolerate pluralism as long as you kept your private beliefs to yourself and conformed to the practices of her Church. ‘We would not have windows into men’s souls’ she is reputed to have said (it appears that it was actually Francis Bacon who wrote this, but it surely comes near to what she thought). And until 1575 there was no religious persecution in England, in this England was only matched for toleration in the Free Dutch Republic at this time (although the latter allowed for more genuine outward religious pluralism). In 1575 – perhaps, significantly, the year of Matthew Parker’s death, the persecutions began. I will have to return to this darker chapter of Elizabeth’s reign before we weigh the final evidence for the meaning of the abrogation of the 42nd article. However, for the next post I will say something more about Matthew Parker and the influences on him (so hold your questions back about Elizabeth the persecutor for the moment).

All the best

Dick

A footnote to the above post –

Elizabeth - ‘Good Queen Bess’ - is known to have loved at least one man with a fond and steady affection - that man being Matthew Parker (I would not call her famous affection for Robert Dudley ‘steady’ - rather it was solely passionate and therefore capricious, although she was never cruel to him). She is also known to have loathed one man so much that it out put her out of all charity - that man being John Knox, Scotland’s fierce and unrelenting Reformer trained by Calvin in Geneva. In the year that Elizabeth came to the throne Knox published a tract entitled ‘A Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment Of Women’; in this tract the mirthless firebrand argued for a strong view of the so called ‘biblical’ doctrine of the headship of men and subordination of women, inferring from this that it was ungodly, indeed Satanic, that a Queen should ever come to the throne of any country. To be fair to Knox, he had written this tract before Elizabeth’s accession and his real targets were Bloody Mary, then Catholic Queen of England, and Mary of Guise then French Catholic Queen of Scotland (and mother of Mary Queen of Scots). But certainly ‘Good Queen Bess’ was not amused.

Note that the Christian Humanist tradition, in contrast to Mr Knox, had always held a high view of women and about the goodness of educating women - witness Thomas Moore and his educated daughters who disputed with the King on points of law and theology, and Roger Ascham the tutor to Elizabeth, and all of the spirited and resourceful heroines in the comedies of Shakespeare, who was also much influenced by Christian Humanism.

Second footnote - those of you who have not read other posts I have made may think my judgements are too soft when I look at people from the past (you may, for example, think that I’ve even seemed to condone Elizabeth’s use of fines and light prison sentences for Calvinists in the last post - but not so). Maybe I am a man of soft temperament (we can’t all be hardnosed all of the time!). However I will say that I believe that we should not be anachronistic in our judgement of people in the past. We need to judge them in the light of their circumstances and limitations, as future generations will do to us one day - if they are merciful and don’t also leap to making anachronistic judgements about us.

I’m always concerned about the Tentmaker site view of history - where ECT is simply a conspiracy of the power hungry and bad, while universalism was always the clear teaching of the early church; this, in myview, discredits our case as Univesalists by being too clear cut and going against much of the evidence. It may also seduce us into thinking that some people credited with Universalists views over at Tentmakers - I’m thinking especially of John Chrysostom and Jerome - would be good company to keep if alive today (but I think most of us would find both of them, particularly Jerome, absolutely vile).

Now for the really pretentious bit! I think history is a wonderful training in moral imagination and that it is much undersold. We look back at people in the past and recognise shared joys, sorrows and problems with them (this trains us in sympathy). But on closer inspection we often realise with a jolt how very different they also were from us, and how it is stupid to judge the past in terms of the present (this trains us in empathy - being able to negotiate and understand difference and otherness in our everyday lives). I told you it was going to be ‘deep man’ :laughing: .

All the best

Dick

Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury, was much loved by the Queen. He had been the Chaplin to her Protestant mother, Anne Boleyn (second wife of Henry IIIV). He had also been Chaplin to the young Elizabeth throughout the dark and difficult years before she became Queen (she had, for example, been imprisoned by her sister Mary in the Tower of London for a short time – uncertain of her own fate – and this was the same prison fortress where her Mother had met death at the hands of a sword wielding headsman). So Elizabeth and Parker had a shared personal history; and she had every reason to feel fond affection for him – and forgave him for having married when she appointed him her Archbishop (one of the idiosyncrasies of Elizabeth’s faith is that, although a Protestant, she was a firm believer in celibacy for those clergy raised to the rank of bishop).

Her appointment of Parker was also a shrewd move – I think we are mistaken if we view her depth of faith and political shrewdness as incompatible; she needed a conciliator and moderate to restore the Protestant faith to her realm in such a way as not to threaten violence and schism. This was a time when all religion was political (and even the pacifist Anabaptists refusal to buy into State controlled Magisterial Protestant religion was interpreted as an act of political rebellion).

So we know of Parker’s influence on the Queen – although we can be sure that she certainly had a mind of her own too! So what can we say about the influences that shaped Parker’s? Can these tell us anything about the context of the abrogation of the 42nd article (before we look at this in detail).

Regarding sources, we actually have good resources of primary source documentation for Parker – which I will give details of very soon in a separate post not much to say). However, I think we can be almost 99% certain that none of these sources give us a clear window into Parker’s soul regarding whether or not he was a Universalist (or whether or not the young Queen Elizabeth shared these sympathies with him before bitter political experience took its toll on her spiritual optimism). All I can do is make a good case for his Universalist sympathies based on the possibilities from the evidence.

Parker was educated at Oxford University and, unlike the other major English Reformers, he actually studied Patristics. So he knew the Church Fathers and it is very likely that he had studied Origen in some shape or form. He would certainly have been aware of the theology of Origen from the writings of the Dutch Christian Humanist Erasmus, who had a great influence on the English Reformers prior to the Genevan ascendancy of the Elizabethan Calvinists (I will do a separate post on the influence of Erasmus because I feel this is vital in making my ‘case for the possible’). Parker was also the friend and colleague of the moderate continental reformer Martin Bucer who was resident at Oxford university during the reign of the boy King Edward IV (I will also do a separate post on Bucer)

When Parker became Archbishop, one of his first acts was to call upon the ancient powers and authority of ‘Convocation’ to reinstate the Ecumenical faith subverted by the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome. And this Convocation which revised Cranmer’s 42 Articles to 38 (that later became the 39 Articles) was modelled on the Great Ecumenical Councils of the early church at which the Bishop of Rome was merely a ‘first amongst equals’ – as Parker well knew from his study of the Patristics. The Elizabethan Convocation was composed of; Parker; Richard Cox Bishop of Ely - an ill tempered and peppery anti-Calvinist by all accounts; and Edmund Gheast (or Guest) Bishop of Rochester who had been Parker’s Chaplin and was a man after Parker’s heart. (In some sources I have seen the third Bishop named as Edmund Grindall, Parker’s successor to Canterbury, but the most recent sources name Gheast so I assume the others are in error). Farrar in ‘Eternal Hope’ tells us that the alterations made by this Convocation to Cranmer’s articles – which included the abrogation f the 42nd - were given the consent of ‘the Bishops and Clergy of both…provinces’ (that is Canterbury and York).

Parker’s first love was Church History on which he wrote prolifically. In his writings he made a case that the English Church since Saxon times had always showed a degree of independence from the tyranny of Papal authority – and thus was keen to stress the continuity of the Reformed Church with the church founded by St Augustine of Kent, missionary to the pagan Angles and Saxons (a different Augustine from St Augustine of Hippo, the foremost ‘Severe Doctor’ of the Church). In his historical interests Parker stood foursquare in the tradition of Christian Humanism.

Christian Humanism began in the fourteenth century with the Italian scholar Petrarch. Whereas the medieval scholars had concentrated single-mindedly on the study of Divinity and the things of Eternity, Petrarch showed a new interest in the Human story of Human history. He lived in the City State of Florence which was under threat from the ‘fascist’ tyranny in Milan. Partly in repose to this threat he revived interests in the Classics of Republican Rome, written before the Caesars, and spoke of a Republican Age of Freedom and Light (in Rome), and a republican age of Freedom and Light (in Florence) with a ‘Middle Age’ of darkness that lay between the two. From this we derive the concept of the Middle Ages and, it seems, Petrarch’s insight had an enormous influence on the development of historical consciousness – of our awareness of change through time. Parker was basically following Petrarch’s model in writing his History of the English Church.

Christian Humanism never dismissed the claims of Eternity but tried to hold these in creative tension with the claims of Time. Hence the Humanists were interested in theology and biblical studies, but they were also interested in history, politics, law and in human emotion and empathy. As the motto of the Christian Humanists, taken from a Roman poet, put it – ‘I am a human being and therefore nothing human is alien to me’. In this connection the favoured Christian Humanist model of salvation was the Greek Orthodox one of salvation being a process of collaboration between the Human and Divine wills (Jacob Arminius was himself a Christian Humanist).

Christian Humanists were also concerned to establish the best texts for the Bible – going to the Hebrew and Greek originals rather than depending on the authority of the Latin Vulgate and ahving an evangelical purpose in doing this – and they were concerned to settle matters of doctrine by research into the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils. So again Matthew Parker fits the profile.

During the reign of Bloody Mary. Parker had kept a low profile rather than flee to the Continent or court martyrdom. He had actually spent a lot of time absorbed in his studies. Because of this I can anticipate a macho response that he somehow ‘wimped out’ of martyrdom from some quarters – and this is worth briefly reflecting on. Both Jesus and Paul avoided death until they had no alternative but to face it. And Paul’s hymn to Agape in 1 Corinthian 13 gives us a timely warning about the death loving cult of martyrdom – real Martyrs die as witnesses to love, not for ideological reasons. As the Anglican Universalist William Law wrote, ‘Martyrdom has had its fools’. I note for example that Cranmer who was martyred under Mary, was the same Cranmer who persuaded the boy King Edward to sign the warrant for death by burning of an Anabaptist woman of blameless life. I have also often been haunted by the sentiment expressed by the scholar Richard Marius in his biography of Luther. He wrote that Luther’s position was often precarious and he was undoubtedly a very brave man who would have faced death with resolution if this had been required of him. However, because of the intemperate violence with which Luther pursued the cause for Reform, Marius concludes that if Luther had not been born perhaps a hundred thousand people who died horrible deaths in war and persecution would have died quietly in their beds.

All the best

Dick

Superb post Dick, thank you. Very helpful to understand something of Parker’s academic credentials and the Christian Humanist tradition. Keep 'em coming, friend.

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/smiley/toppieplus.gif

(Not entirely sure what that means, but I’m going to pretend it means approval for the ongoing topic. :mrgreen: )

Thanks Drew and Jason – very kind of you of you both. Continued support until this is finished is much appreciated; any praise only goes to my head for a very short time these days. (I’m at work tomorrow and have to have a tooth out on Thursday but will try to get this finished by Friday, or at least by Sunday, while I’m still inspired).

Before looking at the influence of Erasmus, I first want to look at the influence of Martin Bucer who was Parker’s academic colleague at Cambridge during the reign of the Protestant boy King Edward VI (mea culpa! - I said ‘Oxford’ incorrectly in my past post and stand self corrected; it seems that Parker was also a Cambridge man). Among the Continental Reformers, Bucer has a well deserved reputation for moderation. He was early on influenced by the writings of Erasmus that advocated moderate, Ecumenical and peaceful reform based on consensus over essentials and agreeing to differ in a spirit of charity over details.

Bucer was originally based in Strasbourg and from there he influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. His time of authority in Strasbourg is notable in that although he was a Magisterial Protestant, he banished Anabaptists rather than having them killed – which was an improvement on the record of his fellow Reformers.
In the early Reformation he was noted as a conciliator when he acted as a mediator between the two leading reformers, Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, who differed on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Later, Bucer sought agreement on common articles of faith between the Reformers. He also believed that the Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire could be convinced to join the Reformation. Through a series of conferences organised by Charles V, he tried to unite Protestants and Catholics to create a German national church separate from Rome.

In 1549, Bucer was exiled to England, where, under the guidance of Thomas Cranmer, he was able to influence the second revision of the Book of Common Prayer. He died in Cambridge, England, at the age of 59. Although his ministry did not lead to the formation of a new denomination, many Protestant denominations have claimed him as one of their own. He is remembered as an early pioneer of ecumenism’.

With all this in mind we can imagine Bucer having a formative influence on the instinct for moderation in the young Matthew Parker – and Parker was named by Bucer as one of the two executors of his estate when he died in England in broken health at the age of 52.

I have found no explicit or implicit evidence to suggest that Bucer had Universalist sympathies. There is one thing I know that, perhaps, strikes me as telling about Bucer’s theological; sympathies. In the first revision of Cramner’s Book of Common Prayer the Service for the Burial of the Dead included the rite of Holy Communion and the offering of prayers for the dead, as in the Catholic rite. It was apparently Bucer that influenced Cramner to drop these from the service of the second revision so as to bring Anglican practice more in line with Reformed tradition. Now I understand that Holy Communion and prayers for the dead at a burial service were (and are) open to abuse – they can lead people to think that somehow their prayers can curry favour with God to alter His judgements, and they can even lead to a sort of fetish like, ancestor worship type mindset. However, although neither Holy Communion nor Prayers for the Dead during the Burial Service are part of my tradition, I do think that both practices, undertaken properly, can be very beautiful in expressing the solidarity of the living and the dead in both the Old Adam and the New Adam – and these are truly Universalist sentiments. That Bucer felt so strongly about their suppression suggests to me that he was not a hopeful Universalist. I wouldn’t want to make too strong an issue out of this; it’s impossible to say one way or the other, but I don’t think we have any clues about him being a Universalist at heart, and his suggestions for the revision of the Burial Service could be construed as suggesting the contrary.

All the best

Dick

Drew - just to speak up for MArtin Bucer, I note that in the early part of this thread you made the follwing quotation from him -

**The following quote from Martin Bucer is telling:

If you immediately condemn anyone who doesn’t quite believe the same as you do as forsaken by Christ’s Spirit, and consider anyone to be the enemy of truth who holds something false to be true, who, pray tell, can you still consider a brother? I for one have never met two people who believed exactly the same thing. This holds true in theology as well.

Bucer wrote this in 1530, after trying in vain to mediate between Luther and Zwingli over various differences.

(Source: Greschat, Martin (2004), Martin Bucer: A Reformer and His Times, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, ISBN 0-664-22690-6 . Translation from the original Martin Bucer: Ein Reformator und seine Zeit, Verlag C. H. Beck, Munich, 1990.)**

And this places him in the tradition of Erasmus (see next) although it is not on its own sufficient proof of hopeful Univeralsim on his part.

All the best old chum

Dick

I need to say something about Erasmus now. Erasmus of Rotterdam was the foremost Northern European Christian Humanist of the Reformation period. I’ve already linked him to the English Reformation – and he is a very important figure to account for in deciding whether Parker could have been motivated by secret Universalist sympathies in abrogating the 42nd Article. So here is a sketch of what I know about Erasmus.

Erasmus influence on the broad Northern Christian Humanist tradition – for whom his ‘’Praise of Folly’ was a much loved classic - on Anglican tradition, on the Reformed tradition of Martin Bucer, and latterly on the Anabaptist Spiritual Tradition (and through them on the Quakers), on the Socinians, and on the Protestant Armenian tradition is well attested. His influence on political thought in the concept of European Community is also acknowledged by many today (and celebrated currently by the EEC funded ‘Project Erasmus’).

Erasmus’ biting ‘Satires’ on the abuses of Late Medieval Catholicism – the sale of indulgences, the monastic retreat from the world into an easy life etc – were one of the key factors that motivated the Reformation; indeed they were perhaps as influential as Luther’s promulgation of his 39 Theses. Certainly it was a reading of the Satires that first inspired the young Thomas Cranmer to enlist in the cause of Reform.

At first Erasmus supported Luther, but Erasmus dreamed of peaceful Reform of the Church, and of an inclusive/comprehensive Church in which all Christians could agree upon essentials, but exercise charity in agreeing to differ about the details. Erasmus never fully specified what the essentials of doctrine were; but it seems that what mattered to him most was imitation of Christ in a life of gentle self giving.

As well as a man of letters and a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics, Erasmus was also a great biblical scholar. He produced the ‘Textus Receptus’ of the Greek version of the New Testament – based on only six manuscripts out of the hundred or more available to scholars today. His Greek text was not entirely complete and he had to fill in the missing bits with translations from the Latin Vulgate - but it was a start. He also wrote paraphrases of his edition of the Greek New Testament which were translated into English and were in common use by the early, pre-Elizabethan, Anglican Church (in which his ’Satires’ were also loved). Matthew Parker would have known both texts well.

(Note: in an earlier post I sated that ‘regarding the ambiguous meaning of ‘aionos’ in New Testament Greek, D.P. Walker states that Thomas Burnett (c.1635–1715), an Anglican Theologian connected with the Cambridge Platonists and ‘others’ – presumably other associates of the Cambridge Platonists - argued ‘with some success, that the word used for eternal in Matthew XXV and other crucial texts, need not mean more than age-long…”(‘Decline of Hell’, p.7). Burnett is writing more the a hundred years after the Convocation met to establish the39 Articles – but this does not mean that the issue was unknown earlier’. I have not been able to find evidence that Erasmus was aware of this distinction in his lexical labours on the Textus Receptus – but who knows? This is an issue that the scholars on this site may well be able to help with. Any takers?)

Erasmus actually stayed in England during the reign of Henry VIII, at a time before the English Reformation had gathered any momentum. He became firm friends with his fellow Catholic Christian Humanist Sir Thomas Moore who was then Lord Chancellor of England. He also advised Dean Colet of St Pauls on Colet’s lectures about St Paul’s Epistles in the original Greek tongue.

As the Continental Reformation gathered an all too violent momentum, Erasmus and Luther fell out irreconcilably. The key issue was Justification by Faith. Luther, working from the theology of St Augustine of Hippo – he had been an Augustinian monk - argued that the human will was powerless. Erasmus begged to differ. He respected Augustine but placed another of the Fathers above him in terms of esteem and soundness of doctrine; namely, Origen the Father of Christian Universalism. From Origen Erasmus argued for a synergistic understanding of salvation – that this entails collaboration between the Human and Divine wills, and therefore it is wrong to speak too simply about the powerlessness/bondage of the Human will. A bitter falling out ensued, with bitter invective and counter-invective exchanged.

Origen was much in vogue amongst the Christian Humanists. Erasmus claimed that Origen’s metaphysical speculations about the pre-existence of souls, the Final Restoration of All in Christ etc., were of little interest to him. Rather he admired Origen for other virtues–

• First, for his doctrine of the (limited) freedom of the human will

• Second, as the prototype for the Christian Humanist scholars – Origen was the first truly significant Christian scholar and compiled a massive compendium of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek using comparison of multiple divergent texts to establish the best reading.

• Third as the systematiser of the threefold method of interpreting scripture according to the literal level, the moral level and the allegorical level of meaning in any specific text. I may get round to doing a supplementary post on his topic before moving on from the Elizabethan age to the 39 Articles in the context of later Anglican history. Suffice to say at the moment that Erasmus followed Origen in his interpretive methods. Luther also paid attention to the allegoric meaning of scriptural passages sometimes, but Calvin poured scorn on this method preferring the clear sense of the literal level of scripture.

• Fourth as a model of good rhetorical style – and the teaching of good rhetorical style was a key feature of the Christian Humanist education programme.

Well this is what Erasmus claimed – but perhaps he was being less than open about his interest in Origen’s metaphysical speculations – at least regarding the Restoration of All Things in Christ. I note the following from D.P. Walker’s ‘The Decline of Hell’ (p. 75) –

’…Erasmus of course was far too prudent to make any pronouncements about the eternity of hell. Indeed when he was criticised for the following passage in his ‘Enchiridon’:
The flame in which that rich feaster in the Gospel is tortured, and the torments of hell, about which the poets have written much, are nothing but the perpetual anxiety of mind which accompanies habitual sin
He replied, not very convincingly, that he was writing only of remorse in this life,

Nor was there then any doubt in my mind about the fire of Gehenna

But the whole tone of his evangelical philosophy of Christ, and his great admiration for Origen, might easily lead disciples to reject eternal torment.

So what is going on here? We can only speculate within the bounds of the possible. Erasmus may well have been a hopeful Universalist emulating the caution of his master Origen on this matter. I refer agina to D.P. Walker(p.5 this time) –

**The peculiar dangers attached to any discussion of the eternity of hell were such that they produced a theory of double truth: there is a private, esoteric doctrine, which must be confined to a few intellectuals, because its effect on the mass of people will be morally disastrous; and a public, exoteric doctrine, which these same intellectuals must preach, although they do not believe it. The second kind of truth is not, of course, a truth at all, but a useful, pragmatically justifiable lie. This secrecy was already being advocated by Origen, who, when discussing hell in his ‘Contra Celsum’, forbore to go beyond the mere statement that it was a place of punishment, because:

To ascend beyond this is not expedient, for the sake of those who are with difficulty restrained, even by fear of eternal punishment, from plunging into any degree of wickedness, and into the flood of evils which result from sin**

We today may find Origen’s argument depressing in its expediency – but it was the only show in town for magisterial Christians of a Universalist temper in the West until moral reasoning from the psychology of fear started to be questioned in the Eighteenth Century. I think Erasmus may well have been playing at the same game of ‘double truth’.

Open confession of Universalist sympathies would also have been the end of the road for Erasmus who had no enthusiasm for unnecessary martyrdom. He saw his friend Thomas Moore’s death in a different noble cause as pure ‘waste’. Indeed there appears to have been a strong tradition of dissembling during the dangerous times of Reformation Europe – with people outwardly appearing to conform to ‘orthodox’ beliefs (as defined by the religious system of power in which they lived and moved) but inwardly holding different beliefs. Elizabeth avoided death under Mary by outwardly confessing Catholic beliefs. Thomas Moore dissembled in silence and prevarication until he could no longer hold his peace about his views on Henry VIIIs divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Therefore, I think this is another good reason, in supplement to ‘double truth’ to the disparity between Erasmus’s utterances about hell noted above.

(Incidentally, the tradition of religious dissembling went under the title of ‘Nicodemite dissembling’ first named by Calvin in his Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites after Nicodemus who in John’s Gospel comes to see his Lord Jesus by night while remaining a pious member of the Jewish Sanhedrin by day).

Matthew Parker – and even perhaps Elizabeth - when viewed in this context could well have been Universalists holding to a standard of double truth out of expediency, and perhaps even Nicodemites if they feared that open Universalism could mean that their supporters would lose respect for them and unseat/kill them. We cannot prove any of this – but I have made the case as best as I can.

Finally, all of this dissembling and double truth telling in a dangerous time took its toll and could, I believe, have people living with split consciousness. For example, Thomas Moore, who in his fantasy ‘Utopia’ seems to recognise religious toleration as a good thing in an ideal world, in the real world, as Lord Chancellor of England, was a fierce persecutor of English Protestants (and pilloried for this as a villain ,with some cause, by John Foxe in his Book of Protestant Martyrs). Erasmus, the champion of toleration, in a few passages seems to advocate persecution of those who leave the comprehensive Church as sectarians.

John Jewell was another man with a split mind. I referred to him in an earlier post. He was Bishop of Salisbury during Elizabeth’s reign and an accomplished Humanist scholar. IN 1569 he wrote guardedly in support of his fellow Humanist scholar, the German Gerhard Jam Voss who in 1569was the first to cast doubt on the authorship of the Athanasian Creed – thus denting the authority of the Creed used in Elizabethan England to support the burning of heretics – as we shall see. However Jewel was also a strong supporter of the death penalty for heretics.

Christian Humanists were not always moderate people – but the general tendency of the movement, in the spirit of Erasmus, was towards moderation and tolerance.

All the best

Dick

Hi Drew (and Hi Paul Corinthians - havent; heard from you for a couple of days and hope you are still following) –
I’m home from work now (early start, early finish) – I’m just going to chill out for the afternoon and then will get going with this thread again in the early evening.

Any feedback from you as to how the argument is developing at this point is appreciated. I hope I’ve made valid distinctions in assessing the evidence between what we can be certain about, what is probable, what is possible, and what is plain ridiculous when we are talking about this fascinating area of history (at least for us Christian Universalists). I hope I am beginning to make a reasonable case for thinking that arguments suggesting Matthew Parker may have been a Universalist are not ridiculous; rather they wobble somewhere between the possible and the probable (indeed I’m beginning to think that the idea that Elizabeth nursed Universalist sympathies may be possible, despite her career as a persecutor from 1575).

You’ll just have to trust me about sources – because I am giving you a general sketch rather than the real McCoy here. If you would particularly like to question me about my sources on specific points of interest, do ask and I will supply them.

Before assessing the changes to Cranmer’s 42 Articles in any detail (at last!!)I think that I/we now need to pause to reflect on why we cannot expect the evidence from this period to yield positive answers. It’s not only that the evidence is fragmentary; it’s also to do with the lack of personal disclosure expected of most public figures at this time even in their personal correspondence (and there are sound reasons for this – expedient self protection, and also the lack of a clear language of personal revelation at this time).

I think perhaps I should also say a little more about the ‘double truth’ doctrine of early Universalism – we may find this troubling, D.P. Walker certainly stands in harsh moral judgement on it; but I think he is being anachronistic and we are being anachronistic if we feel as he does. Also, on reflection, I certainly feel that Walker’s use of the words ‘esoteric’ and ‘intellectual’ in his passage on Origen quoted in my last post needs to be qualified.

With my dentist appointment tomorrow – which I had conveniently put to the back of my mind since I don’t like having teeth pulled!!! – I think it unlikely that I will have everything completed by the end of Friday. But I do hope to have the argument about the abrogation of the 42nd in its original Elizabethan context settled, as far as is humanly possible.

After this I want to continue the story – mainly looking at how the Athanasian Creed was used by the Tudor and early Stuart Anglican Church as a charter for persecution, and how (some) Anglicans eventually learnt that this was wrong at the same time that they questioned the authority of this creed (this links to the English Civil War and its aftermath, the development of Religious Toleration from the late seventeenth in England and its Anglican supporters and detractors, the changes to the prayer book made by the Episcopalians in 1801, and the prosecution for blasphemy of an Anglican hopeful Universalist clergyman in the mid- Victorian period using the Athanasian creed as a pretext (Farrar alludes to this prosecution in the sermon I have already quoted).

An important sub-theme here is the different arguments put forward by Anglicans and others during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The eighteenth century arguments against hell are based on reason – threats do not produce good behaviour, disproportionate punishment eventually breed hatred of a tyrant and rebellion rather than compliance. This is in keeping with the Age of Reason/Enlightenment and part of the rational/classical ethos.

In the nineteenth century the arguments against hell are based more on feeling and imagination – ‘How can a loving father do such things to his children? How can we live happy knowing that or nearest and dearest departed may be suffering eternal torment?’ Etc. This is in keeping with the ethos/emphasis of Romanticism.

At the end of the thread I’d like to sum arguments about whether an Anglican today -,of whatever shade or party, and whether ordained or lay - can in good conscience describe themselves as Universalist (given the 39 articles, The Athanasian Creed etc; to which, of course, I hope to give a resounding ‘yes!!!’)

I think I will deal with this part of the argument on unused thread on the ‘Athanasian Creed, the Damnatory clauses and EU’ Drew started for me at Ecclesiology. I will refer everyone to the very full discussion of the theological issues regarding the Creed that has already taken place for excellent background reading. But will confine myself to the history outlined above in the new thread.

The new thread should not be as complex as this one, of which it will be a continuation, and I hope to have it ‘nailed good and proper’ by the end of next week. That’ll give everyone, including me, a time to take a breather between thread topics.

I hope you are all still on board and appreciate your support.

All the best

Dick

Still very much on board, Dick, but have been too busy to respond. I’m not pinning my hopes on Parker and Elizabeth being universalists, but it is fascinating that your research is leaning towards that possibility.

Hi Drew –

I always know you are there!! A quick word about primary sources for Matthew Parker

First he left a substantial library to Corpus Christi College on his death in 1575 –

**The Parker Library is the rare books and manuscripts library for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the core of which were bequeathed to the College by Archbishop Matthew Parker.

The Parker Library on the Web project is a joint venture run by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library and Stanford University Libraries in the United States of America.The main goal of the project is to digitise all of the medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library and to be the first project that seeks to make an entire library publicly accessible on the web. The project is funded by the Mellon Foundation.**

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Lib … ti_College

I note from the catalogue that his collection includes texts of both Erasmus and the Church Fathers, and plenty of texts concerning the History of the English Church – Venerable Bede, Alfred, Anglo Saxon Chronicle etc… I could do a proper scholarly trawl here, but I’m pretty content that this all accords with the picture that emerges from biographical information.

Second we have his correspondence from his time as Archbishop that was all published in the nineteenth century by The Parker Society, ‘For the Publication of the Works of the Fathers and Early Writers of the Reformed English Church’. This society was formed in 1840 and disbanded in 1855 when its work was completed. The current Church Society gives the opinion that –

The stimulus for the foundation of the (Parker) society was provided by the nineteenth-Century Tractarians. Some members of this movement, e.g., R.H. Froude in his Remains of 1838-9, spoke most disparagingly of the English Reformation: ‘Really I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more’. Keble could add in 1838, ‘Anything which separates the present Church from the Reformers I should hail as a great good’. Protestants within the Church of England therefore felt the urgent need to make available in an attractive and accessible form the works of the leaders of the English Reformation. To many it seemed that the Protestant foundations of the English Church were being challenged like never before. Thus the society represented a co-operation between traditional High Churchmen and evangelical churchmen, both of whom were committed to the Reformation teaching on justification by faith. Subscribers were also involved in the erection of the Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford, although this was as much anti-Roman Catholic as anti-Tractarian. The society had about seven thousand subscribers who paid one pound each year from 1841 to 1855; thus for fifteen pounds the subscribers received fifty three volumes – the General Index and the Latin originals of the 1847 ‘Original Letters relative to the English Reformation’ being special subscriptions. Twenty-four editors were used and the task of arriving at the best text was far from easy. The choice of publications was controversial and some authors and works were unfortunate not to be included in PS volumes. While some of the volumes have been superseded by more recent critical editions, today this collection remains one of the most valuable sources for the study of the English Reformation.

See -

churchsociety.org/churchman/ … namond.pdf

The Church Society – a very Conservative body within the Church of England - is involved in a project to re-publish the volumes first published by the Parker Society to encourage the faithful today. They are keen, like the original Parker Society, to give the lie to the idea that the Elizabethan Settlement, of which I shall write very soon, was a compromise between the ‘extremes’ of Lutheranism/Zwingli-ism and not a compromise between the extremes of Roman Catholicism and Calvinism. My view is that those that stress the former view (Conservative Protestants) are as much guilty of historical myth making as those who stress the latter view (Anglo-Catholics), The Elizabethan settlement in Parker’s Prayer Bok with its 38 Articles was deliberately vague, and it always meant different things to different people (as he was content to be ‘all things to all men’).

However, the unwitting testimony of the publication of Parker’s correspondence by Conservative Protestant Anglicans must be that there is nothing in this correspondence to disturb their view. I hope you agree with this – and on these grounds I take it as read that I do not need to trawl through his letters etc, for new evidence.

Likewise I take it as read that Dean Farrar would have researched Parker’s correspondence before writing his Eternal Hope sermons and that he was well aware the arguments and historical myths/conjectures of Conservative Protestant Anglican’s when he wrote -

To say that it (the 42nd article) was struck out because the Anabaptists were no longer prominent is simply an unsupported conjecture. The conjecture may be true, but even if so I look on the elimination of the Article as distinctly overruled by a watchful Providence; since it is the province of the Church to decide only in matters of faith, and no church has a right to legislate in those matters of opinion on which wise and holy men have, in all ages, been content to differ, seeing that we have no indisputable voice of Revelation to guide our conclusions respecting them.

(see my first post in this revived thread - a couple of days ago)

A lot more is known about Christianity in the Renaissance and the Reformation today than was known in Farrar’s day – of how messy and disparate and fascinating Christianity was then (as it is today). This has allowed me to make my own conjectures (but I hope these are stated with due modesty rather than as historical myths- or ‘truths’ that go beyond the evidence). In the end we have to focus on ‘the watchful providence’ of how the abrogation of the 42nd article worked itself out in our history –this is the truly important thing in my view.

What I will do now is briefly address the issues I highlighted in my last post, and then crack on with an analysis of the Elizabethan Settlement. I think I will also start and Appendix thread for the two Ecclesiology threads that are developing here – I have other very relevant and interesting bits and bobs that the committed may well want to read and comment on; but I do not want this material to interrupt the main narrative thread

All the best

Dick

Correction to the above - I meant to say that the Church Society’s Conservaitve view of the Elizabethan Settlement is that it was a compromise between Lutheranism/Zwingli-ism and Calvinism (a narrow range).

In my view the C of E today - which is the C of E that matters most - has progressed from the Elizabethan Church through Acts of Toleration and through learning from its history as a persecuting Church and repenting of this. Today the Anglican compromise - in all but the rite fo Adult Baptism - is actually more like a compromise between Catholicism and Anabaptism.

All the best

Dick