Articles, The Thirty-nine, of the Church of England, are the articles of religion which were agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces and the whole clergy in the convocation held at London in the 4th year of Elizabeth, 1562, under Archbishop Parker. To have a clear view of the history of these important articles, we must go back to the promulgation of the original ones, forty-two in number, in the reign of Edward VI. The council appointed by the will of Henry VIII. to conduct the government during the king's minority, was for the most part favourably disposed towards the Reformed opinions, and the management of church affairs devolved almost entirely upon Archbishop Cranmer. In the year 1549, an act of parliament was passed, empowering the king to appoint a commission of 32 persons, to make ecclesiastical laws. Under this act, a commission of 8 bishops, 8 divines, 8 civilians, and 8 lawyers (amongst whom were Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, Coverdale, Scory, Peter Martyr, and Justice Hales), was appointed in 1551, and one of its first acts was to draw up a code of articles of faith. These were forty-two in number, and were set forth by the king's authority in 1553. Strype makes it appear that these forty-two articles were agreed upon in the convocation that was sitting in 1552, but his assertion has been much questioned. Against Strype may be cited not only Fuller, but also Burnet, Lamb, and Palmer. But perhaps the best authority on the subject, Archdeacon Hardwick, in his History of the Articles of Religion (1859), makes it appear highly probable that Strype's view was correct. To these articles was prefixed the Catechism, and there is no doubt that Cranmer had the principal hand in their composition; for he owned before Queen Mary's commission that they were his doing. But immediately after their publication, Edward died, and one of the first acts of the convocation summoned with the parliament in the first year of Queen Mary, was to declare that these forty-two articles had not been set forth by the agreement of that House, and that they did not agree thereto. In 1558 Elizabeth succeeded her sister. In 1559 Parker was installed in the see of Canterbury, and immediately the other vacant sees were filled up. And now came a fresh opportunity of drawing up some articles of faith which might serve as a test of orthodoxy in the Reformed Church. Parker applied himself to this work, and, for the purpose, revised the forty-two articles of King Edward, rejecting four of them entirely, and introducing four new ones—viz. the 5th, 12th, 29th, and 30th, as they now stand, and altering more or less seventeen others. This draft Parker laid before the convocation which met in 1562, where further alterations were made; and the 39th, 40th, and 42d of King Edward's, which treated of the resurrection, the intermediate state, and the doctrine of the final salvation of all men, were finally rejected. The 41st of King Edward's, which condemned the Millenarians, was one of the four which Parker omitted. Thus the articles were reduced to thirty-nine. They were drawn up and ratified in Latin, but when they were printed, as was done both in Latin and English, the 29th was omitted, and so the number was further reduced to thirty-eight. From these thirty-eight there was a further omission—viz. of the first half of the 20th article, which declares that ‘the church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and hath authority in controversies of faith.’ As all the records of convocation perished in the great fire of 1666, it is very difficult to ascertain how these omissions arose. However, in 1571 the articles once more underwent revision, Archbishop Parker and Bishop Jewel making a few trifling alterations, and the 29th being restored. The convocation which was then sitting ratified them both in Latin and English, and an act of parliament was passed in that year compelling the clergy to subscribe ‘such of them as only concern the confession of the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the Sacraments.’ There still, however, remained some difficulty as to which was the authorised copy, some of the copies being printed with, and others without, the disputed clause of the 20th; but this was finally settled by the canons passed in the convocation of 1604, which left the thirty-nine articles as they now stand. ‘His Majesty’s Declaration,’ which precedes them, and directs that they shall be interpreted ‘in their literal and grammatical sense,’ was prefixed by Charles I. in 1628.
It may be interesting to know from what other sources the thirty-nine articles are derived. Some of them, as the 1st, 2d, 25th, and 31st, agree not only in their doctrine, but in most of their wording, with the Confession of Augsburg. The 9th and 16th are clearly due to the same source. Some of them, as the 19th, 20th, 25th, and 34th, resemble, both in doctrine and verbally, certain articles drawn up by a commission appointed by Henry VIII., and annotated by the king’s own hand. The 11th article, on justification, is ascribed to Cranmer, but the latter part of it only existed in the articles of 1552. The 17th, on predestination, may be traced to the writings of Luther and Melanchthon.
The thirty-nine articles have been described as ‘containing a whole body of divinity.’ This can hardly be maintained. They contain, however, what the Church of England holds to be a fair scriptural account of the leading doctrines of Christianity, together with a condemnation of what she considers to be the principal errors of the Church of Rome and of certain Protestant sects. As far as they go (and there are many things unnoticed by them) they are a legal definition of the doctrines of the Church of England; though it is to the Book of Common Prayer that members of that communion look for the genuine expression of her faith. They were adopted by the convocation of the Irish Church in 1635, and by the Scottish Episcopal Church at the close of the 18th century. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, contains the only copies of the Articles in manuscript or print that are of any authority. Amongst them are the Latin manuscript of the Articles of 1562, and the English manuscript of the Articles of 1571, each with the signatures of the archbishops and bishops who subscribed them.
See Hardwick’s history of the Articles already cited. Amongst the commentaries upon them are those by Bishop Burnet (1669); Bishop Beveridge (1716); Bishop Forbes of Brechin (2d ed. 1871); and that most countenanced by Anglican authorities, the exposition by Dr Harold Browne, Bishop of Winchester (Lond. 12th ed. 1882). Tract XC., by Cardinal Newman, illustrated the ‘elasticity’ of the Articles. See also the articles CREEDS and CONFESSIONS.