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TRACT NO. XCl 
 
 THE ARTICLES OF RELIGION FROM AN 
 AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 The Rev. WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON, D.D. 
 
 Rector of Grace Church, New York 
 
 {^Reprinted from The Hibbbrt }OTi'&xihX, for July, 1907'] 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. G. SHERWOOD & CO. 
 
 1907 
 
TRACT NO. XCI 
 
 During the sixty and six years that 
 have elapsed since 1841, the meteorite 
 known in ecclesiastical history as Tract 
 No. XC. has had ample time to cool. 
 Such was the heat of friction developed 
 by the stone's passage through the An- 
 glican atmosphere, so violent was the ex- 
 plosion caused by its impact upon the 
 hard surface of an evangelical England, 
 that, for the time being, a fair appraisal 
 of values was impossible. Any attempt 
 to lift and weigh the incandescent mass 
 would have been futile. But patience 
 has now had her perfect work, relative 
 temperatures have quietly adjusted them- 
 selves, and it is open to sober-minded 
 critics to subject Tract XC. to libration 
 and analysis; hence Tract No. XCI., or 
 The Same Subject Continued. 
 
 Cardinal Newman has left on record in 
 the Apologia a very full and frank state- 
 ment of his reasons for making the Arti- 
 cles of Religion the subject of a Tract. 
 
He had been gradually leading his dis- 
 ciples on, through a sort of enchanted 
 forest, beautiful for leafage and under- 
 growth, though singularly deficient in 
 guide-posts, until some of them, as he 
 could not fail to discern, were on the point 
 of asking him awkward questions. On 
 the lips of more than one of the devotees 
 there trembled the anxious interrogatory, 
 " Master, whither?" 
 
 " From the time that I had entered upon the duties of 
 Public Tutor of my College," Newman writes, "when 
 my doctrinal views were very different from what they 
 were in 1841, I had meditated a comment upon the 
 Articles. Then, when the Movement was in its swing, 
 friends had said to me, 'What will you make of the 
 Articles ? ' but I did not share the apprehension which 
 their question implied. ... I had been enjoined, I 
 think by my Bishop, to keep these men straight, and I 
 wished so to do, but their tangible difficulty was sub- 
 scription to the Articles, and thus the question of the 
 Articles came before me. It was thrown in our teeth, — 
 ' How can you manage to sign the Articles ? they are 
 directed against Rome.' 'Against Rome?' I made 
 answer, ' What do you mean by Rome ? ' and I pro- 
 ceeded to make distinctions of which I shall now give an 
 account." 
 
 There follow some eight pages of ex- 
 planation, of a highly interesting character. 
 With Newman's dialectic method in hand- 
 ling the question of subscription, those 
 
who have read Tract XC. are familiar. 
 His main thesis is that the Articles do not 
 oppose Catholic teaching, that they only 
 slightly oppose Roman dogma, and that, in 
 so far as they antagonise Rome at all, it 
 is mainly with a view to disowning certain 
 superstitions which are not necessarily a 
 part of the system with which, in the 
 Protestant mind, they are commonly asso- 
 ciated. In other words, Newman held 
 that the protest of the English Reformers 
 had been directed not so much against the 
 barque of Peter as against a lot of barnacles 
 encrusted upon the submerged portion of 
 her hull. 
 
 This theory of the true bearing of the 
 Articles was not wholly new ; what made 
 it startling in 1841 was the fact of its 
 having received, for the first time, the 
 imprunatur of an Anglican divine. As far 
 back as in 1633, one Abraham Davenport, 
 a Franciscan Father, known in religion as 
 Sancta Clara, had suggested that at least 
 some of the English Articles might be 
 dealt with in the fashion which Newman, 
 more than two hundred years later, recom- 
 mended. Eighteen of the famous Thirty- 
 
nine Davenport declared to be thoroughly 
 orthodox from the Roman point of view, 
 two he regarded as mere logomachies, 
 while, as to the remaining nineteen, he 
 held that, even if they were not " ambitious 
 of a Catholic interpretation," they were, 
 to use the phrase of the keen analyst who 
 was to come after, ''patient" of such a 
 reading. But Sancta Clara, as has been 
 noted, was a Franciscan ; he looked at the 
 question from the other side of the stream 
 from that on which the English theologians 
 were supposed to stand ; his advances met 
 with no very cordial reception, and the 
 Articles continued to be regarded by suc- 
 cessive generations of educated clergy and 
 faithful laity as the nation's protest against 
 Rome. Sancta Clara and his devices had 
 long been lost out of mind when Newman 
 launched the torpedo destined to blow the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, in their supposed 
 character of a reasoned Protestant eirenic, 
 to shivers. 
 
 For really that is what has happened, 
 though the metaphor may seem to some a 
 little violent. A system which has failed 
 to serve the purpose it was originally con- 
 
trived to answer, ma}^ fairly enough be 
 said to have been shivered by the agent 
 which has demonstrated the failure. 
 
 And what was the purpose for which 
 the Tliirt3^-nine Articles were originally 
 set forth ? The ofHcial documents of the 
 sixteenth centur}' supply us with a per- 
 fectly clear answer to the question. They 
 were published as having been 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 1542, for the avoiding 
 of the diversities of opinions and for the 
 establishing of consent touching true re- 
 ligion." Have the Articles, as a matter 
 of fact, accomplished these salutary ends ? 
 Has there been any real avoidance of ** di- 
 versities of opinions"? Has there been 
 any genuine establishing of consent ? Not 
 certainly since 1841, whatever may have 
 been the case in earlier years. One may, 
 to be sure, buy at the theological book 
 shops either Forbes on the Thirt^^-nine 
 Articles, or Browne; but if he attempts to 
 make the Bishop of Brechin keep step with 
 the Bishop of Winchester, he wall meet 
 
with onh' indifferent success. Can two 
 walk together except they be agreed ? The 
 prophet Amos thought not. 
 
 I repeat, then, that in so far as the ac- 
 complishment of their avowed purpose is 
 concerned, the Thirt3'-nine Articles of the 
 Church of England have been and are an 
 open failure. The}^ attempted the estab- 
 lishing of a common standard of religious 
 belief with respect to a multitude of details, 
 and it sinipl}^ could not be done, — could 
 not be done to last. English Christianity 
 owes a debt of gratitude to John Henry 
 Newman for having made this point clear. 
 His logic metamorphosed what had been, 
 for so many years, hypocritically denomi- 
 nated ^'Articles of peace," into unmistaka- 
 ble articles of war. Ever since his day the 
 cry has been concerning them, " Not peace, 
 but a sword." ''How many sacraments 
 hath Christ ordained in his Church?" 
 " Two," answers the ingenuous child, fresh 
 from his Catechism. "Oh, no;" inter- 
 rupts the Anglo-Catholic, backed, as he 
 now contends, b}'- Article twenty-five; "Oh, 
 no ; seven, m}^ good child ; only 3-ou must 
 be careful not to call them sacraments of 
 
the Gospel." This is a fair sample of what 
 Tract XC. did for the better explication of 
 those fourteen Articles which constitute 
 what may be called the disputed posses- 
 sions, as contrasted with the common terri- 
 tory of English and Latin Christianity. 
 
 We pass from the Thirty-nine Articles 
 of the Church of England to the Thirty- 
 eight of the American Episcopal Church, 
 since it is with these latter that the present 
 paper undertakes more particularly to deal. 
 Three questions with respect to the Ameri- 
 can Articles force themselves upon us : — 
 What is their legal status ? What, under 
 twentieth century conditions, is their theo- 
 logical value ? Why should they continue 
 any longer to be bound up with the Book 
 of Common Prayer? Let us begin with 
 the question of status. 
 
 So long as the Colonial Church contin- 
 ued under the nominal oversight of the 
 Bishop of London, the Articles, as a matter 
 of course, had for American Churchmen 
 precisely the same binding obligation that 
 they had for English Churchmen, no 
 more no less. 
 
 Since no candidate for Holy Orders 
 
10 
 
 could be ordained in those days save b}^ a 
 Bishop of the home Church, whom he 
 must needs cross the ocean to find, every 
 Church of England clergyman exercising 
 his office on this side of the Atlantic must, 
 at some time or other, have actuall}- put 
 his name to the Articles. 
 
 During the period, however, that inter- 
 vened between the overthrow of the British 
 sovereignty on this soil and the firm es- 
 tablishment of an autonomous Church in 
 what the Preface to the Prayer Book 
 calls '' these American States, "the Articles 
 were, to all intents and purposes, in mibibus. 
 Nobody seems to have known precisely 
 where they stood, or what was the exact 
 measure of their binding force. It was 
 evident that to throw them overboard alto- 
 gether, especially after the bold step taken 
 in the practical repudiation of the Qtii- 
 cunqiie vult^ would be a somewhat violent 
 break of doctrinal continuity with the 
 Church of England, while, at the same 
 time, formally to adopt them without some 
 measure of revision was impossible. The 
 twenty-first of the Thirty-nine, for exam- 
 ple, literall}^ reeked with the flavour of 
 
II 
 
 monarchy, asserting, as it did, that General 
 Conncils might "not be gathered together 
 without the commandment and will of 
 Princes." To have sounded that note in 
 the ears of " these American States," in 
 the first flush of their democratic pride, 
 might have subjected White to insult, and 
 Seabury to banishment. In the Book of 
 Articles appended to the American Prayer 
 Book, nothing follows the title "x\rticle 
 XXI. Of the Authority of General Coun- 
 cils" save an asterisk; and if the asterisk 
 be pursued to the bottom of the page, we 
 find the following naive footnote: — " The 
 Twenty-first of the former Articles is 
 omitted; because it is partly of a local 
 and civil nature " (as if there were any- 
 thing really " local " or " civil " about a 
 General Council)," and is provided for, as 
 to the remaining parts of it, in other 
 Articles." A happ}^ phrase this — "pro- 
 vided for in other Articles " ; it shall be 
 given a broader application presently. 
 The upshot of the debate over the recog- 
 nition or non-recognition of the ^Articles 
 was their "establishment," with a few 
 modifications (the most important of which 
 
12 
 
 is the one just noted), by the General 
 Convention of 1801. 
 
 It is worth while, before we pass this 
 point, to quote Bishop White. He re- 
 marks, in his Memoirs (p. 33), that "the 
 object kept in view in all the consultations 
 held and deliberations formed was the per- 
 petuating of the Episcopal Church on the 
 ground of the general principles which she 
 had inherited from the Church of England; 
 and of not departing from them, except so 
 far as either local circumstances required 
 or some very important cause rendered 
 proper. To those acquainted with the 
 history of the Church of England it must 
 be evident that the object here stated was 
 accomplished on the ratification of the 
 Articles." Tiffany, in his History, com- 
 menting upon this memorandum, suggest- 
 ively adds that an attempt, three years 
 later, that is to say, in the General Con- 
 vention of 1804, to make subscription to 
 the Articles compulsory upon the Clergy, 
 by canonical enactment, failed. 
 
 The just conclusion from these historical 
 data would seem to be that, since 1801, 
 the Thirty-eight Articles of Religion have, 
 
13 
 
 in some sense, been of binding force upon 
 the consciences of onr clergy, thongh in 
 precisely what sense or to what extent it is 
 not easy to say. Few wonld venture to 
 assert that they stand on the same footing 
 with the Catholic Creeds in respect to 
 essential dogma ; while, on the other 
 hand, few would go so far as to declare 
 them, in round terms, non- obligatory. 
 They would appear to be held, to use a 
 most illusory phrase, forced upon us by 
 the exigencies of these difficult times, ''for 
 substance of doctrine," though where the 
 *' substance " ends and the " accidents " 
 begin, who shall determine ? 
 
 And just here would seem to be the 
 proper point for a distinct intimation of the 
 present writer's motive and purpose in 
 opening this subject. We are all of us 
 more or less disquieted by the evident dis- 
 inclination of the flower of our youth to 
 seek the ministry of religion as their call- 
 ing in life. Whether or not the same ten- 
 dency is observable in communions other 
 than our own is a separate question. But, 
 without going further afield than our own 
 immediate ecclesiastical limits permit, 
 
14 
 
 wli3' is it, we may well ask, that with such 
 magnificent sources of suppl}' as our great 
 Schools, Concord, Grotou, Southborough, 
 Pomfret, Cheshire, Newport, (not to men- 
 tion others) afford, the current setting 
 towards Holy Orders should be so slug- 
 gish and intermittent? After all due 
 allowance has been made for the fact that 
 many of these bo3^s have been brought up 
 at home in such luxurious surroundings 
 that it is not in them to face possible 
 hardship, it still remains a difficult ques- 
 tion, Why do the}^ not in larger numbers 
 flock to the Colours? It is the writer's 
 conviction that in many instances — by no 
 means in all, but in mau}^ — the reason is 
 that no clear-cut, frank, direct answer is 
 to be had to the question, To what do I 
 commit m3^self doctrinally if I enter the 
 ministry of the Church? 
 
 The Lambeth Platform, to be sure, has 
 an answer to this question, as clear as a 
 bell. " The Nicene Creed," it declares, 
 is " the sufficient statement of the Chris- 
 tian Faith." 
 
 " But what about the Articles of Re- 
 ligion ? " urges the level-headed, keen- 
 
15 
 
 eyed young college graduate, on the edge 
 of postulancy, though doubtful al^out can- 
 didateship, — " To what extent am I bound 
 by them? They contain, I find, many 
 hundreds of propositions. Must I feel in 
 my heart that I give honest assent to every 
 one of these when I am asked in Ordi- 
 nation whether I will minister the doctrine 
 of Christ, not only ' as the Lord hath com- 
 manded,' which would be a comparatively 
 simple obligation, but ' as this Church 
 hath received the same ' ? Tell me, O 
 Bishop, Guardian of the fold and Shep- 
 herd of the flock, tell me, am I bound 
 by an equally strong tie to the affirmation 
 that ' works before justification ' have the 
 nature of sin, and to the affirmation 'on 
 the third day He rose again from the 
 dead ' ? " To which the Bishop, as things 
 now are, can but reply, ''You have Burnet 
 and Beveridge, Browne, Forbes and Hard- 
 wicke ; hear them." 
 
 The Articles of Religion, w^hen anal3^sed 
 and classified, fall into seven groups — 
 the theological, strictly so called, the 
 embryological, the anthropological, the so- 
 teriological, the ecclesiological, the biblio- 
 
16 
 
 logical, and the sociological. The sections, 
 moreover, follow in the order named. 
 Under the head of Theology, pure and 
 simple, come the first five, with these 
 titles, '^Of Faith in the Holy Trinity," 
 '*Of the Word or Son of God which was 
 made Very Man," ''Of the going down of 
 Christ into Hell," " Of the Resurrection 
 of Christ," "Of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Under the head of embryology — a 
 word which may be used, for lack of a 
 better, to define the study of sources — are 
 to be classed Articles six, seven, and eight, 
 which deal with the germ-plots of Chris- 
 tian doctrine, the Scriptures of the Old 
 and New Testaments, and the Catholic 
 Creed in its two forms — the so-called 
 Apostolic and the Nicene. Under the 
 head of Anthropology come Articles nine 
 and ten, dealing respectively with Birth- 
 sin and Free-will. Soteriology fills no 
 fewer than eight Articles, namely, the 
 eleventh, Of the Justification of i\Ian ; the 
 twelfth, Of Good Works ; the thirteenth. 
 Of Works before Justification; the four- 
 teenth, Of Works of Supererogation ; the 
 fifteenth, Of Christ alone Without Sin; 
 
17 
 
 the sixteenth, Of Sin after Baptism ; the 
 seventeenth, Of Predestination and Elec- 
 tion ; and the eighteenth, Of obtaining 
 Eternal Salvation only by the Name of 
 Christ. All these in answer to the ques- 
 tion, ''What must I do to be saved? " — an 
 inquiry originally replied to, it will be re- 
 membered, at a place called Philippi, in 
 fewer words. 
 
 Ecclesiology, not in its petty sense of 
 the science of priestly vestments and 
 chancel furniture, but in its dignified and 
 lofty sense of the science of the Church's 
 corporate life, is dealt with in fifteen Ar- 
 ticles, to wit, Nos. nineteen to thirty-four, 
 No. twenty-one of " the former Articles " 
 counting zero. In these ecclesiological 
 Articles we have the Church's constituency 
 defined, its authority, as limited by Holy 
 Scripture, declared, its existence in a 
 purgatorial state questioned, its ministry 
 safeguarded, the language of its w^orship 
 confined to the vernacular, its sacraments 
 numbered, explained, and protected against 
 both misinterpretation and misuse, the 
 marriage of its priests justified, its sen- 
 tences of excommunication made valid, 
 
18 
 
 and its traditions and ceremonies given 
 such subordinate rank as rightfull}^ at- 
 taches to them. The bibliographical Ar- 
 ticles are two in number, and deal with 
 the Books of Homilies and the Book of 
 Consecration of Bishops and Ordering of 
 Priests and Deacons. 
 
 Finally, under the head Sociological 
 may be classed the last three Articles, one 
 of which touches upon the power of the 
 civil magistrates, one upon communism, 
 and one upon the lawfulness of making 
 oath in courts of justice. 
 
 The Thirt3^-eight Articles having been 
 thus summarised, it is timel}^ to call at- 
 tention to the fact that the x\merican 
 Episcopal Church has in its custody three- 
 and-twent}' more, nameh', the Twelve 
 Articles of the Catholic Creed, and the 
 Eleven Articles of her Constitution or 
 Organic Law. The thesis which this 
 Tract No. XCI. has been written to set 
 forth and to maintain is, that the twent}-- 
 three amply suffice for our purpose without 
 the thirty-eight. Suppose we tr}^ the 
 several groups just enumerated by this test. 
 
 As for the Trinitarian theology, with 
 
19 
 
 which the Book of Articles opens, it is 
 evidently identical, in fact almost verbally 
 identical, with the teachings of the Nicene 
 Creed. So much, therefore, may be set 
 down as surplusage. 
 
 The open Bible on our lecterns testifies 
 to our respect for the authority of the 
 Book, if it be a '' Standard " Bible, and its 
 table of contents will be a sufficient defi- 
 nition of what is held to be canonical 
 Scripture. 
 
 Similarly, it may be said of the two 
 Creeds that their very presence in our 
 manual of worship is ample enough proof 
 of our thinking that they " ought thor- 
 oughly to be received and believed." This 
 disposes of the trilogy of Articles con- 
 cerned with the source of authority in 
 religion. 
 
 On Anthropology, the next subject 
 treated, it is enough to know that man is 
 undoubtedly a sinner; while, of Soteri- 
 ology, it is enough to know that Christ is 
 incontestably a Saviour. Upon both of 
 these cardinal points the Creed insists, 
 when of the Only-begotten of the Father 
 it affirms that "for us men and for our 
 
20 
 
 salvation " He came down from heaven. 
 Were we not lost, saving we slionld not 
 need; were He not Saviour, his coming 
 down had been in vain. 
 
 In a Church which, like our own, has 
 committed its organic law to writing, the 
 proper place for ecclesiological teaching 
 is the Constitution ; and if the eleven 
 Articles of that document, as we now have 
 it, do not suffice, it would be quite within 
 the power of our ecclesiastical legislature 
 to add a twelfth. 
 
 Passing to bibliography, it is certainly 
 unnecessar}^ to have a special Article of 
 Religion to declare that our Ordinal has 
 nothing in it that, " of itself, is supersti- 
 tious and ungodly." The fact that we 
 continue it in use ought to be suificient 
 evidence that we resent such imputation ; 
 while, as for the Homilies, since the ver}^ 
 Article which commends them also sus- 
 pends them, — postpones, that is to say, 
 the public reading of them in churches 
 until they shall have been revised, — we 
 need not trouble ourselves about them. 
 It is more than a century since this good 
 resolution was put into print ; and though 
 
21 
 
 there have been revisions many, we still 
 wait for the homiletical one. 
 
 There remain to be disposed of the three 
 Articles designated as sociological. Of 
 these, the first, '' Of the Power of the Civil 
 Magistrates," is a very different thing 
 under its American form from what we 
 find in the corresponding place in the 
 English Book — in fact, may not unfairly 
 be said to teach an opposite doctrine; for 
 whereas the English Article affirms that 
 godly Princes " should rule all estates and 
 degrees committed to their charge by God, 
 w^hether they be ecclesiastical or tem- 
 poral," the American Article quietly ob- 
 serves that '' the Power of the Civil Magis- 
 trate hath no authority in things purely 
 spiritual " — not a flat contradiction, per- 
 haps, but dangerously near to it. 
 
 The second of the Sociological Articles 
 antagonises Communism as taught by 
 *' certain Anabaptists." But anarchists, 
 not anabaptists, are the men with whom 
 we have to do ; and, moreover, if we are to 
 have an Article of Religion to confront 
 each and every one of the economic here- 
 sies that disturb our peace, we shall need. 
 
22 
 
 not thirty-nine, but a hundred. The Book 
 concludes with the Article entitled " Of a 
 Christian Man's Oath." It confesses tliat 
 vain and rash swearing is forbidden Christ- 
 ian men, but insists that in a good craise 
 a Christian man may swear if the magis- 
 trate requireth it. This is acceptable 
 enough doctrine to all who do not take 
 the Sermon on the Mount too literally ; 
 but, in view of the fact that in the courts 
 of most English-speaking countries, and 
 even in the House of Commons, since 
 Bradlaugh, an affirmation is accepted in 
 place of an oath, the Article has that be- 
 lated look which befits its position at the 
 end of the column. 
 
 This Tract has been written in no acri- 
 monious or destructive spirit. The writer 
 has no wish to contravene a single state- 
 ment in the Articles of Religion. He 
 candidl}^ acknowledges that Christian men 
 ma}^ swear, and he is utterly unwilling 
 that other Christian men should esteem 
 his goods and riches common, touching 
 his own "right, title, and possession of the 
 same." A like cheerful assent he gives to 
 all the propositions of the formulary, as he 
 
23 
 
 understands them ; for it would be strange 
 indeed if, among the multitude of inter- 
 pretations now allowed, he should fail of 
 finding the special one suited to the idio- 
 syncrasies of his particular mind. But 
 while this is his present attitude, he re- 
 calls the day when it was not. He recalls 
 the day when, to his youthful and un- 
 tutored vision, the Articles seemed to ob- 
 scure rather than to elucidate the answer 
 to the question, What is the doctrine of 
 the Episcopal Church ? He cannot help 
 being of the opinion that to-day young 
 men in great numbers are similarly em- 
 barrassed. They can believe the Creeds, 
 but what are they to make of this lengthy 
 addendum to the Creeds ? 
 
 It may be urged that some addendum 
 is necessary, seeing that the Creeds do 
 not interpret themselves. There is truth 
 in this objection, but has the bringer of it 
 considered what an immense amount of 
 interpretative power is stored up in the 
 historic liturgy of the Church? The 
 Creed, for example, is very concise, very 
 concise indeed, in the region of anthro- 
 pology and soteriology; but the Prayers 
 
24 
 
 of the Ages, in a singularly full and satis- 
 factory way, show us how Christians have 
 always thought, or, what is, perhaps, still 
 more to the point, felt upon these subjects. 
 
 What need of Article twelve, "Of Good 
 Works," when we have learned, on the 
 Second Sunday before Lent, to say, " O 
 Lord God, who seest that we put not our 
 trust in anything that we do," and on the 
 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity are again 
 to pray, '' Almighty and merciful God, 
 of whose only gift it cometh that thy 
 people do unto Thee true and laudable 
 service "? It is safe to sa}' that there is 
 not a single Article of the Creed that does 
 not find similar expansion and elucidation 
 somewhere between the covers of the 
 Prayer Book before you reach the Psalter, 
 and long before you reach the Articles. 
 
 It is just here that Anglicans enjoy a 
 great advantage over Presbyterians. To- 
 day the Westminster Confession totters 
 to its fall. The Brief Statement will not 
 save it, for the Brief vStatement was only 
 allowed to come into existence upon an 
 understanding that for " substance of 
 doctrine " it was to be regarded as a fair 
 
23 
 
 exponent of the longer document. Relief 
 obtained on such terms can be but tem- 
 porary. Only the gnats have been strained 
 out, the camel is left in the cup. But if the 
 Westminster Confession goes to pieces, 
 what have our Presbyterian brethren to 
 fall back upon? They have never con- 
 ceded to the Catholic Creeds that high 
 place of honour in which Anglicans have 
 always held them. If Westminster fails 
 them, they have no Nicaea to fall back 
 upon. It looks as if it would be a case, as 
 in Paul's shipwreck, of " some on boards 
 and some on broken pieces of the ship." 
 In such an event, may a good Providence 
 so order things that, as happened on the 
 coast of Malta, they shall escape all safe 
 to land, — the land of the historic faith, no 
 island but the continent of truth. Yes, 
 the Creeds suffice. They have outlived 
 many a document like our Book of Articles 
 and the Confessions of Augsburg and of 
 Westminster, and will outlive many an- 
 other. The Confessions have their day 
 and cease to be ; the Creeds live on — all 
 the days are theirs. The Creeds are like 
 Stonehenge and the Pyramids ; — to go at 
 
26 
 
 tlicni with hammer and chisel, under a 
 pretext of reparation, were little short of 
 sacrilege. The Thirty-nine Articles are 
 a sixteenth centur}^ Episcopal residence 
 of many rooms, some of them much out 
 of repair. 
 
 But what shall we do with our Book of 
 Articles if we snip the threads which now 
 bind it up with the Book of Common 
 Prayer ? Put it, with reverent and loving 
 hands, in the Archives, I reply — the 
 Archives of English Religion. There 
 are other books to keep it company in 
 that honoured and dignified retirement. 
 There is The InslitiUion of a Christian 
 Man; there is King Henry's Primer ; 
 there is NowelPs Catechism ; there is 
 Jewell's Apology ; there are those unfor- 
 tunate Books of Homilies, still unrevised ; 
 and there is, if you please. The Confes- 
 sion of 02tr Christ ia7i Faith ^ commonly 
 called the Creed of St. Athanasius. 
 
 What a handsome set of Archives they 
 would make, and how happily the Thirt}^- 
 nine Articles would fit in ! Bibliotheca 
 Anglicana we will call it, and it shall have 
 glass doors to protect the honoured pages 
 from an otherwise inevitable dust. 
 
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