among the
clergy at home. In Cromwell's scheme for mastering the priesthood it had
been needful to place men on whom the king could rely at their head.
Cranmer became Primate, Latimer became Bishop of Worcester, Shaxton and
Barlow were raised to the sees of Salisbury and St. David's, Hilsey to
that of Rochester, Goodrich to that of Ely, Fox to that of Hereford. But
it was hard to find men among the clergy who paused at Henry's theological
resting-place; and of these prelates all except Latimer were known to
sympathize with Lutheranism, though Cranmer lagged far behind his fellows
in their zeal for reform. The influence of these men as well as of an
attempt to comply at least partly with the demand of the German Princes
left its stamp on the Articles of 1536. For the principle of Catholicism,
of a universal form of faith overspreading all temporal dominions, the
Lutheran states had substituted the principle of territorial religion, of
the right of each sovereign or people to determine the form of belief
which should be held within their bounds. The severance from Rome had
already brought Henry to this principle; and the Act of Supremacy was its
emphatic assertion. In England too, as in North Germany, the repudiation
of the Papal authority as a ground of faith, of the voice of the Pope as a
declaration of truth, had driven men to find such a ground and declaration
in the Bible; and the Articles expressly based the faith of the Church of
England on the Bible and the three Creeds. With such fundamental
principles of agreement it was possible to borrow from the Augsburg
Confession five of the ten articles which Henry laid before the
Convocation. If penance was still retained as a sacrament, baptism and the
Lord's Supper were alone maintained to be sacraments with it; the doctrine
of Transubstantiation which Henry stubbornly maintained differed so little
from the doctrine maintained by Luther that the words of Lutheran
formularies were borrowed to explain it; Confession was admitted by the
Lutheran Churches as well as by the English. The veneration of saints and
the doctrine of prayer to them, though still retained, was so modified as
to present little difficulty even to a Lutheran.

[Sidenote: The Irish Churches]

However disguised in form, the doctrinal advance made in the Articles of
1536 was an immense one; and a vehement opposition might have been looked
for from those of the bishops like Gardiner, who while they agree