To illustrate this point let us study four particulars, which may be likened to the four corner stones of our citadel, and consider them in the order in which they stand in our Articles; the sufficiency of the Scriptures; justification by faith; the spirituality of the sacraments; and the final completeness of the one propitiation.
(1.)—_The Sufficiency of the Scriptures_.
It is the fashion to say that the Articles were intended as a compromise; but that nothing can be further from the fact may, I believe, be proved without the slightest difficulty. The Council of Trent met in the year A.D. 1546, and then drew up some of its most stringent dogmatical decrees. It was in direct opposition to these decrees that the Articles were framed six years afterwards, as containing the clear, well-considered, and uncompromising testimony of the Church of England. This may be proved even by their omissions, for there are some things which we might wish to find in them, but which have been passed over in silence, for the simple reason that respecting them there was no collision with Rome. Such, _e.g._, is the inspiration of the Scriptures. If we were called to draw up the Article now, the subject of inspiration would be the first to be considered. But no error had been taught by Rome respecting it, and therefore it did not appear on the battlefield, and was not mentioned in the Article. The Article referred only to the new position defined by Rome in the Council of Trent, and that new position involved the insufficiency of the Scriptures. Rome taught two errors, first, that there are two parallel lines of truth, “written Scripture and unwritten tradition,” and declared that both must be received “with equal sense of piety and reverence”; and second, Rome placed the Church as an interpreter between the Scriptures and the individual, and decreed that no one should “dare to interpret the Scriptures except according as the holy Mother Church has held, and still holds, and also according to the unanimous consent of the fathers, even though their interpretations should never at any time have been brought to light.” It was in direct opposition to this decree that the Sixth Article on the Sufficiency of the Scriptures was drawn up six years afterwards. It declared Scripture to be sufficiently full and sufficiently clear: sufficiently full, for it contains all things necessary to salvation without any supplement from tradition; and sufficiently clear, for, without the aid of either Church authority or the unanimous consent of the fathers, it speaks right home to the heart and understanding, so that whatever “is not read therein, or may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the faith.”