94

HISTOET OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

xi.

JG83.

that great party which has been peculiarly zealous for the An-glican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned stronglytowards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much at-tached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, onquestions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin.One of the characteristic marks of that party is the dispositionwhich it has always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatictheology, rather to the Liturgy, which was derived from Rome,than to the Articles and Homilies, which w r ere derived fromGeneva. The Calvinistic members qf the Church, on the otherhand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment onsuch points is much more likely to be found in an Article or ahymn of thanksgiving. It does not appear that, in the debateson the Comprehension Bill, a single High Churchman raisedhis voice against the clause which relieved the clergy from thenecessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the doc-trine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Decla-ration which, in the original draught, was substituted for theArticles, was much softened down on the report. As the clausefinally stood, the ministers of the Church were required to de-clare, not that they approved of her constitution, but merelythat they submitted to it. Had the bill become law, the onlypeople in the kingdom who would have been under the neces-sity of signing the Articles would have been the dissentingpreachers.*

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Churchgave up her confession of faith presents a striking contrast tothe spirit with which they struggled for herpolity and her ritual.The clause w’hich admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold bene-fices without episcopal ordination was rejected. The clause

* The distaste of the High Churchman for the Articles is the subject ota curious pamphlet published in 1689, and entitled a Dialogue betweenTimothy and Titus.