Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Thirty-Nine Articles, Vol. 1 of 2: Their History and Explanation
Faith. But it was impossible. Like a common which is perpetually being contracted by the encroachments of persons who quietly fence bits otf for their own use, the Faith at these two epochs was suffering loss from the depredations of heretics who deprived the Christian com munity, say, of the right to worship Christ, as did Arius or of the right to a real incorporation into, and main tenance by, His Body, as did the Sacramentaries of the l6th century. In either case the Church had to rotect the religious interests of her members. She ad to vindicate their right to share in the whole of the common heritage of the ancient Faith and she did so by recourse to formularies. She set up her fence, and her notice to trespassers; not however to narrow down the limits of truth, but on the contrary, to save them from contraction, and to secure the ancient freedom and latitude for all her children. Thus it is because they are the products of two over-speculative ages in the history of the Church, that the Creeds and Articles, though in?uenced by philosophical language and built up in some measure by its assistance, are eminently unspeculative. So far from supplying, their set purpose is to exclude, explanatory theories of the truth. It has been pertinently said of the Creeds, that 'they were the negation of explanations. The Church held that all such explanations, or partial explanations [as Arius and others proposed for the doctrine of the Trinity] in?icted irremediable impoverishment on the idea of the Godhead which was essentially involved in the Christian revelation. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.' So, by the Articles, as in the doctrine of the Sacraments for instance, the whole truth has been preserved free from the en croachment of explanatory theories, i.e. By the same negative policy of a ring fence to secure the integrity of the Christian's territory and free access for him by an open door. Thus the Creeds and Articles are akin in a common impulse and a common pur ose.
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