Thirty-nine Articles

Thirty-Nine Articles The set of doctrinal formulae first issued in 1563 and finally adopted by the Anglican Communion in 1571 as a statement of its position. Many of the articles allow a wide variety of interpretation. They had their origin in several previous definitions, required by the shifts and turns of the English Reformation. The Ten Articles (1536) and Six Articles (1539) upheld religious conservatism, but the Forty-Two Articles (1553), prepared by CRANMER and Ridley, were of markedly Protestant character, and they provided the basis of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Thirty-Nine Articles. The articles of faith, designed in the 16th cent., to elucidate the particular tenets of the Church of England, in contrast to the Catholic and reformed churches of the Continent. They were curtailed by Convocation in 1563 from the Forty-Two Articles of 1553, and were approved finally in 1571. They are commonly printed at the end of the Book of Common Prayer. The Articles are in no sense a creed, but only statements of the Anglican position on dogmatic questions of the 16th cent.

Thirty-Nine Articles. The set of doctrinal formulas finally accepted by the C of E. The first text was issued by Convocation in 1563; they received their final form in 1571. They are not a statement of Christian doctrine in the form of a creed; rather they are short summaries of dogmatic tenets, each dealing with some point raised in contemporary controversy. Various interpretations have been put on some of them, and probably this licence was intended by their framers. Until 1865 the clergy were required to accept each and every one of them, but then a more general assent was substituted, and since 1975 the Articles have only to be accepted as one of the historic formularies of the C of E which bear witness to the faith revealed in Scripture and set forth in the catholic creeds.