comprehension
comprehension. The Elizabethan religious settlement attempted to comprehend all from catholic to Calvinist under cover of liturgical uniformity, royal supremacy, episcopacy, and the Thirty-Nine Articles. Excepting recusants, this was largely successful until after the Interregnum, the sectarians' heyday. By failing to achieve comprehension through modified episcopacy, the Savoy conference of 1661 ended in schism—the exclusion of 936 non-episcopalians from their livings. Further attempts to include sectaries within the church through comprehension bills (1668, 1678, 1689) failed, for most bishops, including Sheldon and Sancroft, stood by the Clarendon code. It was, for Tories, unthinkable to have a national church with sectaries outside. Despite the loss of 18th-cent. methodists, later archbishops have prevented further schism by retaining within tighter boundaries evangelicals, liberals, Anglo-catholics, and, more recently, opponents of women's ordination. Plurality of belief within defined limits of creeds, episcopacy, Scripture, and sacraments is a hallmark of Anglicanism.
Revd Dr William M. Marshall
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comprehension