I looked at the numbers who have read this thread the other day and got a bit down because they are very high. I’d just like to say that although the suppression of the 42nd Article in the Convocation of 1563 has consoled and given legitimacy Anglican Universalist in later times, I’m certain now that there are no reasons to think that allowing universalism was the intention of the Convocation, and there are many good reasons for thinking this was not the case. Sorry about the change of mind:-/ And I think it is better to refer to the 42nd article having been ‘suppressed’ rather than ‘abrogated’.
All the best
Dick
Matthew Parker’s tutor Martin Bucer - who mentored him in moderation which is the reason why Elizabeth appointed him – was not a man who would shun someone for disagreement over matters that he thought we not essential . However, when – before he’d fled to England -he questioned Hans Denck the Anabaptist in Strasbourg who was charged with universalism and other matters (perhaps wrongly) he had part responsibility for having Hans Denck banished from the City. Bucer wrote that Denck had been leading members of the flock astray from their own salvation by teaching universalism.
The Articles that were deleted included those against the ‘millenarians’ (and like universalist. in the nineteenth century there were Anglican clergy who had become dispensationalist who used the deletion of this article as evidence that their beliefs were allowed). There are strong arguments to think that this was not the intention of the Convocation either. However, the one argument that trumps this reasoning is that the article against the ‘antinomians’ was also deleted – and it would be absurd to argue that therefore Anglicanism at this time was open to the licentious teachings of the antinomians.
The only evidence we have for debate about matters of belief concerning the articles at the convocation of 1563 is from correspondence between Bishop Alley of Exeter and Matthew Parker urging that the article about the Descent into Hell be shortened because there was so much disagreement over it. And indeed Cramners’ article was abridged in the final version no longer affirming that Christ preached to the spirits in prison but instead simply affirming that Christ descended into hell (The Calvinist doctrine that Christ that took this stamen as figurative for Christ experiencing the pains of hell on the cross – which did away with suggestions of post mortem salvation in the descent was well known in England and was the doctrine preferred by the Reformers who had returned from Switzerland . And with this being such a contentious issue, allowing universalism as an option would have been way beyond the pale.
Although the Funeral service in the Prayer Book was complained about as ‘Orignestic’ in the later Calvinist Admonitions to Parliament’ - along with many other complaints about the Articles not being fully Reformed - the suppression of the 42nd article is not mentioned in these. It certainly would have been if this allowed universalism.
Although the 42nd article was suppressed other articles assume the prospect of eternal damnation. For example the one on the Creeds. The authenticity of the Athanasian Creed was not in doubt at this point apart from in very secret communications of some Continental humanists, and the ‘charity of its damnatory clauses was not an issue before the rise of the non-conformists at the end of the eighteenth century. Also there the Article about the error of believing that people can be saved by following their own sects and opinions outside of the Church (which assumes that those who believe this are damned) and the comment about unbaptised children not begin saved in the Prayer Book of (which was deleted in the late seventeenth century when this idea rightly came to be seen as abominable).
The article against Purgatory and other superstitions is strengthened in the Elizabethan Prayer Book. (And some sort of doctrine of post mortem purification was essential to universalism at this point). Cranmer only speaks of the scholastic doctrine of purgatory as an abomination – but Parker’s article is less specific calling it squarely ‘Romish’. And this is clarified in John Jewel’s homily that scoffs at any idea of there being an intermediate state of purification and of the efficacy of prayer for the dead. Prayers for the dead were ordered in Cramner’s first prayer book but deleted from the second prayer book on the advice of Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr. They were condemned in the early Latin draft of the Elizabethan articles but this condemnation was dropped from the 39 articles (and they are included in a Latin primer later in Elizabeth’s reign). We do know that the Elizabethan Reformers were ‘gradualist’ in their project and were hoping that concessions made to the old Catholic practices when these were not too contrary to Protestant faith would actually result in these practices dying out. It was only later at the end of Elizabeth’s reign in reaction to the near triumph of the Reformed party in the Church that the idea that Anglicanism was a real middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism gained currency with Richard Hooker.
There is no evidence of any Anglican priests advocating universalism before the late seventeenth century – the general idea expressed at prior to the seventeenth century is that universalism is a madness that threatens all social order by taking away the motivation for people to be good an disobedient. In the late seventeenth century the advocates of universalism wrote either pseudonymously or in posthumous publication which does not suggest any degree of acceptance of universalism before this date. There were of course vigorous debates about predestination and freewill in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church– but this is another matter
The most thorough evidence we have of an Anglican swayed by the teachings of Origen earlier than the late seventeenth century comes from Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘Religio Medici’ where Browne tells us that in his youth –in the 1620s - he believed in universal restoration for a time but later renounced his error (although his other writings show that his wider charity still was at variance with the teachings about hell). He says that he fell into error rather than heresy because he did not publicly teach his error and therefore cause division in the Church.
