Hi Drew – and all readers of this thread (I’m amazed at your perseverance! 
). I think I’m ready to set things down now – this is not an exact work of scholarship so there is no need for me to be scrupulous with referencing etc. – because I’d take forever to write it up and none of you would read it anyway!!! So I’ll keep things fairly informal - you are my audience , no one else is! However I think I can now sketch out my conclusions about the abrogation of the 42nd article from the fairly diligent research I have done; I think you can trust me about 95% of the time now (although I’m open to correction on matters of detail). I no longer think we require getting other academics, real academics, involved – for reasons that I will describe later. For those reading this thread for the first time – and with the staying power produced by a genuine interest in the subject matter – I refer you to an earlier post I made summarising the arguments of D.P. Walker in ‘The Decline of Hell’ as essential background reading; it’s very useful for you to grasp the meaning and the consequences of ‘magisterial Protestantism’ for example.
To begin I want to summarise the views of Anglican Clergymen in the past about the importance of the abrogation of the 42nd article for the Universalist cause (I’ve added to my earlier posts, but the stuff that I reproduce here it’s worth reading again to pick up the thread of a dormant argument)
The Abrogation of the 42nd
I have reflected on the context and meaning of the suppression of the 42nd Article a little more. The entry on the 39 Articles in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (p.1622) tells me that “Subscription to the 39 Articles has never been required of any but the clergy and until the nineteenth century, members of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. From 1865 the clergy were only required to affirm… them as agreeable to the Word of God and undertake not to teach in contradiction of them… Since 1975 they have been required simply to Articles as one of the historic formularies of the C of E which bear witness to the faith revealed in the scripture and set forth in the catholic creeds”.
It strikes me from all of this that through the centuries of the C of E’s existence, those who have been primarily concerned with pondering the meaning and implications of the Articles have been clergy and scholars. All will have been educated to some degree in the history of the Anglican Church and thus most will have know of the abrogation of the Forty Second Article from Edward IV’s Prayer Book. Yes, the 39 Articles do not positively allow the teaching of Universal Salvation but knowledge of the abrogation/suppression of the 42nd Article condemning universalism must have caused many Anglican clergy through the ages to pause for thought. And Drew, it is such an notable, striking thing to an Anglican who has embraced Universalism that I’m not surprised that others have arrived at the same conclusions as you in the past, and independent of each other (it’s almost a sort of ‘cloud of witness’)
First example I’ve found is from George Rust, formerly Dean of Conor and later Bishop of Dromore, and a younger associate of the Cambridge Platonists, in A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the chief of his opinions’ (published under a pseudonym in 1661)
**I would fain know why she (i.e. The Church of England) who in her 39 Articles does so punctually (i.e. exactly) follow the Articles agreed upon in King Edward’s Days, or with little variation, should wholly omit that Article which condemns the Restorers (i.e. the exponents) of this opinion, if she had thought it ought to be condemned’ **
Second example is Andrew Jukes from The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things, 1867. I’ve seen some conflicting versions of his story but the consensus appears to be that he was ordained in the Church of England but was suspended and left over disagreement with the authorities about Infant Baptism. He went on to found an independent church and was friendly with Darby of the Plymouth Brethren (decidedly not a Universalist) and Samuel Cox the Baptist Universalist. When he published ‘Restitution’ he lost a lot of his congregation in protest and eventually came back to the Church of England as an Anglo Catholic – although he never took holy orders again. In Restitution he wrote -
It ought not to be forgotten also, that our English Church , having in her original Forty-two Articles had a Forty-first, declaring of “Millenarians,” that they “cast themselves headlong into a Jewish dotage,” and a Forty-second, asserting, that “All men shall not be saved at length,” within a very few years, in Elizabeth 's reign, struck out both these Articles. Surely this is not without its significance. The Creeds, which are received both by East and West, not only make no mention whatever of endless punishment, but in their declaration of “the forgiveness of sins” seem to teach a very different doctrine.
Third example is Frederic William Farrar from ‘Eternal Hope: Five Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey. November and December, 1877’. Farrar was Dean of Westminster Abbey and although other Anglicans before him had expounded on the theme of Hopeful Universalism – notably Tillotson who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the late seventeenth century in a Christmas Day sermon preached to Queen Mary, the wife of William III –Farrar was the first to preach a hopeful (but not certain) Universalism to a wider public, and his sermons were published and sold out in five editions rapidly. He wrote/preached that –
For ten years indeed (1552 -1561) a Forty Second Article condemned Universalism; but for Universalism (that is ‘certain’ Universalism) I have not pleaded, and, more-over, even that Article was struck out with the consent of the Bishops and Clergy of both Houses and Provinces. TO say that it was struck out because the Anabaptists were no longer prominent is simply an unsupported conjecture. The conjecture may be true, but even if so I look on the elimination of the Article as distinctly overruled by a watchful Providence; since it is the province of the Church to decide only in matters of faith, and no church has a right to legislate in those matters of opinion on which wise and holy men have, in all ages, been content to differ, seeing that we have no indisputable voice of Revelation to guide our conclusions respecting them.
Fourth and last is the Rev. Professor Michael Screech – Anglican Priest and notable scholar of the Renaissance – writing in his ’Laughter at the Foot of the Cross’
**Some think of the Christian revelation as above all a deposit dutifully guarded by an infallible man, institution, or church. Others see the revelation of the fullness of Christ’s truth as primarily a winding road, leading members of a fallible church –however fitfully – towards a deepening understanding of divine truth, justice and mercy. Christian truth may be at any time revealed – in his own way and in his own choosing – by the risen Christ. Christ is the Logos, the Living Word, the very idea of right-reason. He approaches man and addresses him in ways he can understand. It may all seem very mundane. The Logos does not smother the personality of those whom he chooses to address, but he does expect to elicit a response. One response has been a quiet rejection – despite Fathers and Councils and encyclicals and synods – of the notion of a celestial Belsen where wretches suffer infinite and everlasting torment, partly in order to add to the joy of the elect. When in 1553 the church under Edward VI drew up the Forty-two Articles, the forty second read: All men shall not be saved at length. Edward died almost at once and those articles were immediately abrogated under Queen Mary. The forty second was never restored under Elizabeth. So the church left the universalism of Origen an open question. Origen (the favourite theologian of Erasmus) held that, in the end, all rational creatures will be saved: all mankind, and even all devils. The Church, by never restoring Edward’s forty second article, leaves the door of God’s redeeming power wide open: all of us may be eventually saved. If so there will be no human beings left in hell to laugh at…’ **
I note here the references; to Origen for whom Christ perceived in his fullness is Logos /Wisdom – i.e. that which will hold all things together in balance in the fullness of time; to Erasmus, the Christian Humanist and Catholic reformer who revered Origen above Augustine, and was a profound influence – at least in his rhetoric of moderation – on the English Reformers; and to the horrendous idea derived from Tertullian, that Farrar rightly termed the ‘damnable doctrine’, that the elect in heaven would enjoy great voyeuristic pleasure from watching and scoffing at the torments of the damned (Screech goes on to point out the sheer wickedness of the logical conclusion of Augustinian fundamentalists in all sections of the Church on this socre – that since un-baptised/unsaved babies are damned, the elect can also look forward to laughing at their torments. Finally Screech suggests that Fredric William Farrar should be remembered as a ‘Merciful Doctor’ of the Church.
All the best (and thanks for your patience)
Dick
. Of Duffy’s thesis:
You’ve really explained all the critical issues with wonderful clarity - I’ve been stumbling trying to understand these of late myself because I keep bumping into them during research on Drew’s topic. And I needn’t have bothered!