Article 36 is the concluding article on church discipline. It concerns the public form for the ordination of ministers and the setting apart (consecration) of some presbyters to act as “overseers” or bishops. XXXVI—Of the Consecration of Bishops and…
Article 35 on the subject of “the Homilies” is unique among the reformed churches of Europe. We who live with the reprints of many seventeenth and eighteenth-century sermons preached by reformed pastors, it does not seem strange that doctrines…
Article 34 on the traditions of the church is another excellent example of the application of sola scriptura among the formularies of the English Reformation. It addresses the issue of the uniformity of ceremonies in the church through what has…
The exposition on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper turns to reform of the Roman Mass. Tracking the confession from article 28, Anglicans insist that the elements of the Supper are signs that signify Christ, but are not Christ himself,…
The exposition on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper concludes three final articles that address Lutheran consubstantiation and the blasphemy of the Roman Mass. The doctrine that was fully explained in article 25, ‘in such only as worthily receive the…
In our continual series through “The 39” Articles of Religion of the Reformed Church of England, Thomas Cranmer continues the exposition of the sacraments in a more specific study of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. XXVIII—Of the Lord’s Supper …
As we have seen in our study of the preceding articles in the Thirty-Nine Articles, article 25 on the sacraments maintains that they are not only badges and tokens of Christian men’s profession, but “…certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs…
As we’ve seen in our ongoing study of “The 39,” when the articles discuss essential doctrine, they begin with the general principles of the doctrine before continuing to a more specific examination. Article 25 set out the general principles on…
The Thirty-nine Articles continue its narrative as it sets out a biblically faithful theology of God’s ordained means of grace in the sacraments. As we have seen in our study of other essential doctrines, the article begins with the general…
The narrative of the Thirty-nine articles has set the primacy of the Scriptures as the principal means by which God is revealed and has set the details of the application of this same principle. Scripture alone determines the limits of…
