Both were the work of the same master workman, though under different circumstances, and with the aid of different assistants. When Cranmer undertook the work at first, lie was not yet a Protestant; when he finished it, in Edward's reign, he was a somewhat advanced one. In the latter years of his life, under the influence of Ridley and Peter Martyr, Cranmer's opinions had advanced rapidly, and he had become, as is shown in the Articles and the second Prayer-book of Edward, and as he himself tacitly admitted in his second examination at Oxford, Zwinglian in doctrine. Nevertheless he remained true to the conservative instincts characteristic of the English Reformation throughout, and altered as little as his new principles would permit. He may doubtless also have considered that a manual of devotion is one thing and a formula of doctrine another. The Liturgy he composed, as the beauty of its language and its reverential tone suggests, under the full influence of these feelings, retaining as much as possible of whatever was calculated to soothe the feelings and excite the devotion of the worshippers, and to suggest as little as might be the changes and controversies of the day; and without a thought that it also would one day be subjected to the torturing processes of controversial theologians and ecclesiastical lawyers, endeavouring to screw out of its rhetorical expressions and time-honoured metaphors, a constructive licence for holding doctrines which it was the one object of his later years to oppose and to denounce, and, if possible, to obliterate.
The Articles, on the other hand, he drew up distinctly as a formula of faith, intended to express the doctrines of the Church as accurately as was consistent with sufficient comprehensiveness to avoid splitting up
