the Protestant body into as many differing sects as there existed, or might exist, shades of opinion on obscure theological doctrines; and certainly without any foresight of those 'non-natural senses' to which the ingenuity of later times would compel them to submit, with the evident and even avowed object of forcing them to admit those very doctrines which the whole history, both of the documents and of their framers, shows that they were intended to exclude.[1] It was no doubt a stroke of genius on the part of those who, in after years, desired to undo Cranmer's work, when they claimed the right to interpret the Articles by the language of the Liturgy; but that the latter never was intended to be used for such a purpose may be considered to be historically proved by the following facts: (1) That while both were the work of the same hand, the Articles were the later composition of the two; (2) that a new edition of the Liturgy was published in the very same year with the Articles, in which the very few changes made were of such a kind as to bring it into accord with them in the one or two points which appeared to the compilers to be important; and (3) that, as just pointed out, the rhetorical and devotional tone of the older document, compared with the scholastic and argumentative style of the later, shows plainly which of the two was meant to serve a controversial or polemical purpose, and also which was not so intended. The final conclusions, then, at which we must arrive from the history of Church and State in England under the Tudor Dynasty appear to be as follows:—
(1.) That during the earlier part of the period—i.e., during the whole reigns of Henry VII. and of Henry VIII.
