The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571)

The classic doctrinal standard of the English Reformation: a compact confession of biblical, catholic, and Reformed faith, ordered around the sufficiency of Scripture and the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The Thirty-Nine Articles were not written in the quiet of an undisturbed church. They emerged from four decades in which England’s public religion shifted repeatedly, sometimes violently, under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Their stated purpose was the “avoiding of diversities of opinions” and the “establishing of consent touching true religion.” They sought to give the Church of England a clear doctrinal identity: rooted in Holy Scripture, faithful to the ancient creeds, Protestant in its doctrine of grace, and reformed in worship and the sacraments.

A Confession Through Upheaval

Henry VIII’s separation from Rome did not by itself settle England’s doctrine. Reform advanced much more fully during the short reign of Edward VI, only to be reversed when Mary I restored communion with Rome. Protestants were imprisoned, driven into exile, or put to death, while many who escaped found refuge among the Reformed churches of Strasbourg, Zurich, Frankfurt, and Geneva. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, the English Bible and a revised Book of Common Prayer returned, but the church still needed an agreed account of what it taught.

The political pressure was real as well as theological. The settlement faced criticism from Roman opponents on one side and demands for further reform on the other. The Northern Rebellion of 1569 and the papal excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 sharpened fears of foreign intervention and domestic revolt. In that climate, the Articles served not merely as a catalog of disputed points, but as a public declaration of the faith the English church intended to preach, administer, and hand down.

Thomas Cranmer and the Forty-Two Articles

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533 until his deposition under Mary, gave the Articles their first mature form. His theological convictions had developed through sustained study of Scripture and the church fathers, through the controversies of Henry’s reign, and through fellowship with Continental Reformers. As archbishop he helped shape the English liturgy, the Books of Homilies, and a church whose public worship and doctrine would be heard in the language of the people.

Under Edward VI, Cranmer and his fellow reformers produced the Forty-Two Articles, published by royal authority in 1553. They were intended to gather the English church around evangelical doctrine, but Edward died only weeks later and Mary’s government suppressed the Reformation settlement. Cranmer himself endured imprisonment, signed recantations under terrible pressure, and then publicly withdrew them before he was burned at Oxford on March 21, 1556. He did not live to see the Thirty-Nine Articles, but the confession that survived him retained most of the structure and substance he had helped establish.

The Articles’ Reformation Inheritance

The Articles belong to the broad fellowship of sixteenth-century Protestant confessions. Their earlier stages drew language from the Augsburg Confession, often through the Anglo-Lutheran Thirteen Articles of 1538. Cranmer’s work was also shaped by the presence in England of Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli, whose biblical teaching strengthened the English Reformation’s doctrine of the church, discipline, and the Lord’s Supper. During the Elizabethan revision, the Württemberg Confession of 1552 supplied further language and comparison.

Yet the final work is not simply Lutheran, Swiss, or the product of one theologian. It confesses the ancient trinitarian and Christological faith, makes Scripture the final norm, speaks with the Reformation’s clarity about justification by faith, and gives distinctly Reformed expression to the sacraments and Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice. Its authors sought catholic continuity without submission to later errors, and Protestant reform without surrendering the visible church, ordered ministry, or common worship.

From Forty-Two to Thirty-Nine

Under Archbishop Matthew Parker, the Convocation of 1563—dated 1562 according to the Church of England’s contemporary reckoning—revised Cranmer’s Forty-Two Articles, omitting several that addressed particular controversies and combining or reshaping others. The first printed Latin form contained thirty-eight articles after Elizabeth withheld the article concerning the unworthy reception of the Lord’s Supper.

In 1571 that eucharistic article was restored as Article 29. Convocation carefully reviewed and subscribed the English text, the Queen gave her approval, and Parliament required subscription from the clergy in the doctrinal and sacramental articles. This 1571 recension is therefore the settled English form presented in the full text.

A Confession Centered on Christ

The Articles make much of Christ from beginning to end. They confess Him as the eternal Son, one with the Father, who truly assumed our nature, suffered, rose bodily, ascended, and will return as Judge. The Old and New Testaments offer one everlasting life through Christ, the only Mediator. Fallen sinners cannot prepare themselves for faith, but the grace of God comes through Christ; they are accounted righteous only for His merit and receive that righteousness by faith, not by their works.

Even the Articles’ sharpest denials guard the sufficiency of the Savior. Christ alone is without sin. His name alone brings eternal salvation. His church lives under His Word, His sacraments have their efficacy from His institution and promise, and His body is received in the Supper in a heavenly and spiritual manner by faith. Above all, His one offering upon the cross is declared the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for sin, leaving no other sacrifice to complete His work.

An Enduring Anglican and Protestant Heritage

Bound for centuries with the Book of Common Prayer and joined to the Homilies and Ordinal, the Thirty-Nine Articles gave generations of churches a concise grammar for preaching, worship, ministry, and Christian obedience. Their reception has varied across the Anglican Communion, but they remain among its foundational historic formularies. Their influence also traveled beyond Anglicanism, most visibly when John Wesley adapted them for the Methodist Articles of Religion.

Their lasting strength lies in disciplined proportion. The Articles do not attempt to answer every theological question. They say enough to guard the church’s confession, bind conscience to Scripture rather than speculation, set grace before works, and keep the believer’s assurance fixed upon Jesus Christ. In that form they remain not only a record of a contested settlement, but a durable inheritance of Reformation truth.

Read the Articles

Creeds and Confessions