The Lambeth Articles (1595)
1. God from eternity has predestined some men to life, and
reprobated some to death.
2. The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not
the foreseeing of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of
anything innate in the person of the predestined, but only the will of
the good pleasure of God.
3. There is a determined and certain number of predestined, which
cannot be increased or diminished.
4. Those not predestined to salvation are inevitably condemned on
account of their sins.
5. A true, lively and justifying faith, and the sanctifying Spirit
of God, is not lost nor does it pass away either totally or finally in
the elect.
6. The truly faithful man—that is, one endowed with justifying
faith—is sure by full assurance of faith ("plerophoria fidei")
of the remission of sins and his eternal salvation through Christ.
7. Saving grace is not granted, is not made common, is not ceded to
all men, by which they might be saved, if they wish.
8. No one can come to Christ unless it be granted to him, and
unless the Father draws him: and all men are not drawn by the Father
to come to the Son.
9. It is not in the will or power of each and every man to be
saved.
The Lambeth Articles were drawn up by Dr. William Whitaker, Regius
Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, with input from Dr. Richard
Fletcher (Bishop of London), Dr. Richard Vaughan (Bishop-elect of
Bangor) and Humphrey Tyndall (Dean of Ely).
The Articles were formally approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury
(Dr. John Whitgift), the Archbishop of York (Dr. Matthew Hutton), the
Bishop of London (Dr. Richard Fletcher), the Bishop-elect of Bangor
(Dr. Richard Vaughan), and other prelates convened at Lambeth Palace,
London (20 November, 1595). Dr. Whitgift, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, sent the Lambeth Articles to the University of Cambridge a
few days later (24 November, 1595), not as new laws and decrees, but
as an explanation of certain points already established by the laws of
the land.
At the Hampton Court Conference of King James I and several
prelates with the leaders of the Puritans (January, 1604), Dr.
Reynolds made the request that "the nine orthodoxal assertions
concluded on at Lambeth might be inserted into the Book of
Articles." But the Lambeth Articles were never formally added to
the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles (1563). They were,
however, accepted by the Dublin Convocation of 1615 and engrafted on
the Irish Articles (1615), which are believed to have been largely the
work of James Ussher, who was to become Archbishop of Armagh and
Primate of All Ireland (1625-1656). In the Church of Ireland, the Lambeth
Articles obtained for some time a semi-symbolical authority. It is
stated that they were exhibited at the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619) by
the English deputies, as the judgment of the Church of England on the
Arminian controversy.
Sadly, today, most Anglican churches around the world have fallen
into Arminian free-willism and worse and the faithful Lambeth
Articles are either unknown or rejected.
