ABSTRACT
The English emissaries returned home to a second traumatic royal marital crisis. The articles are usuallyascribed to a typically English ambiguity; but they are deliberately ambiguous, because the author was being diplomatic. Article two upheld the sacrament of baptism as necessary for salvation, and specifically with Anabaptists in mind, confirmed the baptism of infants. It sounds as if the article was seeking to accommodate the Henry’s Lutheran emphasis on absolution and faith without excluding confession. The article repeats phrases and Scriptures that Melanchthon used in his Loci, like the necessity of good works for everlasting life, and others. Thomas Cromwell presided over convocation during 1536 when the articles were formulated and enacted, and was as closely involved in their legislation as any clergyman. Effectively Cromwell was now chief minister of church and state, and this unprecedented advancement so soon after the passing of the articles suggests that Cromwell’s role was more than one of simply overseeing proceedings.
