The two Houses of Convocation adopted and subscribed the Book of Common Prayer on the 20th of December. As the Act of Uniformity had not then been passed, as this subscription was intended to prepare for it, and as no Act of Parliament existed at the time requiring subscription, it may be instructive and useful to notice the grounds on which this subscription took place. [Sidenote: 1661.] This fact is curious that, although the practice of subscribing to a creed began so early as the Council of Nicæa, neither the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, nor the clergy of the Greek Church have ever been required, or are now required, by any of their laws, so to express their belief as to doctrine and their resolution as to practice. The enforcement of subscription upon Protestant ministers commenced soon after the Reformation; and, in some cases, the extent of belief which it was intended to cover seems wide indeed; for in the Duchy of Brunswick, Duke Julius required from clergymen, from professors, and from magistrates, "a subscription to all and everything contained in the Confession of Augsburg, in the apology for the Confession, in the Smalcaldic Articles, in all the works of Luther, and in all the works of Chemnitz."[301] The Articles of the Church of England were not subscribed generally until the twelfth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when subscription was ordered for the special purpose of checking the admission of Papists into the English Church, and also the admission of those who had taken orders in the foreign Reformed Churches. The assent required was confined to those Articles "which only concern the Confession of the true Christian faith and the doctrine of the Sacraments."[302] The Earl of Leicester introduced to the University of Oxford, in 1581, subscription to the Articles, without any precise form of words to be required from all undergraduates upon matriculation, and from all who took degrees. The extending of the act of subscription to the entire Liturgy was a step not taken until 1603, when, by the canons of Convocation of that year, this form of assent came to be required of all the clergy. Hence it appears to have been in compliance with a canon law enacted by their predecessors, and not in compliance with any statute law, that the members of Convocation, in the year 1661, signed the declaration of assent and consent to the contents of the Prayer Book.[303] [Sidenote: CONVOCATION.]