The connexion of the _Reformatio Legum_ with the Articles of our Church, and the light which they throw on each other, I need not point out to any who are acquainted with the history of our Church at that time. The Forty-two Articles, from which our Thirty-nine were, ten years afterwards, derived, were first published in 1553. In the November of the preceding year, Cranmer proposed that the bishops should have them at once _subscribed_ throughout their dioceses. The death of King Edward prevented this from being accomplished. They were revised and subscribed by Convocation in 1563, in the name of the whole clergy of England. The early chapters of the _Reformatio Legum_ contain the doctrine of the Articles, and were, no doubt, intended to be an authorized exposition of them. How strict a system was meant to be inaugurated by the Reformers may be judged by even a superficial perusal of that Book. Heresy and blasphemy were to be punishable by death. Adultery was to be visited with imprisonment and even banishment. Impenitent persons were to be “handed over to the civil power.” All this was the sort of Discipline which was waiting to be put in force as soon as the Reformers could persuade the nation to bear it;—and yet this is the supposed time when Subscription was alien from the mind of the Reformed Church! Temporary restriction of the Clergy. Subscription in 1564. But during this interval of twelve years, while the bishops were doing their best to bring the clergy and people to Uniformity, and preparing them for the “Discipline” which was openly clamoured for, we find that immediately after the Articles were published, “advertisements” came out by authority further to restrain the liberty of the preachers. In 1564, the clergy, who had by their proctors subscribed the Articles in Convocation, were required “to protest and _subscribe_” that they would not preach at all without special license from the bishop, but “only read that which is appointed by public authority:” and further, that they would “observe, keep, and maintain, all the rites, ceremonies, good usages and order” set forth by the Act of Uniformity. Here then was “Subscription” to the whole Prayer-book as it then stood. And, indeed, even three years before, the “readers” in Churches were obliged, by “Subscriptions” to certain injunctions, to execute their office within prescribed and narrow limits. The state of things doubtless was still felt on all hands to be but provisional. The great Roman Catholic party waited, without separating formally. The Puritans were stirring themselves in the cause of “Discipline:” it was hoped by both parties that some change might, from the lapse of a few years, better their position. The latter reckoned on the more aged of the old Popish Clergy dying out; the former were encouraged by a fanatical prophecy to expect the death of the Queen herself in the twelfth year of her reign; but