Two Books of Homilies
The “Homilies” mentioned in Articles of Religion II and XXXV refer to the original 12 Homilies written in 1543—were then forgotten—and then resurfaced to be published in 1547. The second book of Homilies, twenty-one of them, was published in 1563, and the 21st was added in 1571. The two books are usually published together. The Homilies are sermons of a topical nature that were written to be read (preached) in all the churches of England in sequence. It was not unusual for clergy in pre-Reformation times to be untrained preachers, and not at all uncommon for them to read a homily from an established collection. It was only with the Reformation that ministers rediscovered the power of the Word read aloud and preached.
Written to Be Read in All the Churches.
The purpose of the two books of Homilies was to provide sound teaching in churches for its “re-formation” of church and society, to compensate for the lack of skilled preachers in England, and especially to systematically and memorably communicate the gospel.
“Despite the Protestant priorities, and even the subject of the first homily [Holy Scripture], the Reformers’ intention for the homilies was not to teach people the Bible itself, but instead to teach them a systematic doctrinal framework.” It’s easy to see how God used the Homilies to help ordinary people understand what the Reformation was about, and to impart a theological mindset around the authority of the Bible and the central doctrine of justification by grace through faith. They weren’t originally written to be official doctrine or to serve as a “formulary,” but over time they were recognized as a sound source of Anglican teaching. They are not easily read today because the sentences in Elizabethan English are very long. Thomas Cranmer was the author of four of the original twelve homilies: Holy Scripture, Salvation, Faith, and Faith and Good Works. Historian Gerald Bray says that the homily on Holy Scripture gives us the context for which Articles 6 and 7 of the Articles of Religion were written and is “the most extensive exposition of the doctrine of Scripture to be found in any official Anglican document of the Reformation era.”
