Doctrine · The Articles of Religion

Article XXII — Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches. It is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same, or exactly alike; for they have been always different, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word. Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification.

moderately contested

What it says

“Rites and ceremonies need not be identical everywhere; each church may set or change them so long as nothing contradicts Scripture and all is done for edification — but breaking lawful common order on private judgment merits open rebuke.”

The stake
Liberty in things indifferent *and* the authority of common order, held in one article — adiaphora without anarchy.
Why it matters
It is the constitutional basis for Methodist liturgical freedom and for the church's right to change its forms — and the brake on individualist disruption.
The Wesleyan take
This is Wesley's own license: he abridged the Prayer Book and the General Rules under exactly this principle — change rites for edification, against God's Word in nothing — while insisting on order against the self-willed disrupter.
Original English
It is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same, or exactly alike; for they have been always different, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word. Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly and purposely doth openly break the rites and ceremonies of the church to which he belongs, which are not repugnant to the Word of God, and are ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly… Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification. Thirty-Nine Articles Article XXXIV (1571), 'Of the Traditions of the Church,' kept by Wesley essentially verbatim. Two balanced claims: rites are *adiaphora* (indifferent, variable by place and time, so nothing be against God's Word), yet *order* matters (the lone individual who 'openly' breaks lawful common ceremonies 'ought to be rebuked openly'). ¶104 footnote 4 lists Article XXII among XIV–XXI for ecumenical reading. This article is the constitutional charter for Wesley's own liturgical freedom in abridging the Prayer Book and the General Rules.
VersionRendering
United Methodist Book of Discipline (¶104) It is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same… so that nothing be ordained against God's Word… Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification.
Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), Article XXXIV It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like… Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying. Wesley kept the adiaphora principle and the 'rebuked openly' order clause; *Book of Resolutions* #3144 governs its ecumenical reading.

Traditions cited patristic ·reformed ·anglican ·wesleyan ·modern ecumenical

Article XXII — Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches

The Text

Article XXII is the article that made this whole document possible. It states the principle by which Wesley could take a national church’s liturgy and Articles, change them, and call the result a faithful standard. Rites and ceremonies “need not in all places be the same”; each church may “ordain, change, or abolish” them, on two conditions: “nothing be ordained against God’s Word,” and “all things… done to edification.” But it is not a charter for free-for-all: the individual who, “through his private judgment,” “openly” breaks lawful common ceremonies “ought to be rebuked openly.” Liberty in things indifferent; authority in common order; edification as the test of both. Wesley kept it intact because it is the constitutional ground he stood on to produce everything else in this collection.

Translation Notes

“rites and ceremonies” — adiaphora, things indifferent: matters neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture (vesture, posture, calendar, form of service). The article’s first move is to classify them correctly, so they are neither absolutized nor despised.

“so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.” The one hard limit. Liberty is wide but not unbounded: Article V (Scripture sufficiency) is the fence. A “ceremony” that contradicts Scripture is no longer indifferent.

“done to edification.” The positive criterion — the same word as Article XV (intelligible worship). Changes are judged not by novelty or taste but by whether they build up the people. Edification, not preference, is the article’s measure.

“openly break… rebuked openly.” The order clause. The article distinguishes the church changing its forms by common authority (licit) from an individual disrupting lawful forms by private judgment (to be openly rebuked). Liberty belongs to the church corporately; it is not a license for the self-willed.

Historical Context

Article XXXIV of the Thirty-Nine answered the Puritan pressure for a single divinely mandated church order: the English settlement insisted most ceremonies are human and variable, defensible by edification and antiquity, not by divine command — while defending the authority of the established order against individualist disruption. It is the via media’s self-defense on both flanks.

For Methodism the article is not theory; it is autobiography. The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America (1784) is Wesley’s abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer; the General Rules are a “slightly modified” version adopted at the Christmas Conference; the Articles themselves are his cut of the Thirty-Nine. Every act of editorial freedom this entire commentary has been tracing — the Athanasian struck, the descent deleted, predestination removed, the liturgy shortened — was performed under the authority of Article XXII: a particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites, so that nothing be against God’s Word and all be done to edification. The article is the document’s own license, kept inside the document.

Lines of Interpretation

The disputed question: how far does “indifferent and changeable” reach, and who holds the authority to change — the church, or the individual conscience?

Patristic

Tradition: diversity of customs within unity of faith

Augustine’s counsel (“when in Rome…”) and the early church’s regional liturgical variety embody Article XXII: one faith, many usages. The article’s “always different” is historically true.

Strengths

  • Grounds liturgical diversity in catholic antiquity, not Reformation pragmatism
  • Keeps unity (faith) and diversity (rite) properly distinguished

Weaknesses

  • Antiquity also fought hard over some “rites” (the dating of Easter); the line indifferent/essential is not always obvious
  • Custom acquired quasi-binding force early; “merely indifferent” is tidier than the history

Reformed

Tradition: the regulative vs. normative principle; adiaphora

The Reformed split here: strict regulative-principle traditions allow only what Scripture commands in worship; the broader (and Anglican-Wesleyan) reading is Article XXII’s normative principle — what Scripture does not forbid, the church may order for edification.

Strengths

  • Names the real interpretive fork (regulative vs. normative) honestly
  • The normative reading fits the article’s plain liberty

Weaknesses

  • Strict regulative readings would resist the article’s breadth
  • “Edification” without limits can baptize mere fashion

Anglican

Tradition: the via media; the church’s authority over its order

Article XXXIV is quintessentially Anglican: ceremonies human and variable, the church’s common authority real, the disruptive individual rebuked. It is the settlement’s charter for ordered liberty.

Strengths

  • Reads the article whole — liberty and order, not one without the other
  • Explains Wesley’s own practice exactly (he changed forms by authority, not by whim)

Weaknesses

  • “Common authority” can harden into resistance to all change — the opposite error
  • The English establishment frame must be re-applied to a non- established Methodism

Modern / Ecumenical

Tradition: liturgical pluralism; inculturation

Modern theology reads Article XXII as the warrant for inculturated, contextual worship — diverse forms, one faith — while the order clause guards against individualist or factional disruption.

Strengths

  • Frames contemporary liturgical diversity as principled, not merely permitted
  • Keeps the edification test central in a pluralist church

Weaknesses

  • “Contextual” can erode the “nothing against God’s Word” fence
  • The corporate-authority clause is easily forgotten in an individualist age — the article’s neglected half

Wesleyan Voice

Article XXII is the hinge on which the entire Wesleyan corpus this site annotates turns, and Wesley used it with both hands. With the liberty hand he abridged ferociously — the Prayer Book into the Sunday Service, the Thirty-Nine into twenty-four, the Athanasian Creed struck, the descent deleted, predestination removed — every edit defensible only because rites and even the received Articles are, under Article XXII, subject to a particular church’s authority to “ordain, change, or abolish… so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.” Wesley’s whole editorial confidence rests here: he is not freelancing; he is doing what Article XXII authorizes a church to do.

With the order hand Wesley was equally firm, and modern Methodism forgets this half. He insisted to the end that his preachers and people not separate from the Church of England, not hold service in church hours, not break lawful order on private judgment — and when they did, he rebuked it openly, exactly the article’s clause. The General Rules’ closing discipline ([[general-rules/the-closing-discipline]]) is Article XXII’s order clause as church practice: the self-willed disruptor is admonished, borne with, and, unrepentant, excluded. Wesley’s liberty was churchly, never individualist: the connexion could change its forms; the lone preacher could not, on his own authority, break them.

The Wesleyan note that resolves the tension is edification. For Wesley a rite is to be kept, changed, or abolished by one test — does it build up the people in the knowledge and love of God? That is why he could revere the Prayer Book and still cut it: not contempt for order but the same criterion that governs The Means of Grace and Article XV — the forms exist for the people’s salvation, not the reverse. A Wesleyan who invokes Article XXII only for liberty (change anything) or only for order (change nothing) has taken half of Wesley. The whole is: the church may change its forms, under Scripture, for edification — and no individual may break lawful order to do it.

Hymnody

There is no hymn on adiaphora, and the absence fits: you do not sing a principle of liberty. What the Wesleyan tradition sings is the edification that is the article’s test — “All praise to our redeeming Lord, who joins us by his grace,” the church being built up together; “Christ, from whom all blessings flow, perfecting the saints below… build us in one body up.” The hymnody keeps the article’s criterion in view: whatever the form, the question sung is whether the body is built up in love.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is permission with a fence. Article XXII frees a congregation and a denomination from the anxiety that every liturgical form is divinely fixed: forms “have been always different” and may be changed for edification. This is the constitutional answer both to the traditionalist who treats a received form as untouchable and to the church afraid that changing anything is unfaithful — the test is Scripture and edification, not custom.

The second use is the forgotten order clause. In an individualist church, the article’s “openly break… rebuked openly” is the harder word: liberty in worship belongs to the church by common authority, not to whoever has the strongest preference or the microphone. Pastorally this disciplines the liturgical entrepreneur and the factional disruptor alike — change is licit through common order, not through private will. Held with the General Rules’ closing discipline, it is the church’s defense against worship by the loudest.

The third use is honest self-reference. This is the article to teach when explaining why the Methodist Articles are an abridgment at all — why the church recites a creed it edited and confesses Articles one man cut. The answer is Article XXII: a particular church may change rites and even received forms for edification, under Scripture. Taught so, the whole strange genre of this document becomes intelligible, and the congregation learns that its tradition’s freedom and its tradition’s discipline come from the same sentence.

Further Reading

  • 1 Corinthians 14:26, 40 (“all things… unto edifying… decently and in order”); Romans 14 — things indifferent and the weaker brother
  • Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXXIV (1571) — Wesley’s source; Book of Resolutions #3144
  • John Wesley, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America (1784) — Article XXII in action
  • The Minutes on not separating from the Church / not holding church- hours service — the order clause enforced
  • The sufficiency fence: [[articles-of-religion/article-5-of-the-sufficiency-of-the-holy-scriptures]]
  • The doctrine of the church it serves: [[articles-of-religion/article-13-of-the-church]]
  • The order clause as discipline: [[general-rules/the-closing-discipline]]

Related

The Articles of Religion

Article I — Of Faith in the Holy Trinity. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Article II — Of the Word, or Son of God, Who Was Made Very Man. The Son, who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided; whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men. Article III — Of the Resurrection of Christ. Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day. Article IV — Of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God. Article V — Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation. The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. Article VI — Of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and Man. Although the law given from God by Moses as touching ceremonies and rites doth not bind Christians, nor ought the civil precepts thereof of necessity be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral. Article VII — Of Original or Birth Sin. Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually. Article VIII — Of Free Will. The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. Article IX — Of the Justification of Man. We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith, only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort. Article X — Of Good Works. Although good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and spring out of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree is discerned by its fruit. Article XI — Of Works of Supererogation. Voluntary works — besides, over and above God's commandments — which they call works of supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety. For by them men do declare that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake than of bounden duty is required; whereas Christ saith plainly: When ye have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants. Article XII — Of Sin After Justification. Not every sin willingly committed after justification is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore, the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after justification. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin, and, by the grace of God, rise again and amend our lives. And therefore they are to be condemned who say they can no more sin as long as they live here; or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent. Article XIII — Of the Church. The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. Article XIV — Of Purgatory. The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God. Article XV — Of Speaking in the Congregation in Such a Tongue as the People Understand. It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the primitive church, to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understood by the people. Article XVI — Of the Sacraments. Sacraments ordained of Christ are not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they are certain signs of grace, and God's good will toward us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm, our faith in him. There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Article XVII — Of Baptism. Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. The Baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church. Article XVIII — Of the Lord's Supper. The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another, but rather is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death… The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith. Article XIX — Of Both Kinds. The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people; for both the parts of the Lord's Supper, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be administered to all Christians alike. Article XX — Of the One Oblation of Christ, Finished upon the Cross. The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in the which it is commonly said that the priest doth offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit. Article XXI — Of the Marriage of Ministers. The ministers of Christ are not commanded by God's law either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage; therefore it is lawful for them, as for all other Christians, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve best to godliness. Article XXII — Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches. It is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same, or exactly alike; for they have been always different, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word. Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification. Article XXIII — Of the Rulers of the United States of America. The President, the Congress, the general assemblies, the governors, and the councils of state, as the delegates of the people, are the rulers of the United States of America, according to the division of power made to them by the Constitution of the United States and by the constitutions of their respective states. And the said states are a sovereign and independent nation, and ought not to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction. Article XXIV — Of Christian Men's Goods. The riches and goods of Christians are not common as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as some do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability. Article XXV — Of a Christian Man's Oath. As we confess that vain and rash swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ and James his apostle, so we judge that the Christian religion doth not prohibit, but that a man may swear when the magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the prophet's teaching, in justice, judgment, and truth. Of Sanctification (appended 1939; legislative, not constitutionally protected). Sanctification is that renewal of our fallen nature by the Holy Ghost, received through faith in Jesus Christ, whose blood of atonement cleanseth from all sin; whereby we are not only delivered from the guilt of sin, but are washed from its pollution, saved from its power, and are enabled, through grace, to love God with all our hearts and to walk in his holy commandments blameless. Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority (appended 1939; legislative, not constitutionally protected). It is the duty of all Christians, and especially of all Christian ministers, to observe and obey the laws and commands of the governing or supreme authority of the country of which they are citizens or subjects or in which they reside, and to use all laudable means to encourage and enjoin obedience to the powers that be.