The problem of Oliver Cromwell's religious beliefs and the sincerity of those beliefs is one that has bedevilled historians from the seventeenth century to the present. Ultimately it is not one that will yield a concrete solution, for it is far too dependent on subjective considerations. Nevertheless, the impossibility of its definite resolution does not permit historians the expediency of dispensing with an enquiry into Cromwell's religion; for it is certainly the most striking characteristic of the man as he is revealed in his writings and speeches.

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed it to be “a dogma divinely revealed that the immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was run, was assumed in body and in soul to heavenly glory.” Unlike some earlier definitions of dogma, the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin did not provoke any widespread controversy within the Roman Catholic communion about the substance of the doctrine. It had been generally believed by the people and taught by the theologians for a long time, and petitions signed by millions of the faithful had been importuning successive popes throughout this century and before to define it as binding de fide upon the entire Church.

The history of exegesis as a discipline is one of the stepchildren of Church History. As such it has not only been neglected by Church historians, but even if studied, it has received inferior treatment. Surely there is something ironical about an age of theological scholarship which has so self-consciously bought the historical method to study the Bible, but which nevertheless allows scholars to be so un-historical in their approach to the history of its interpretation. Consider that much of the material in the history of exegesis has been mined by scholars whose proper business is the study of the Old and New Testaments; or that the history of interpretation is usually considered a part of biblical studies. Inevitably the question asked by biblical scholars sounds something like this: how does a man, a school, or epoch interpret such and such a passage? Frequently this question issues in monographs tracing the history of interpretations of the chosen passage. The result is usually a catena of citations classifying and cataloguing the answers given to problems in the text. Most often the perspective brought to the material is that of the contemporary exegete, who, either explicitly or implicitly thinks he knows what the passage meant—or at least what it could not mean.

In the fall of 1524 the Strassburg reformer Wolfgang Capito published a typically irenic work entitled Was man halten und antworten soil von der Spaitung zwischen Martin Luther und Andres Caroistadt, in which he showed, at least to his own satisfaction, that the disagreement between Martin Luther and Andreas Carlstadt, the two former colleagues on the Wittenberg faculty, was peripheral and of no significance. Luther himself begged to differ, called Carlstadt “incarnatus diabolus” and remarked with characteristic flair, “ibi non homo sed spiritus Satanae ornat se sua sapientia.” Historically Luther's assessment, rather than Capito's, has set the precedent. In the first decade of this century Hermann Barge sought to raise and answer Capito's question once more Barge published an impressive two-volume biography of Carlstadt with the express intent of modifying the traditionally negative view of his hero. At the same time he offered a broad reinterpretation of the early Reformation. Barge chided scholarship for its preoccupation with the leading Reformation figures and demanded that greater attention be paid to the sentiment of the common people. According to Barge, a ground swell of popular enthusiasm for ecclesiastical change came to the fore at Wittenberg during Luther's stay in the Wartburg, exerting its influence upon the theologians, notably Carlstadt, who became the main spokesman for this new perspective and helped in the attempt at actual transformation at Wittenberg, making some incisive theological and ecclesiastical contributions. Elector Frederick, perturbed by the mandate of the Reichsregiment of January 20, 1522, intervened and crushed this budding “lay puritanism.” Luther had originally sided with those who demanded definite ecclesiastical change, but switched his orientation under the Elector's influence and returned to Wittenberg as a determined proponent of conservative reform. The scholarly opposition to Barge was virtually unanimous and his volumes, while adding substantial information, particularly for the time after 1523, made no positive contribution to Reformation scholarship.

Philipp of Hesse's style as a Christian prince had some unusual aspects. He came under the influence of the Reformation during a formative period for himself and his territory and developed his princely self-understanding and the ecclesiastical constitution of Hesse in dialogue with the evangelical movement. Both the man and the land bore the indelible stamp of the encounter.

In Contra Celsum Origen briefly states his approach to constructing a theological system. He says, “… anyone who constructs a Christian philosophy will need to argue the truth of his doctrines with proofs of all kinds, taken both from the divine scriptures and from rational arguments (logois akolouthias). ” Origen here specifies a twofold basis for theology—Scripture and rational argument. He often speaks explicitly of these two in his system. For example, in De principiis II.v.3 he says that he has refuted the heretics by arguments drawn from the authority of Scriptures (ex auctoritate … scripturarum) but it will not be unfitting if he discusses the matter from the standpoint of rational argument (ex ratione … consequentiae=akolouthia). And again at the end of the preface of De principiis, this programmatic statement occurs: Anyone desiring to construct a system out of the articles of faith just listed will do so “… with the aid of such illustrations and declarations as he shall find in the holy scriptures and of such conclusions as he shall ascertain to follow logically from them when rightly understood.”

More than any other single influence, it was Woolman's clear and steady voice that woke the conscience of the Quakers and ultimately, through them, of the Western world to the moral evil of slavery.

George Herbert was a devotional poet in the early part of the seventeenth century; he was also an Anglican minister. Like his friends, John Donne and Lancelot Andrewes, he loved the Church of England, and his faith was a source of creativity. In the later part of his life Herbert had a hobby; he liked to collect simple proverbs. Herbert's sayings, which he published as Outlandish Proverbs, had little to do with religion. Compared with the themes of his poetry, in fact, they were surprisingly secular.

The question of post-Reformation Catholicism in England has received increased attention of late from historians of various creeds, with the Elizabethans and the Generation of 1829 exercising a particular fascination. Only the eighteenth century continues to suffer neglect—and this despite the monumental scholarship of an earlier day, when Edwardian ecclesiastics ventured to reconstruct the Georgian world of Bishop Challoner and the missioners of the “Penny Chapels.” Their conclusions now stand in need of fundamental revision, not only in the interests of greater impartiality, but in order to determine more precisely the condition of a religious minority, allegedly subjected to the heaviest disabilities. “Proscribed and persecuted the Catholic faith has notoriously been for the last three centuries,” so wrote the editor of Dolman's Magazine in 1847; and, some fifty years later, neither Bishop Burton nor Bishop Ward thought it necessary to demur. Indeed, for them, the period which culminated in the riots of 1780 so obviously reflected the malice of the Protestant majority as to justify the demand for“Relief”or “Emancipation.”

The accretions and modifications of time often disguise the origin of familiar contemporary institutions. Furthermore Medieval institutions must frequently be studied in regard to their development rather than in terms of their function at any one time. Thus this paper will deal with certain aspects of development in conciliar history and will examine the relation of this development to the early history of the university.

The historian Presniakov has characterized the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the reign of Alexander I, as “Russia at the crossroads” (Rossiia na rasput'i). No longer content with slavish imitation of Western Europe, Russia now began to develop a culture which would be admired and emulated by the West. Once beyond the fringe of European diplomacy, the Empire now moved to the center of that arena. Shaped by her national traditions, but involved increasingly in continent-wide trends, the Russia of Alexander I was confronted by a varied and complex set of problems, both domestic and foreign, which demanded resolution. The destruction of the Napoleonic threat, the assimilation of subject nationalities, the establishment of efficient techniques and procedures of government, the articulation and implementation of national policies in education and in economic life were among the countless tasks which faced Alexander I and his advisors. Educated Russians of the day heatedly debated the most effective means of solving the myriad dilemmas.

It is generally acknowledged that Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ranks as one of the supreme masterpieces of historical writing. Yet surprisingly enough, more than a third of his entire narrative, that portion dealing with the later Roman or Byzantine Empire, has been badly neglected by historiographers. Now Gibbon as a Byzantinist must needs be an ecclesiastical historian as well, given the nature of Byzantine civilization with its close identification of the religious and the political. But here again, though sharp controversy has for long raged over Gibbon's judgment of early Christianity, especially its responsibility for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, his treatment of medieval Greek Christianity has been almost ignored by critics, except for sporadic, general remarks by Bury, Dawson, Giarrizzo—remarks which have added little to the traditionally accepted view that Gibbon was contemptuous of Byzantine civilization.

In recent years growing numbers of German and American church historians have turned their attention to the spectacular Kirch enkanipf (Church Struggle) under the Nazis but have so far largely neglected the preceding Weimar period. And yet it stands to reason that the ambiguous response of Evangelical churches in the 1930's to a seemingly demonic use of political power can be explained, at least in part, by their political and social attitudes in the 1920's.

More than seventy-five years ago, Ludwig Keller (1849–1915), German archivist and historian, wrote to the young Mennonite immigrant to the United States, John Horsch (1867–1941), to propose that

just as in the “Evangelical Alliance” Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, etc., meet from time to time, the Mennonites of the various branches could join with the Quakers, Schwenkfelders, … Dunkers, several branches of the General Baptists, the Hutterian Brethren, several wings of the Presbyterians, etc., in brief all the parties that grew out of old Anabaptism, in an “Old-Evangelical Alliance” [Alt-evangelischen Bunde].

Nineteenth century liberals constantly expressed dissatisfaction that non-Catholic worship was banned in Rome by the pontiffs. Traditionally, diplomats such as Prussians, Americans, and Russians, were allowed chapels of choice for themselves and their nationals, usually in legations or in licensed buildings outside the city gates. The fact that Pope Pius IX had removed to extra-mural quarters two Scottish Presbyterian churches and the false rumor that he threatened the American place of worship, played a role in causing the United States to cut off as of June 30, 1867, funds for its minister to the Vatican. A discreet Protestant cemetery containing the tombs of Shelley, Keats, and Alexander von Humboldt, cheek by jowl against the walls of Rome near the Porta San Paolo, is reminder that dissenters were not permitted to give scandal to the faithful by ostentatious religious ceremonies. The situation changed abruptly once the Patrimony of Saint Peter became part of Italy.

British travelers have swarmed along American shores in vast numbers ever since the early years of the new republic. During the nineteenth century they erected a model of the United States, resembling Tocqueville's, with which they nearly always came to understand America. It was built around two generalizations. First, Americans believe in the principle of equality, or more precisely, the belief that all men deserve equal opportunities to rise, no matter what their inherited rank in society. And, second, Americans make an heroic effort to incorporate this principle into the daily institutional fabric of their national life—into the public schools, into family relationships in the homes, into a political life which revolves around the universal ballot, into their adoring attitude towards women and children, into their respectful treatment of “help,” and into the fluid class structure itself.

This, with Edwards, is established, that mind cannot conceive a state of perfect nothing. Something, somewhere, there must be; for if we say that there is absolutely nothing, we talk nonsense, inasmuch as we imply a disjunction where there is none. “Either being or absolute nothing is no disjunction, no more than whether a triangle is a triangle or not a triangle. There is no other way but only for there to be existence. There is no such thing as absolute nothing.” Some being, therefore, some place necessarily and eternally is. And if at some place then in all places, since it is no less meaningless to affirm that nothing is in some one place than it is to say that nothing is at all. “So that we see this necessary, eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent.” But if omnipresent then not solid, for solidity is nothing but resistance to other solidities, all of which we can with ease conceive as not existing, whereas this omnipresent being “is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being.” What is this being, then, that no amount of mental effort can deny? It is, says Edwards, space.

Looking back upon the Puritan Holy Commonwealth from the vantage point of our Great Society, we recognize continuity, but it would be surprising if we were not more conscious of differences. Not the least of these, we might assume, would be the abandonment of a colonial ideal of theocracy in favor of a wall of separation between church and state in a thoroughly secularized world. Surely in a day when God is hidden or dead we do not look for any avenues of divine direction in mundane affairs or for some visible body of saints through whom God's continuing will for culture may be made known. Yet it has been urged that even after the Puritan theocracy collapsed “the Puritan vision of the political order subdued to God and operating under his will by his people was not lost. It persisted in American life through various transformations until thoroughly secularized.” The thesis deserves scrutiny, period by period, person by person. For our purposes we can find substantial evidence of a continuing theocratic ideal in such a suggestive period as the Great Awakening,2 when revivalist preachers and excited followers seemed to rattle and even threaten the structure of their own society, and certainly left a legacy of movements and causes to affect the body politic later. Towering over all other figures in the upheavals of the 1740's is that fascinating and enigmatic Puritan, Jonathan Edwards. The specific purpose of this paper is to inquire whether this contemporary of Davenport and Tennent—as well as Franklin and Mayhew—did what we might expect him to do: support and transmit a theocratic ideal.

Recent studies of the history of ethnic groups in America have produced a growing awareness that the relationships between religious institutions and ethnic identity are more complex than was earlier believed. Three factors, it seems to me, are now hindering our efforts to understand these relationships. One is the absence of an alyses of the wide functional differences between congregations and denominations, the two kinds of institutions which serve the religious needs of modern democratic societies. Another is the con centration of most historical research in immigrant religion upon one ethnic group. And the third is the emphasis upon the history of either rural frontiers or large cities. In this paper, I wish to present the results of a study of the religious life of the Lake Superior cop per and iron mining country, a region in which immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe are predominant, yet one in which the newcomers of each nationality were spread widely through small towns and villages.

America made its immigrants ethnocentric. Except for the travelers from England, every other nationality sensed its cultural distinctiveness soon after settling here with countrymen. The process of identity-consciousness went on continually with every group. In a strange and unknown environment, newcomers, particularly the least Anglo-Saxon, joined their fellows for a security of continuity, yearning for that Old World basis of religion, language, and social customs. Although these fresh ties could not restore their European community exactly, they could offer a reasonable substitute for adjustment, the American immigrant society. To latecoming arrivals the reconstructed ethnic colony moderated the differences of the original and destined community and made the contrast less jarring. The immigrants had refashioned the old primary settlements in America and struggled to maintain them. In the recent debate over the acculturative process, how the “melting pot” worked, certainly the ultural pluralists describe best the first-generation communities.