It is part of our American folk-lore that sooner or later a criminal will return to the scene of his crime. And perhaps it is a bad conscience which brings me to this topic. Nonetheless, if indeed this paper be an exercise in the amendment of life, I take comfort in the fact that a confession of sin is hardly a profession of achievement. Consequently, if at the close of this paper I leave this topic no better than I found it, the effort will yet have been a phase in my amendment of life. I do not think that any of us will come easily or quickly to an adequate understanding of how greatly we all must change our ways. Nor will the change itself be accomplished by mere good intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine several aspects of the relationship between Christianity and the rise of the new rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth century. It is in this connection that we intend to examine the thought of the French Huguenot preacher Jacques Saurin (1677–1730). Historians have held that the two leading ideas of that century, Nature and Reason, derive their meaning from the natural sciences. Such a point of view tends to ignore the greater realism towards nature and politics which developed within the Christian theological framework itself. From the sixteenth century on, we find orthodox theologians emphasizing the need for dealing with the world on its own terms. It was not so much the new sciences but rather the conflicts of the Reformation which brought out this increasingly rational attitude on the part of both Protestant and Catholic theologians. This development went on side by side with that secularized idea of reason which is of specific scientific inspiration. The means which theologians used to make room for a greater realism in their Christian framework of thought was casuistic divinity.

Basil Willey in the introductory chapter of his Seventeenth Century Background calls attention to the fact that the rise of scientific humanism introduced a basic dichotomy into the intellectual and religious life of that century. A new pattern of explanation came to dominate Western thought in the seventeenth century, and it was destined to continue without being effectively challenged until the twentieth. For three centuries it was assumed that reality was a closed system of law, and no explanation was satisfactory which did not make clear the efficient causation operating within this closed system. Epistemological studies, to be sure, developed within this period a radical skepticism regarding the validity of man's knowledge of ultimate reality; but not even Hume or Kant succeeded in conceiving of reality as essentially dynamic. The early nineteenth century witnessed a reaction against the static rationalism of the previous age. Emphasis came to be put on movement, development, evolution. Things were explained, not by direct relation to a nexus of fixed laws, but by descriptions of how they came to be.

It has become almost a commonplace of both historical and systematic theology to interpret the doctrine of the Trinity as an elaboration of the christological faith and formulations of the early church. That is true of such radically divergent interpreters of that doctrine's origin as Adolf Harnack and G. L. Prestige. Both these scholars agree in seeing the trinitarian dogma as a response to the question whether, in Harnack's words, “the divine that has appeared on earth and reunited men with God is identical with that divine which created heaven and earth, or whether it is a demigod.” Or, as Prestige elaborates the thesis: “If the godhead was not unitary, it was as simple to conceive of three Persons as of two; hence the deity of Christ carried the weight of trinitarian controversies without any necessity for extending the range of dispute, and as a matter of history, the settlement of the problems connected with the Father and the Son was found to lead to an immediate solution of the whole trinitarian difficulty.”

It is not generally known that during the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries, England and Scotland were in fairly close cultural relations and religious contacts with Bohemia. But such was the case. The earliest such connection is traceable to the endowment established by Vojtěch Ranků of Ježov (Adalbertus Ranconis de Ericinio) for Czech students wishing to study at Oxford or Paris. Vojtěch was one of the most learned Czech Masters of the University of Paris, where in 1355 he had served as Rector. Later he had taught at Oxford. Furthermore, this initial tie between Bohemia and England was greatly strengthened when in 1382 King Richard II married Anne, the daughter of Emperor Charles IV and sister of the Czech King, Wenceslas IV. She was an unusually cultured young lady who read her Bible assiduously in three languages—Czech, German, and Italian. Many Czechs, among them Lord Peter of Wartenberg, accompanied her, and some of them even settled in England. Furthermore, a considerable number of Czech students matriculated at the English universities. Those who studied at Oxford became acquainted with the writings of John Wyclif, and upon their return home brought copies of them to Prague. At first, only the philosophical works of Wyclif were thus made available; but after 1400 his theological treatises were extant in Bohemia as well. Among those who introduced Wyclif's doctrines into Bohemia, the most important was Jerome of Prague. He returned from Oxford in 1401 and influenced Hus by his fervent Wyclifism. Hus transcribed many of Wyclif's works for his own use. Later, similar services were rendered by two Czech students, Nicholas Faulfiš and George of Kninice. They visited the Lollard centers, such as Kemerton near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and Braybrook in Northamptonshire. There they copied many of Wyclif's works which were apparently no longer available in Oxford, and upon their return to Bohemia brought them along. They also delivered a document from the University of Oxford testifying to Wyclif's orthodoxy—although this was probably a forgery.

In the thirty years following the American Civil War, American society witnessed marked changes. Among the many stimuli to these changes, Darwinian evolution and the literary and intellectual Renaissance of the Middle Period were perhaps predominant. And of all the changes wrought in this thirty years of many changes, those in American religious thought may be counted among the most significant.

The preachers of the New Model Army during the 1640's and 1650's engaged in a three-pronged attack upon the educated people of Puritan England, i.e., upon the clergy, the university teachers, and the lawyers. Both the Levellers and the Diggers gave strong support to this anti-professional or anti-intellectual point of view. Most of the Army preachers, especially William Dell, John Saltmarsh, Thomas Collier, Walter Cradock, and William Erbery, were purveyors of that branch of Independent Puritanism (sometimes called Antinomianism) which stressed the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit rather than formal learning. Furthermore, despite the conclusions of R. H. Tawney about Puritanism in general, the Army preachers were generally concerned with the poor and uneducated members of society rather than the prosperous and educated. In the phraseology of H. Richard Niebuhr, they sought “the salvation of the socially disinherited.” An examination of this interest in social amelioration will help to clarify the anti-intellectual attack.

Four hundred years have passed since the bells rang out in Germany to announce the Peace of Augsburg. Each century since, historians have piously performed their antiquarian rites in its honor. It was, to be sure, the most important Diet between that of Worms in 1521, when Luther stood alone, and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War which involved many nations. The oratorical monuments erected faithfully on these centennials have generally emphasized the great gain of Protestantism in legal recognition, the assurance, by God's grace, of the freedom of the church, and the honest good of peaceful coexistence. But a sober analysis produces an effect rather more astringent than exhilarating and medicinal than intoxicating.

In assaying responsibility for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the crescendo of persecution which preceded it, historians have shown rather noteworthy indecisiveness. It would seem that almost every member of Louis XIV's inner circle and every possible combination of individuals within that select group have been stigmatized at one time or another by some memoirist or historian for his part in the events of 1685. Louvois, Le Tellier, Châteauneuf, Harlay, Seignelay, Fr. La Chaise, Mme. de Maintenon, and others have had their reputations alternately blackened and whitewashed, or restored to a fairly satisfactory shade of gray. The Grand Monarch himself has been portrayed both as the innocent victim of unscrupulous and misleading advisers and as the archfanatic in an entourage of fanatics.

By 1878 the United States stood on the verge of a period of immense consolidation and concentration of business wealth. Already the process was underway by means of pools and marketing agreements, and the powerful “trusts” were in the immediate future. By the turn of the century the characteristic feature of American business was the giant corporation, built on holding companies and interlocking directorates. The existence of such great wealth and power in the hands of a relatively few men posed a question for the interpreters of Christian ethics, and the answers ranged all the way from an idealistic communism to the benefits of stewardship.

So far as religious affairs are concerned, the colonial period of our history begins with the planting of the first permanent English colony in 1607, guided by the intention to perpetuate in the new land the religious patterns to which the mother country had grown accustomed. Chief of these for our purposes was uniformity enforced by the civil power. The period culminates just 180 years later with the complete rejection of this central intention in the provisions for national religious freedom in the Constitution (1787) and First Amendment (1791).

The period of the reforms in the reign of Peter the Great shook Russia to her very foundations, drastically altering her historical course. It is noteworthy in many respects, particularly in the sudden appearance of many men in various walks of life capable of envisaging and of carrying out these novel measures. In the Orthodox Church, which was as profoundly affected as any other Russian institution, this phenomenon is admirably illustrated in the career of Theophan Prokopovich, the Ukrainian ecclesiastic. The range and power of his intellect were enormous; a theologian, scholar, teacher, poet, dramatist, and man of affairs, he merits respectful treatment both from students of theology and literature as well as politics. He was the Tsar's intimate associate, well-known to Catholic and Protestant theologians abroad, friend of the poet Kantemir and the historian Tatischev, and a man who could influence the imperial succession itself.

At the outset of Italy's struggle for political regeneration religious differences divided American opinion as to the justice of the Italian demands and continued to color that opinion throughout the years that followed. Before the election of Pius IX to the Papacy, Americans had read and heard a great deal about the tyranny of the various despotic governments of Italy after the Congress of Vienna. Books of travel, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, accounts of newspaper correspondents in various cities of the peninsula, stories told by returning travellers and by Italian exiles in America had painted a most gloomy picture of the spiritual and physical conditions under which many liberals were suffering in the dungeons of the despots who had been restored to power after the downfall of Napoleon. Nowhere were conditions worse, it was believed, than in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in the Papal States.

Within the last twenty years the New England theology of the seventeenth century has been examined far more closely than it had ever been before, and the findings have been that this theology is very different from the simple “Calvinism” which earlier students of the period had labelled it. Professor Perry Miller, the principal worker in the field, concluded that the New England theology was really “Covenant Theology” and has declared that this is a very different thing from “Calvinism.” Others have readily accepted his findings.

It should now be evident that Bucer is no longer “the little known,” “the forgotten,” “the lesser prophet” of which the literature as late as the 'twenties and even the 'thirties spoke. The rediscovery of Bucer began earlier, with the assertion of his formative influence upon Calvin, in writings by Seeberg, Lang and Anrieh, by Pannier and Otto Ritschl. Hyma (19) suggested that Bucer “made Calvin a Calvinist”; and Pauck (15) concluded that Calvin left Strassburg as Bucer's “pupil or follower.” That thesis in its broad assertion prompted research into specific aspects of his influence upon Calvin. The question of church organization drew special investigation, to which Lang, Courvoisier, Stupperich and Strohl made important contributions. It was generally agreed that the Reformed “type of church” was Bucer's creation.

The point of Calvin's debt to Bucer has been well taken. But recent Calvin scholarship has tempered the claim (cf., 24, 25, 30). And Bucer scholarship inclines to redirect attention to the man himself, to his whole life and work.

Two concerns mark the trend in Bucer study. The first is to understand his personality, and thus more fully his contribution. Strohl (30) notes “the openness of his mind, his faculty of comprehension and assimilation, which qualified him to be an agent of liaison among the great minds of his time.” Ritter (32) marks the same trait. Courvoisier (21) contrasts it to Calvin's greater clarity of mind. And Heinrich Bornkamm cites it as the reason why Bucer did not produce a firm kirchcntypus, why his work found no enduring form, why his contribution is so hard to grasp; for he “sought conciously the whole above particulars, unity above opposites”: Martin Bucers Bedeutung für die europäische Reformationsgeschichte: Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, Nr. 69, Jahrg. 58, heft 2. Another side of his personality, according to Strohl (and Ritter and others), was “his practical sense, his pastoral spirit, his preoccupation of cultivating the Christian life individually and collectively, of realizing a Christian society.” Pauck (114) and others have found this trait underlying his social ethics. Weber (29) describes his thought as ein praktisches Erleben des Christusglaubens. Again, scholars have called attention to Bucer's humanism—Pauck (114) in terms of his social and political ethics, Strohl in reference to both his ethics (124–26) and his educational policies (111–12), Stupperich (127) in connection with his unitive efforts. Again, Holsten (128–29) has noticed the “germ” of Pietism in his attitude toward non-Christian religions. Frick (130) speaks of him more confidently as “the Pietist of the Reformers.” And Lang begins his study of Puritanismus und Pietismus (152) with Bucer. But Van de Poll (92) concludes:

He cannot be called a spiritualist, as Köhler did, for then one forgets the connection with the whole of his liturgical activities; no more is it right to entitle him the pietist among the reformers, as Lang has done, for this name would do no justice in his conceptions on Church, Office and Holy Supper.

The second concern is to reveal the extraordinary range of Bucer's activity and influence. Hastings Eells wrote Martin Bucer (8) to satisfy students of the Reformation who “have found his footprints not only in Germany but in Switzerland, France, England, and other countries as well.” Under “The contributions of Martin Bucer to the Reformation” (51), Eells lists: Reformer of Strassburg, Conciliator of the Lutherans and Zwinglians on the Eucharist; Imperial Statesman; Protestant Partisan (after Regensburg, 1541) and Reformer of Cologne; and Contributor to the English Reformation. Bornkamm (180) concludes that

the union of inner-German Protestantism, Divine Worship and the organization of the Reformed Church, the Anglican conception of church and state, the Puritan and Pietist movements bear his touch in various degrees.

Studies of this extensive career underscore Bucer's importance and make him an appealing figure to the twentieth century. In an era of ecumenical effort, McNeill recalls him to us as “the most zealous exponent of church unity of his age.” His teachings and negotiations concerning the Lord's Supper have been interpreted in many studies by Eells and illuminated in the important documentary articles by Ernst Bizer. In a time of liturgical reflection, Maxwell presents him as the father of the Reformed tradition; and Van de Poll ascribes to him the development of “the actual character” of the Reformed Church. His contribution to the English Reformation has been reported by Hopf; the enduring importance of his De Regno Christi upon English religious affairs, by Pauck; his influence upon Puritanism and Pietism, by Lang. Questions about the sacramental teachings of the Book of Common Prayer have prompted serious and controversial studies of Bucer by Smyth, Dix, Timms and Richardson. Bucer's influence upon Calvin need not again be mentioned; he is numbered among the fathers of the Reformed Church.

Why then has Bucer been so little known? It was not his purpose to leave behind a separated church; and history counts him less than the founders. In Strassburg and elsewhere, the Gnesio Lutherans suppressed his writings and tried to discount him entirely. His career was marked by failures; but even they reflect the measure of his ambitions. “There is much of the tragic about his work,” writes Bornkamm (180), citing the frustrations in Strassburg and the failure of his unitive efforts. “But for that his stimulus flows in the whole of European Reformation history.”

Historians are in agreement that the Presidential election of 1928 aroused the concern of American Protestantism. Many observers have expended thousands of words discussing this election. Curiously, while most investigators chide the churches for their indifference to secular affairs, in this instance condemnation is usually because the Protestant churches displayed too much rather than too little interest.