Academic history in general, as is well known, straddles the conventional departments of college faculties; it is always a problem whether history should be listed among the social sciences or with the humanities. Clio is traditionally one of the arts, yet historians jealously defend their claims also to critical science. Church history likewise presents these Janus faces to the world; it is at the same time a product of religious imagination and thought and a scientific discipline. May it not be, however, that these two aspects of church history need to be maintained in a certain relation to each other, and that today they are generally imperfectly integrated?

Interpretations of the last book of the New Testament usually dwell upon its visions of things to come. Except for its prayers and hymns, however, little attention has been paid to its liturgical character. This fact is the more surprising since it is just in that respect that the Apocalypse of John differs mostly strikingly from other Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings. Its visions are presented within a framework of liturgical activities, and toward the end of the book it is hardly possible to dissociate the acts of worship from the visions of the future. This close relationship shows that its liturgical portions are not a purely literary device. Rather in the Seer's mind they form part of the revelatory process itself representing the reaction of initiated creatures to the gradual disclosure of the saving purpose of God and its execution. From the historical viewpoint, this liturgical framework of the Apocalypse of John is interesting, because it contains a number of features which, in a similar manner, occur also in the liturgies of the Ancient Church. Thus it is from the liturgical character of the Apocalypse that the historical development of the Christian liturgy becomes intelligible. Out of the perplexing diversity of its types, the formative principle of its early stages emerges, and a number of motives become visible, some of which have determined its history to the present day. Others, which have no longer a vital role assigned to them, were, nevertheless, preserved on account of the significance originally attached to them. Among these features I mention the ideas of the Eucharistic Parousia, the Church's participation in the angelic worship, the emphasis placed upon the worthiness of the interpreter of Scripture, the connection between the Confession of Sins and the Eucharist, the separation of the believers and unbelievers prior to the heavenly meal, the celebration of the Eucharist as an act of the Church in its cosmic totality, the association of the Eucharist with the Judgment of the World, and the interpretation of the liturgy as a spiritual battle. It will suffice to single out two of these features, which for their lack of centrality in the liturgies are particularly apt to illustrate our point, viz. the participation of the Church in the angelic worship, and the worthiness of the interpreter of Scripture.

Toward the close of the fourteenth century the Dutch mystic and revival preacher Gerhard Groote inaugurated in the Low Countries the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna or the New Piety. Forced into silence by his enemies among the clergy, the popular preacher was devoting himself to the problems of giving permanent form and organization to his scattered groups of followers when death prematurely ended his career in 1384. But the small circles of pious men and women who under his inspiration had begun to practice the common life in imitation (so they believed) of the Christians of New Testament times, found a capable leader in Florentius Radewyns, the trusted friend and disciple of Groote and the leader of the Deventer circle of Groote's followers. In 1386 some of this group, with Rade-wyn's approval, founded the monastery of Windesheim, near Zwolle. This act constituted a definite division of the Devotio Moderna into two branches. One, with Windesheim as center, became monastic in character and was knolwn after 1395 as the Congregation of the Augustinian Canons Regular of Windesheim, The other, which reflected more nearly the ideals of Groote, continued the non-monastic traditions of the parent house in Deventer and took the name of the Brethren of the Common Life. The Congregation of Windesheim spread rapidly and numbered in the course of the fifteenth century many houses in the Low Countries and in Germany. The Brethren of the Common Life, on the other hand, because of their refusal to take monastic vows and because of their insistence upon manual labor as the chief means of financial support, encountered determined opposition from the regular clergy and therefore could not rival the development of their more acceptable brothers of Windesheim.

It has been the peculiar lot of Puritanism that, while most men will agree that its influence—good or evil—upon Anglo-Saxon culture and history has been profound, yet great disagreement exists as to just what Puritanism was, how it began, and what aspects of traditional Anglo-Saxon thought and life are traceable to Puritanism. The most common view is that Puritanism was imported into England from Calvinistic Geneva by the returning Marian exiles. This view must then go on to account for the many non-Calvinistic elements in the Puritanism of the Civil War era. Another school of thought has sought to identify Puritanism with the beginnings of democratic political, social and economic ideals during the Tudor-Stuart era. Almost diametrically opposed to this is yet another school of thought which finds in Puritanism an ultra-rightist authoritarianism in theology and politics, and the seed-bed of an unbridled and Pharisaical capitalism. Still others see in Puritanism the long hard travail which gave birth to the ideal of complete freedom for the individual in all phases of life. Of necessity, each of these interpretations, and others not here mentioned, has sought to ground itself in the history of the English Reformation, and so we have many quite different accounts of the origins and history of Puritanism.