Looking back over the stormy times of Revolution and Civil War, Thomas Hobbes came to the conclusion that it was superior force which had been decisive. The sword rather than the heavens had passed judgment upon the people of the Lord. The holy zeal of the early Puritans had run its course; the crusade was ended. Had Thomas Hobbes looked across the Atlantic he would have seen another “Holy Experiment” in decline. The second half of the Seventeenth century saw a debacle of Puritanism of such dimension that not even their most purposeful enemies of an earlier date would have had cause to complain. One recent historian has even called the Restoration of Church and King a “Laudian triumph.” Yet for all this, the Revolution took place and triumphed, if only for a time. In evaluating the political ideas which the Puritans held before and even during their rise to power, subsequent events have too often been taken into account. Puritanism led to Revolution; thus doctrine of resistance to authority must be stressed. The movement failed to hold on to power largely due to the Utopianism of its proponents. This also must be explained. The first view has often led to stress upon a straight line of Puritan thought from Christopher Goodman to John Milton. The second contention based itself on the literal application of Scripture which Puritans were sometimes apt to make. It was their urge “to build Jerusalem on England's green and pleasant strand” which led them into all sorts of follies. We are still inclined to think of the Puritan in sombre dress, his intellectual equipment symbolized by the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other.

Sometime between a.d. 176 and a.d. 180 Athenagoras, a Christian, an amateur philosopher and possibly an Athenian, wrote a Plea addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. This document is marked by a carefully controlled apologetic aim unmarred by crude efforts to convert and is remarkable for the positive attitude it shows toward the Roman emperors and the administration of justice throughout their realm. Athenagoras' apology was lost sight of in antiquity, in all likelihood, because it contributed so little to theology; precisely for the same reason it is valuable to us in our assessment of the political and social awareness of a segment of Christians shortly before the empire plunged into the troubles of the third century. Athenagoras was obviously well trained in rhetoric; he had dabbled in philosophy; and he clearly felt himself culturally superior to the “common men, artisans, and old women” whom he praises for their simple, if unreasoned, display of Christian virtue (11.4). He is representative of a growing elite in Christian circles which was seeking to explain the new religion to the Graeco-Roman world.

There has been little substantial textual work on Erasmus' paraphrases of the New Testament. This study of the paraphrase of the Gospel of John, by examining the changes in the various editions, the use of patristic commentaries, and the characteristic emphases of the text itself, attempts to further our understanding of his work on the New Testament. I shall discuss first the composition of the paraphrases insofar as this relates to Erasmus' self-consciousness about the project of writing paraphrases of the New Testament.

During the nineteenth century, over 300 missionary periodicals were established in Britain, along with hundreds in North America, Europe, and the colonial world, yet little has been written about the rationale behind their establishment. From their beginnings as sources of intelligence, periodicals developed into vehicles of influence by the first decades of the nineteenth century, with missionary organizations also using this reduplicated commodity to deliberately persuade and mold public attitudes. This article examines some thirty inaugural editorials and first volume prefaces to Protestant missionary periodicals, including those from “new series,” to uncover how editors justified their establishment to their potential readership.

The contributions made to American Presbyterianism during the colonial period by those of its members who were of New England stock have never been adequately recognized. For various reasons this contribution was so greatly minimized during the nineteenth century that even today an essentially false picture of the origins of American Presbyterianism has become currently accepted. Typical of the nineteenth-century propaganda which was later to be accepted as fact, was the attitude of Samuel Miller, the first professor of Church History at Princeton Seminary. In 1833, Miller wrote a series of open letters to Presbyterians as part of the Old School party's polemic against the New England element in the Church.

During the fifth century of our common era the Latin church fathers struggled to explain how we humans are saved and why it seems that not all humans are saved. Most of these attempts pivoted on the writings of Augustine of Hippo. The fathers either borrowed from Augustine's thought, adapted it, or reacted to it. Beginning with the generation of theologians who thrived at the end of Augustine's life and just following his death, there arose a tendency in the western church to moderate his more extreme positions concerning grace and predestination by realigning them with accepted church tradition. This tradition includes those Christian doctrines which were held and promoted most widely by theologians—up to, but not including, Augustine himself—whom the early church accepted as orthodox.

The sympathy of most English Catholics during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 lay with General Francisco Franco and the other generals who had rebelled against the Second Spanish Republic. If there was any doubt of this, the spate of literature which then appeared, much of it polemical, and the journalistic views presented could leave little doubt on the matter. The adoption of an anti-Republican stance in English Catholic circles, while not complete, nevertheless implied an adverse judgment upon the viability and legitimacy of the Republic, if not its legality, from 1936 onward. The Republic had failed in its primary obligation—to rule justly—and the military revolt had been necessary to forestall anarchy or communism. The judgment that the Republic had failed, however, was not an a priori one, nor was it enthusiastically reached so much as accepted.

In the last years, a number of surveys on Luther have appeared. Some of these will be continued. With the re-appearance of the Luther-Jahrbuch and the regular “Zeitschriftenschau” by Gunther Franz in various issues of the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, an ongoing medium for references to articles and reviews of books is at hand. All major German books are reviewed in the Luther-Jahrbuch and in the Theologische Literaturzeitung. The 1957 issue of the Luther-Jahrbuch, the first volume in the resumed series after a fifteen year interval, contains a summary Luther-Bibliography for 1940- 1953, and a more extensive survey for the year 1954. The 1958 volume contains a bibliography for 1955; the 1959 one, for 1956; the 1960 one, for 1957. The disadvantage of the time lag in publication does provide the possibility of a comprehensive listing. Apart from the book reviews, the materials are listed without evaluation.

Research into the origins of bishops is not new, but it has taken on increasing importance within the last twenty years. In 1965 an important introductory study of the social origins of French bishops between the years 1150 and 1350 appeared under the auspices of the Institut de Droit Canonique de Strassbourg. Since then, other studies on the origins of the French episcopate have followed. Despite the fact that these studies possess intrinsic value as manifestations of interest in the family and social origins, the method employed in them raises questions. It is the scope of the studies—not so much in terms of chronology as in numbers of bishops considered—that is problematic. The large numbers of candidates considered render scrutiny of individual candidates and electoral processes impossible.