Thirty years ago, J. de Ghellinck suggested that an examination of the thought of St. Bruno, bishop of Segni, might reveal some parallels with the thought of St. Anselm. More recently, R. Gregoire has explored the notion in his study of St. Bruno. He concedes that some similarities are noticeable, particularly in the conservative monastic attitude which both Bruno and Anselm display towards the theologian's task. But he questions the worthwhileness of any attempt to compare the two on two grounds. First, diere is some question as to the authenticity of one of the works attributed to Bruno, whose thought most closely resembles that of Anselm's treatises. And secondly, he finds insufficient grounds for believing that Bruno can have borrowed from Anselm in composing this piece—even if it is, indeed, his; there are demonstrably other possible sources of their common ideas. If de Ghellinck had in mind any such direct borrowing, the evidence is certainly most unsatisfactory. But die term he chooses is ‘rapports’. It may be that we are dealing here, even if not always wim works of Bruno himself, with writings which are the product of the contemporary community of thought upon which Anselm himself drew. The interest of the ‘rapports’ which are undoubtedly present would then lie in the evidence they provide as to the climate in which Anselm himself thought and wrote.

Following the Reformation, the Inns of Court established a tradition of preaching inferior to none. The wealth and influence of-these centres of legal and genteel education attracted such noted preachers and divines as Richard Alvey, Thomas Gataker Jr., John Donne, Richard Sibbes and John Preston. In an age of religious disputation, their activities could easily provoke controversy. At the Temple in 1585 to 1586 the celebrated clash took place between Richard Hooker and Walter Travers. In subsequent years the puritan proclivities of William Crashawe and the Laudian pretensions of Paul Micklethwaite produced similar debate. Considering the prominence of their office, the parallel expansion of London preacherships and the attention given to events after 1585, the earlier development of divinity lectureships at the Inns of Court deserves particular treatment.

No one doubts that the treatise on repentance published in 1648 as the sixth book of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is by Hooker, but there has been considerable doubt that 1648 (as I shall call it) belongs in the Laws. Keble pronounced it ‘an entire deviation from its subject’, which should have been the Disciplinarian proposal that the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction be exercised by congregational lay-elders, while W. Speed Hill concludes his recent detailed discussion of the problems surrounding the posthumous three last books of Hooker's great work by calling on those who would include 1648 in the Laws to argue their case for its inclusion ‘in the face of a substantial body of evidence, internal and external, to the contrary’. The present note is a response on the ‘internal’ side to Professor Hill's call for argument.

The most subtle nineteenth century analysis of religious conviction was the work of John Henry Newman; but who would analyse Newman himself? The simplest, most brilliant and wicked interpretation was that of Henri Bremond, for whom the ‘mystery of Newman’ was an all-devouring ‘autocentrism’ and self centredness, evidenced in an impassioned sense of self-identity and intensified by a twofold conviction of the reality of God and of the unreality of the visible world. Bremond's proof text was Newman's account of his Calvinist conversion, ‘confirming me in my mistrust of material phenomena, and making me rest in die thought of two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator’. ‘Myself and my Creator’—here, thought Bremond, was an appalling glimpse of Newman's egotism, die secret of a spirit alien to other men, for whom ‘every individual soul is a closed world’. Here was the making of that touchy hypersensitive melancholic, ‘the solitary by choice’, who ‘by confining his universe to two beings, his Creator and himself, made forever that void at the very bottom of his heart’.

In a little over 400 pages Robert T. Handy's volume of the Oxford History of the Christian Church surveys more than four hundred years, two countries of vast geographical extent, almost 300 million people, fifteen churches claiming over two million members each, innumerable smaller churches, denominations and sects. One cannot but admire the tenacity with which he has carried out this daunting task, and be grateful for a critical bibliography of over 30 pages which will be invaluable for anyone who requires a quick guide to the literature on almost any aspect of American or Canadian Church history. The presentation is clear, and the stream—or torrent—of information is handled with skill.