The bull In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula of April 28, 1738, by which Clement XII inaugurated the long series of papal denunciations of Freemasonry, was issued virtually without warning and without much apparent provocation. Such was not the case with the Unigenitus of 1713 or the Dominus ac Redemptor noster of 1773, affecting Jansenists and Jesuits, for both movements had for years before their proscription occasioned violent controversy not only theological but political. Today the Unigenitus is the gravestone of a dead issue, while the Jesuit order was reinstituted in 1815. But the anti-Masonic Bull of 1738 has proven to be the progenitor of increasingly severe anathemas over two centuries, and the persecutions and the political conflicts to which it gave the impetus show little abatement. Rome's sudden charge of secret heresy and political sedition against a movement which theretofore had been planned and conducted with a view to avoiding, indeed even to reconciling political and theological animus, served to create, wherever the proscriptions enjoined by the Bull were executed, the anti-clerical and revolutionary features objected to! What else could have been expected from the ensuing persecutions, which brought imprisonment, confiscation, exile, and often martyrdom to multitudes of Freemasons in the eighteenth century? And how ironical that fate was for a movement whose original purpose was to unite men of all faiths, values, and classes in a spiritual, moral, and cultural brotherhood, and whose record, prior to the Bull, was one of unprecedented sectarian fraternity. But with the publication of the Bull and the suffering at the hands of the Inquisition and the secular arm which it instigated, there began a virtual crusade, such as had been directed previously against Saracens, Cathari, Hussites, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Socinians, and Huguenots; and this crusade continues, with the connivance of Catholic Fascists, to this day.

In these days, when men's ideas of the functions of rulers and governments are being changed—sometimes overnight—and when new programs and new “ideologies” are proclaimed with bewildering suddenness, students are returning with renewed interest, and with new interests, to the investigation of ancient governments. The nature and significance of the official character of the Roman emperor, and of his heir, the Byzantine emperor, has proved a particularly fruitful field of research in recent years, and our ideas in this domain have been transformed and expanded in significant fashion. We have been shown, for example, how the emperor came to be surrounded by a whole galaxy of attributes and virtues — chief among them Bravery, Clemency, Justice, Sense of Duty, Foresight—which made up his official personality. Constantly illustrated on coins and commemorated in inscriptions, these attributes served to remind the people of the Roman Empire what they might expect from their rulers. The emperor came to be looked upon as the father of his people, the source of all good things, and the fount of all wisdom and law.

The leaders of the Evangelical Movement in the Church of England till the end of the nineteenth century can, for convenience sake, be divided into three groups: the Awakeners, the Pastors and Organizers, and the Ecclesiastical Controversialists. The main concern of the first was to awaken the inert and indifferent population by preaching of sin and judgment, of forgiveness and eternal life; that of the Pastors and Organizers was to guide awakened and conscience-stricken people in the paths of righteousness, and to organize their resources for more efficient service to God and man; that of the Ecclesiastical Controversialists was to stem the rising tide of Tractarianism and Biblical criticism which seemed to them to be endangering the purity of the Gospel and to be leading the Church into false paths. It was under the leadership of this last group that the Evangelical Movement became definitely “Low Church” (at first, in distinction from the Latitudinarians, it had been relatively “High Church”) and what today would be called “fundamentalist.” If it be remembered that these groups were not hard and fast, that the Awakeners were pastors and that the Organizers were awakeners, and that the Ecclesiastical Controversialists were trying to be both, they will serve to indicate the general phases of the movement.

One of the most significant documents in the literature of the Continental Reformation is that bearing the title The Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants. Its significance rests upon a basis of historical importance far exceeding that of its inclusion in the body of Huguenot writings which illumines the religious life of sixteenth and seventeenth century France. It is important because, as Mr. Harold Laski indicates, it is “a brilliant summary of ideas already adumbrated by the Huguenot party,” and it “surpassed all other essays of the time in the vigor and lucidity with which it restates these ideas.” It is a work which is regarded as embodying the best Huguenot thinking, and it records a memorable protest against tyranny that has renewed poignancy at every crisis in the age-long struggle for human freedom. It asked, and in its own fashion answered, questions having wide political significance because of the inextricable union of political with religious problems of the time.

One of the potent factors determining religious and theological education in the Middle West was Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872). Justly famous as hymn writer, archaeologist, educationist, and theologian, Grundtvig strove to build a new Germanic culture in Denmark to replace the “Latin culture” which he believed had been destroyed by the French Revolution. This new culture he hoped to found on Christian principles backed by the “living word” so thoroughly accepted by the earlier Germanic mysticism, which in turn came via Neo-Platonism from Plato himself. Hans Denck taught that the Scriptures apart from the inner living word were nothing, and Calvin, Herder, and Fichte seemed to support this teaching. It is likely that Fichte's influence in this direction was most keenly felt by Grundtvig, although he found the same idea in the old Germanic-Scandinavian theology and mythology which he sought successfully to revive. The Scandinavian Thuler, which may be translated seer or prophet, represented by the “living word” the human incarnation of Odin. Saxo calls the Thuler the Uggerus vates; and Caesar records the fact that the Druids who were certainly akin to the old Scandinavians forbade that their teachings about God and the immortality of the soul be put into written form, since such subjects could be understood only in the “living word.” All this Grundtvig adopted and taught. Likewise he held that the ten commandments should be considered “living words” handed down from mouth to mouth in order that they might carry the needed inspiration to make them effective in life. This idea he carried over immediately into his theory of education.

Most of the early leaders of Anabaptism were martyred after a few months or years of activity. Two of the more outstanding exceptions are Menno Simons and Pilgram Marpeck, neither of whom is numbered among the founders of the Anabaptist movement, however. With Menno the world has long been familiar, and the group with which he united now bears his name. His writings in the original Dutch, or in German or English translation, are found in Mennonite homes in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and America. But even Mennonites know little of Marpeck today. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Marpeck labored among the south-German and Swiss Anabaptists, thus sustaining a more direct relationship to the main body of American Mennonites than does the Dutch Menno Simons. The persecution and oppression which the Swiss and south-German Mennonites long had to bear is responsible, at least in part, for the early disappearance of Marpeck's name among his followers. One may add that this was also the fate of Conrad Grebel, the founder of Swiss Anabaptism. Yet Marpeck was the greatest of the south-German and Swiss Anabaptist leaders, and well deserves a closer study.

In 1819 the orthodox Congregationalists of Connecticut suddenly turned from almost complete absorption in the internal affairs of their own little state of “sober habits,” and launched a determined offensive against the Unitarians of Boston and vicinity. This campaign they carried on with vigor through the following seven years. Then they dropped it almost as suddenly as they had taken it up, and became involved in dissension within their own ranks, climaxed by the controversy between Nathaniel W. Taylor of Yale and Bennet Tyler of East Windsor and Hartford. This study sketches the background and some of the events of the campaign against the Unitarians in an attempt to indicate why the Connecticut group were not involved before 1819, why they conducted the campaign as they did, and why they suddenly lost interest in 1826. Since Lyman Beecher, minister at Litchfield, Connecticut, was the outstanding leader of the orthodox during this period, the answers to these questions are to be found largely in a study of his work.

When the American Civil War began, the Southern dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church organized a Confederate Church. Contrary to sentiment in the other popular Protestant denominations, there was in 1861 little hostility between the Confederate and Northern leaders of this Church. As the war progressed, however, bitterness developed until in 1865 at the close of the war many wanted to retain separate church organizations. Despite these animosities, some bold spirits succeeded in bringing about the reconciliation of the dioceses of the Church. The story of this reunion has been told before, but new material recently made available warrants a new analysis.

Perhaps I erred in choosing the title “A Forgotten Theology.” A theology that is vital and worthwhile will not be forgotten; it will be absorbed, and by absorption it fulfills its original purpose. Only in that way can it live and have part in theological progress. Furthermore, at the meeting of the American Society of Church History, December 27, 1911, in New York, I read a paper on “The Mercersburg Theology Historically Considered.” The present paper, thirty years later is a sequel to that of 1911. Some of the doctrines of the Mercersburg men, it seems to me, have been unconsciously revived in contemporary theological thought, especially as that is expressed in the reports of the Oxford and Edinburgh Conferences of 1937.

The body of law dealing with discipline, polity, and sacramental administration which has grown up in the history of the church is ordinarily styled Canon Law (jus canonicum), because it is a collection of canons. Canon (derived from the Greek kanon) means a rule, in a material and moral sense. Its original meaning was a straight rod. In apostolic times it signified the truth of Christianity as an authoritative standard of life and a statement of doctrine in general. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the word kanon later came to mean the ecclesiastical legislation which governed the conduct of the faithful. The excellent definition given by Archbishop Cicognani. states that “The Canon Law may be denned as ‘the body of laws made by the lawful ecclesiastical authority for the government of the Church’.”

There are some historical fields which generations of scholars have plowed with special care and thoroughness. The Reformation is one of them. A survey of such labor is quite difficult, particularly if it is to be given within a limited space. I have therefore decided to confine myself in the following investigation of Reformation scholarship to the products of the last twenty years. It will be my purpose to record the chief contributions to historical knowledge and to evaluate the main interests which they reflect.

I propose, in this essay, to present some of the more significant highlights of the Reformation in Hungary. Significantly, little is known with regard to what transpired within the borders of what was the last frontier of the Reformation in eastern Europe. If what Lindsay says is true—and it is definitely—, i.e., “The rise, continuance, and decline of these Churches (in Bohemia, Hungary and the neighbouring lands) are so inseparably connected with the peculiar social and political conditions of the countries, that no adequate or informing account of them could be given without largely exceeding the limits of space at my disposal,” the task should have appeared all the more engaging. The fact is, however, that the difficulties of mastering the Hungarian language have stood as a perpetual barrier to any intensive study of the Hungarian Reformation among scholars outside the land, and those within have devoted lamentably little energy to the task of attracting the attention of the outside world.

There are two representatives of the Czech Reformation who are well known: John Hus its inaugurator, and John Amos Comenius, the spiritual leader of its last generation. A long period of two hundred years lay between the martyr death of John Hus in Constance in 1415 and the appearance of Comenius on the stage of history. Those two centuries have been, of course, studied by Czech historians and much concerning them has been written also in German, French, and English. Church history has attracted foreign scholars more than the political or economic development of the lands of the Bohemian crown. And yet, much is to be done even on this subject, many problems are to be elucidated and explained. Hus and Comenius overshadowed by their fame and renown many of their forerunners or followers.

Who is an Anabaptist? There seems to be a certain amount of confusion with regard to this term and its conception, and a lack of objectivity is still here and there to be met. Emotional prejudices, misleading tradition, insufficient research material, and a mixture of different groups and attitudes prevented church history scholars almost to the present time from reaching a just judgment of these Christian radicals in Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To find out the right place of Anabaptism in history it might be useful to begin with some negative statements.

The intricacies of Mormon polytheism are a perpetual surprise to the student of American thought. But a second surprise awaits the historian who attempts to trace the roots of this American polytheism. It is that Mormon doctrine moved not from ordinary Trinitarian thought but from an original position in which extreme monistic tendencies were dominant. There are three stages in this transition: an original monism, a reversal to tritheism, and the expansion of this into polytheism.

Francis of Assisi has been made the subject of numerous studies in modern times. His dedication to absolute poverty has elicited praise from admirers of varied character. That same ideal has frequently been made the object of unfriendly strictures. All too many researchers have granted him tolerant dismissal as a naïve idealist. Such writers have damned him with the easy condescension of modern men. They have been too busy proclaiming his impracticability according to modern standards to appreciate what he was and accomplished as a medieval man.

William Penn and Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf were both stubborn idealists. Penn, believing that the seal of divinity had been stamped upon him, planned his refuge for the persecuted across the sea. Zinzendorf, fretting at the sterility of the churches and secretly admiring the vitality of the sects, felt called to create a church in Pennsylvania in which the Redeemer's presence would be so perceptively felt as ultimately to halt all words, prayer, and singing. Both dreams were failures— but significant failures: Penn's vision was an important factor in fashioning the American political pattern, while Zinzendorf's ideal is the working principle of modern church co-operation.