The old and very illegible inscription from Athens containing the charter of the Eleusinian Mysteries was happily completed by a few small fragments discovered during the American excavations on the Agora. It was not an easy task for Professor B. D. Meritt to bring together the broken pieces and the stone bearing the inscription (now in the British Museum). He did it with his usual epigraphical expertness and contributed very much to the reading and to the restoration of a document which has been a real problem to many scholars for a long time. Of course, the inscription so old and so badly preserved will continue to be debated by specialists in different fields of Classical studies, but the part of Professor Meritt in elucidating this important testimony of the ancient Greek cult always will be gratefully appreciated. I should like to discuss some passages of the document in question in the hope that small changes in certain lines may perhaps make it more intelligible.

When in 1825 Bishop Charles Sumner published the text and his translation of Milton's long-lost theological study, the Christian Doctrine, the results were in a way disastrous for the reputation of the poet. Instead of being the great composer of the orthodox epic of Protestantism, Milton became in the eyes of the nineteenth century and even of our own day the heretic who advocated the belief in an unequal Trinity—a heresy originally associated with the fourth century church leader Arius. In the light especially of the fifth chapter of the Christian Doctrine, critics reread Paradise Lost and discovered that this same doctrine was implied in passages of the poem which had been accepted for a century and a half as entirely orthodox. The shock to critical and religious sensibilities was considerable; Milton's fame underwent an eclipse from which it perhaps has never really recovered. Although our own century may be less susceptible to disturbance from the presentation of heterodox views, much the same conception of Milton continues; all critics echo Masson's stern judgment that Milton's views of the nature of Christ “are expressly and emphatically those of high Arianism.”

All scholars who have been concerned with the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople have noticed that different sources sometimes give it different names, or different forms of the same name. A certain number of examples of the usage of the ancient writers have been collected and have been available in the current works of reference, but these published lists are not exhaustive. Having had occasion to make a study of the name of the church as given by Nikolaos Mesarites, the present writer has made a collection of examples which appears to be larger than any hitherto published, and it is hoped that the testimonia assembled here may give scholars a better understanding of the conception which the ancient writers had of the dedication of the church and the significance of the designations which were applied to it.

It is difficult in our day to understand the appeal of late medieval nominalism for it seems almost schizophrenic in the way it alternates between opposing emphases. It looked at every theological problem from two radically different points of view: from the perspective of God's absolute power, and from the viewpoint of what he has in fact ordained. In the first context, nominalism relied completely on the power of philosophy and logic to define (though not to prove) omnipotence, and insisted on the radically individualistic isolation of man before a God of absolute and arbitrary power; but in the second context, these emphases are in effect reversed and stress is laid on fideism, the community and its authority, and, in the case of many nominalists, on the moral autonomy of man vis à vis God. Furthermore, the reconciliation of these contrary tendencies is primarily logical, or even verbal. Yet nominalism so captivated the minds of many theologians that they were quite content with what seems to us a purely external and artificial unity and consistency.