If Justin Martyr and Irenaeus on one side and the Verona Latin anaphora on the other may be treated as mutually explanatory, it will appear that paragraphs (1), (2) and (3) of the Latin prayer may be taken in a general sense as representative of the centre of the original pattern. The task to be undertaken consists in effect, therefore, of recovering the head and tail of the pattern, or at least their broad outline and principal motifs.

As the starting-point of this paper I take the question, When did the Church come into existence? It is a question to which a great variety of answers is given; but they can be classified in two groups according to whether they put the birth of the Church before or after the death of Christ. These two groups again correspond roughly with two ways of thinking about the Church. We may think of it primarily as an organization with a function to perform; and in that case we shall think—as I do—of its coming into being at the moment that Jesus called his first disciple. Or we may think of it as a body of people who possess a certain status before God—forgiven sinners, redeemed persons or the like—and in that case we shall tend to think of its coming into being as a sequel to the completed redemptive work of Christ on the Cross.

The Confessions of Augustine carry his life down to the age of thirtythree, from his birth at Tagaste in Numidia in A.D. 354 to A.D. 387, when he was converted to Christianity by Ambrose in Milan. He wrote the Confessions ten years later, in A.D. 397–8, at the age of forty-three or forty-four, when he had just been made Bishop of Hippo Regius, the modern Bône, in North Africa. The work is an autobiography, the one exstant autobiography in Latin literature: but it is peculiar in being addressed primarily to the Deity and in being a record not of the writer's own achievements intended for his own glory, but of all the way by which the power of God had led him. So while in places it does narrate the events of his life and the development of his mind and thought, at other places it breaks out into rapturous praise and adoration of his Redeemer and becomes not so much a narration as a prose hymn, sometimes in a minor key of contrite repentance for the sins and faults of youth now pardoned, sometimes in an exalted strain of ecstatic love, worship, and devotion towards the One to whose service he is now wholly surrendered. Under the eye of the Omniscient, Augustine reviews his life from childhood till his conversion: it is a stern and unflinching self-examination: the pranks of his boyhood are tested for early evidences of sin with the same relentless analysis as the vices, the ambitions, and self-will of his youth and manhood. We have his school-days at his native Tagaste and at the neighbouring town of Madaura: we have the turbulence of his adolescence at Carthage: we see him as a student of rhetoric at Carthage and as a professor of rhetoric at Carthage, Rome and Milan: we are told how the beginnings of his spiritual awareness were excited by the reading of Cicero's Hortensius: we learn of his long association with the quasi-Christian sect of the Manichaeans, of his growing dissatisfaction with their doctrine of a material and finite Deity, and of his long perplexity about religious problems—until through the preaching of Ambrose at Milan and through a study of Neo-platonism, he comes to a realization of an immaterial, non-temporal, non-spatial One.

Divers accidents de la tradition manuscrite ont provoqué des confusions entre les saints et des redoublements de noms, suivis d'explications douteuses et de corrections arbitrages, dans l'ancien martyrologe irlandais. Cʼest en particulier le cas de S. Patrice.

In order to grasp the idea of the Apostolic Succession underlying Irenaeus' utterances on this subject we shall first analyse two different conceptions of the Succession which we meet with in modern times. I think it will be a help to see him against this background since it will enable us to perceive the specifically Irenaean idea of what the ‘succession from the apostles’ implies.

In its directions for the procedure to be followed at the consecration of a bishop, the document now generally accepted as the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome contains, as is well known, the text of an anaphora or eucharistic prayer. Apart from several phrases, preserved in the anaphora of Apostolic Constitutions viii, the original Greek of the prayer attributed to Hippolytus is lost. For its textual basis, therefore, we must turn to what is clearly the most faithful version of the original, as well as the oldest, the Latin of the Verona palimpsest recovered by E. Hauler and published by him in 1900. The anaphora is here introduced by the traditional dialogue consisting of ‘Dominus vobiscum’, ‘Susum corda’ and ‘Gratias agamus domino’, and their responses.

The subject of these remarks, the sequel to a recent paper, was suggested by an investigation undertaken some years ago into the work of the Commissions of Reform at the Council of Constance. It is not my purpose now to disentangle and attribute to their rightful authors the recommendations made there, but merely to recall the fact that the main problem before these Commissions, when they projected the reform of the Roman Curia, was whether the papal collation of benefices in its full Avignonese development should continue, or whether collation should be restored to the ordinaries. A question of such magnitude was capable of dividing not only the ‘nations’ assembled at Constance, but actually the elements constituting a single national delegation. The reasons for such a division are instructive, for they bear directly on the position of the University graduate.

To see ourselves as others see us, and in the light of their sense proportion, not our own, is no doubt a salutary experience, and not least for Englishmen. To do so indeed may lead to a better understanding of some historical perspectives which may otherwise seem puzzling. Anyone, for example, who should study F. W. Putzger's ‘Historischer Schul-Atlas der alten, mittleren und neuen Geschichte’ edited by Baldamus and Schwabe (Bielefeld u. Leipzig 1908) would certainly find much food for reflection as to its probable effect on the attitude towards England and the British Empire in the mind of a young German student. And on this side it was, in fact, a careful study of these maps which suggested an examination of the account of England and British ecclesiastical history to be found in the impressive work edited Dr Hartmann Schedel, physician at Nuremberg, which is commonly known as the Nuremberg Chronicle and was published in 1493. The reader will perhaps forgive an occasional comparison which also suggested itself with parallel accounts in Proctor and Dewick's edition of ‘The Martiloge in Englysshe after the use of the chirche of Salisbury and as it is redde in Syon With addicyons. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526’ (Henry Bradshaw Society. London 1893), familiarly known as ‘Whytford's Martiloge’. The results of the vindemiatio prima contained in this article are not primarily to be considered in respect of the absolute or relative accuracy of the statements quoted but of the temper of mind which they exhibit as we observe what are the features and who are the persons in British history deemed worthy of inclusion in what was designed to be a universal encyclopaedia. Taken as a whole the conspectus will be admitted to be curious both in regard to inclusion and to omission, and the effect probably not to be altogether devoid of interest.

The story of the conflict between Archbishop Winchelsey and the abbot and monks of St Augustine's, Canterbury, was told nearly a hundred years later by William Thome, the monk who wrote a history of the monastery to the year 1397. That history attracted Sir Roger Twysden, the Kentish squire who was a historian and an antiquary and a pioneer in medieval scholarship; he included it in a notable publication, the Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem, printed in 1652. Thorne's narrative was of absorbing interest to William Prynne, the Puritan scholar who became Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London in 1662; he printed extracts from Thorne in his magnum opus, ‘An exact chronological vindication of our king's supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all religious affairs,’ and supplemented them with quotations from the Close Rolls in his charge, a truly laborious search as it appears to the historian of to-day who is aided by the Calendars printed for the Public Record Office.

Everybody who knows the ABC of the history of the Roman liturgy has undoubtedly heard of the story about the fourteenth-century dean of Tongres, Ralph van der Beke (de Rivo). His education in matters ecclesiastical had been splendid; his zeal for the reform of the Church was fervent and sincere; he was especially devoted to a revival of the liturgy of his time and the problems which he raised are accepted as being of the greatest importance. But this is not the whole story. Ralph's life does not lack a certain note comigue which is not often heard of. Ralph had his weaknesses: one of them was a whole-hearted aversion to the Friars Minor, who a century before had occasioned a liturgical reform in the Church, the consequences of which he saw every day and simply did not like. Until someone has checked Ralph's personal connections with the friars and the influence which he underwent from those Italians, who, under a show of zeal for the Eternal City, hid their jealousy and selfinterest and disputed everything concerning the papal court at Avignon, it is difficult to decide whether he could not stand the friars because of their Roman liturgy or the Roman liturgy because of the friars. All the same, whatever they did, for Ralph it was always wrong, and the most flattering thing which he could find in his heart was that those friars singularem usum cum regula servant singulari, as though it were a crime to follow the customs of the pope and nothing but praiseworthy to keep to those of the bishop of Liège or Lyons, or even the abbot of Cluny or Montecassino.

The Worcestershire Association of ministers ‘for our mutual help and concord in our work’ (Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii. 28), as its purpose was expressed by Richard Baxter, its inspirer and leader, has aroused frequent interest and attention, alike for the catholicity of its intention, the degree of success which for a few years it achieved and the example which it set to other ministers throughout the country. It is the more strange that no accurate study has appeared of its personnel. The document containing the original signatures has remained in manuscript at Dr Williams' library, and escaped the notice of Dr F. J. Powicke, chapter xi in whose Life (1924) of Baxter is the most recent study of the Association. In that chapter Powicke made use of a second, and later, MS. list of signatories, but for the rest he relied on the list given in W. A. Shaw's History of the English Church 1640–1660 (1900), ii. 454 f. There Shaw strangely asserts that ‘for the geographical extent of the Association we are reduced to Baxter's Autobiography and to Richard Farnsworth's True Testimony against the Pope's ways: in a return to that agreement of 42 of those that call themselves ministers of Christ … in the County of Worcester and some adjacent parts, published 20th March 1655–56’; as if the list of names provided in this Quaker attack on the Association were not taken direct from the first edition of The Agreement of Divers Ministers of Christ in the County of Worcester, which Baxter published in 1656. Shaw's list is thus a conflation of the names given by Baxter several years post eventum and of those given by Farnsworth, including Farnsworth's vagaries of spelling; and even so Shaw duplicates three of the names. In his edition (1939) of Baxter's Reformed Pastor the Rev. J. T. Wilkinson reprints certain documents relating to the Association, but for its membership contents himself with a reference to ‘the full list’ given by Powicke. A collation of the various sources in manuscript and in print may be of service in indicating how the movement spread from an initial eighteen to a group of something like four times that number; and also who were the original, and who the continuing, supporters of the Association.

It is probably true to say that the unique and peculiar course taken by the English Reformation under Henry VIII, in so far as its origin can be traced to any one man, is due to Thomas Cromwell. Not that he was, as we shall endeavour to show, a theorist of church reform, still less a theologian. Nor did he, any more than any other servant of Henry VIII, at any time hold supreme power. Of all English monarchs Henry might perhaps dispute with Charles VII of France the title of le bien servi; but he was never dominated by his ministers, and made and broke them at will. Yet Cromwell possessed two qualities without which it is hard to see how the Henrician revolution in Church and State relations could have been carried through. He was diligent and methodical to a degree. ‘The whole essence of Cromwell's personality’, says his biographer, ‘consists of different manifestations of one fundamental, underlying trait, which may perhaps be best expressed by the common phrase “a strict attention to business”.’ No man was better fitted to carry through a complicated and slow programme with unhurrying persistence to a triumphant conclusion. Equally he was a man capable of bold and novel designs which might never have occurred, at least in a practical form, to ordinary minds. For both these reasons he was indispensable to Henry VIII in the crisis of the reign. The king, at least in his younger days, was not fond of detailed business; nor, to all appearance, was he gifted with originality above the common measure. Cromwell, with his capacity for detail and his power of imagination, complemented his master. As not infrequently happens, the second-in-command was the more essential member of the working partnership; one can imagine some king other than Henry VIII capable of carrying through Henry's achievement, but it is difficult to conceive how he could have done so without a Cromwell at his elbow.

No other single person has had an influence on the whole Danish people as immense as Grundtvig. His name is known all over the world together with the names of Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard, but his works are not. He is very difficult to translate and his train of thought is often difficult to follow. Clear thinking and concise expressions were not for him. He was—as he called himself—a bard (skjald), and the language of the bard is not always clear although it is often profound.

On the 10th November 1540 considerable attention was excited in the imperial city of Worms by the arrival of a blind Scot. He came with Bishop Tommaso Campeggio of Feltre, Papal Nuncio Extraordinary, to take part as a papal theologian in the discussion between Catholics and Protestants arranged by the Emperor Charles V. The German theologians, who were already there awaiting the opening of the discussion, had difficulty in concealing their surprise, and a jest—‘Legatus caecus oculatis Germanis’—was soon coined.

A conspicuous feature of contemporary historical scholarship in the United States has been the resurgence of interest in the Reformation and a revival of scholarly concern with the Puritans of seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century America. The increased activity of Roman Catholicism in America has resulted in a heightened Protestant self-consciousness and may account in large measure for the revival of Reformation study, while the present straits of Anglo-Saxon culture and society have caused men to re-examine the major current of their heritage in an effort to understand from whence they came and whither they may be tending.

Towards the end of a list, in his autobiography, of ‘Manuscripts that are yet unprinted, which lye by me’, Richard Baxter did not scruple to include ‘And a Multitude of Theological Letters’. It is an indication of the seriousness with which he regarded his correspondence. That Matthew Sylvester, Baxter's literary executor and the editor of his autobiography, the Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), also regarded it seriously appears from his inclusion of some thirty-five letters in the body of that work, with one in the preface and several others in appendices.

‘A gentleman having said that a congé d'élire has not, perhaps, the force of a command, but may be considered only as a strong recommendation: “Sir,” replied Johnson, who overheard him, “it is such a recommendation as if I should throw you out of a two pair of stairs window, and recommend you to fall soft”.’ The vigour of Dr Johnson's forthright observation is evident; but not uncommonly in constitutional history the preservation of outward forms, from which the living spirit seems long to have departed, may be of great value in continuing a tradition, which unexpected changes in circumstances may restore to influence. The good doctor himself declared his readiness to ‘stand before a battery of cannon to restore the Convocation to its full powers’; and it was the careful maintenance of the external forms of convocational procedure during its protracted hibernation between 1717 and 1852 which enabled its restoration to its full powers during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Thus it might not be unexpected that when so learned a scholar and stickler for traditional forms as William Wake was nominated to the see of Canterbury, he should take especial pains to ensure that all the customary stages were most carefully followed and fulfilled.