Christian monasticism in the East has three sources: the original rule of the founder or that of a reformer, laws issued by the Roman emperors, and the canons of church councils. The purpose of this article is to study the latter two, which have received little attention in the scholarly work on monastic life. The close association between church and state, unique to the East, made it incumbent upon the leaders of both the secular and religious hierarchies of Byzantium to oversee the development of monasticism from the fourth to the eighth century. Those 400 years mark the first and normative period of legislation dealing with the monastic life.

By 1516 Luther charged that the Schoolmen had grotesquely inflated the significance of natural virtues. Thereafter, he increasingly was provoked by the suggestion that human effort—touched only lightly, if at all, by grace—could accomplish more healing than harm. But it is commonly supposed that opinions Luther then condemned were opinions he had condoned in his earliest works, in which he is said to have assumed God's willingness to accept the best efforts of sinful persons as virtuous preparation for grace. Certainly Luther's ambitious remarks about partial merit (mentum de congruo), which found their way into his marginal notes on Lombard's Sentences (1509–1510) and into his Dictata super Psalterium (1513–1515), contrast with his later repudiation of the “sufficiencies” of natural powers for moral achievement and of moral achievement for divine acceptance and reward. Luther himself conceded his schoolboy admiration for Ockham, who probably inspired the semipelagianism of much of the late medieval soteriology that Luther came to detest. Understandably, Luther's early apparent endorsements of semipelagian features of scholastic soteriology have attracted considerable scholarly attention. His passage from nominalism to Protestantism, choreographed variously with leaps and stumbles or as an orderly march, has been a topic for debate ever since new fragments of Luther's early theology surfaced and were pieced together in the nineteenth century. Yet two early sermons have generated comparatively little discussion. Copied together from a manuscript in Erfurt and published twice before 1900, they are clearly witnesses from Luther's early career and their contribution to the determination and evaluation of his early semipelagianism ought not to be undervalued.

Congregational polity first appeared in New England in 1620 with the arrival of a small company of Separatists from Scrooby, England. In 1607 or 1608, after many difficulties arising from the policies of King James I, the Scrooby congregation migrated to Amsterdam in Holland. In 1609 they transferred to Leyden, where John Robinson ministered as their pastor. After a decade in Leyden, the congregation negotiated a charter or patent with the Virginia Company to go to Virginia; it was approved in September 1619. Volunteers for the voyage to the New World were sought from the Leyden congregation. Robinson planned to accompany them if a majority agreed to go. However, since only a minority chose to make the journey, he disappointedly conformed to his prior agreement and remained in Holland, where he died six years later in 1625. Traveling on the Mayflower, which sailed off course, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony arrived on 6 December 1620 in Cape Cod harbor. At this time they were under the pastoral leadership and ecclesiological influence of Robinson, and they remained so until his death.

Recent studies of English Methodism have called attention to the importance of the doctrine of the ministry and its evolution for the understanding of the Methodist tradition. Chief among these are John C. Bowmer's Pastor and People and the first two volumes of the new History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain. Each of these studies cites the evolution of the pastoral office, from its roots in John Wesley to its culmination under Jabez Bunting, as one of the distinguishing marks of the Wesleyan tradition. But while they mention the beginnings of formal education for ministry during this period, they do not attempt to gain insight into the understanding of ministry within Wesleyan Methodism that these foundations can provide. It is my intention in this paper to explore these connections and to encourage further investigation into related matters that could prove fruitful for our understanding of this tradition.

The Right Reverend Monsignor William T. Russell, pastor of Saint Patrick's Church in Washington, D.C., since 1908 and reputedly one of the finest preachers in the country, agreed to an unusual interview during the spring of 1912. Five other clergy, including a rabbi, likewise participated in separate sessions with the same Protestant minister. The resulting six semiautobiographical accounts appeared as a weekly series in Collier's magazine at midyear. Unlike the companion pieces, however, the article devoted to Msgr. Russell appeared at a particularly timely moment. On the one hand, the Pan-American Thanksgiving Day celebration, although just three years old, seemed well on the way toward becoming an annual observance that neither the president of the United States nor the Latin American diplomatic contingent could slight idly. Yet, on the other hand, the article heralded a major Protestant protest that would call the entire basis of the celebration into public and even political question. Upon assuming the presidency in 1913, an unsuspecting Woodrow Wilson would find himself inadvertently drawn into an interdenominational dispute over the special Catholic service. Embarrassed to the point of privately admitting a clumsy mistake, Wilson eventually yielded to the critics and finally withdrew his support from an implied experiment in the cultural extension of a famous holiday.