The intimate connection between religious rites and civic activities in ancient Rome made it imperative that the Christian Church establish early certain tolerant policies. In a society where even granaries and police barracks had altars to guardian deities, where a citizen could not pay taxes, enter a museum, or collect his dole without coming into contact with an official religion, it was impossible to designate certain areas or buildings as “secular” and others as “religious,” to permit entry to some places and forbid it to others. Thus we find Tertullian about 200 A. D. writing in his De Spectaculis: “There is no law forbidding the mere places to us. For not only the places for show-gatherings, but even the temples, may be entered without any peril of his religion by the servant of God, if he has only some honest reason for it. … The places themselves do not contaminate, but what is done in them.” With the adoption of the new religion as that of the State itself, however, the situation changed. Buildings like the Senate chamber, inaugurated as templum and dedicated to the goddess Victoria, had to continue in their civic functioning. But what of the temples proper—those buildings which could not now justify their existence in terms of civil, social, or political activity?

The morning of April 8, 1348, began on an ominous note. Milling and shouting thousands covered the area of St. Peter's and surrounded the palace where the cardinals had entered into conclave the day before to elect the successor of Gregory XI, who had chanced to die before returning to Avignon. The Romans were desperate. For nearly seventy years they had lost to Avignon the revenues that had handsomely supported Rome. The city was poverty-stricken; churches and monasteries were in ruins, papal properties dissipated, and rebellion was smoldering. During the customary nine days elapsing between the death of the former pope and election of a new one, citizens and municipal officials of Rome had visited individual cardinals to inform them that they must elect a pope who would reestablish the Holy See in Rome, making it clear that they could not answer for the safety of the cardinals if the latter acted contrary to their wishes.

This unsigned tract published in 1645 is one of the most interesting and historically significant documents in the polemic literature of the Puritan Revolution; it has also been described as “one of the halfdozen most important contributions ever made to the theory of religious toleration in England.” The authorship has never been established, though some speculation has attributed the work to Francis Rous, Puritan mystic and leading member of Parliament. But certain references in contemporary documents, together with considerations of thought and style provide conclusive evidence that the pamphlet is from the pen of Joshua Sprigge, army chaplain, Fellow of All Souls College, constant advocate of toleration, and author of several sermons and political tracts, among them the important history of the army under Fairfax, Anglia Rediviva.

At the present time ideas of church reunion are current in many forms. Journals are appearing which are devoted exclusively to the exposition of dogmatic positions in an increasingly irenical light. Not the least important among these publications devoted to the expository method of clearing up possible areas of thought for reunion are Irenikon, produced by the Benedictines at Chevtogne, and Catholica, published at Münster under the auspices of Dr. Robert Grosche. Catholica has once again appeared after eleven years of virtual suspension and Dr. Grosche lauds the theologisches Gespräch “as the recognized way which can bring us nearer to the unity of the Church.” With respect to actual ecumenical meetings the Faith and Order Conference of the World Council of Churches met in Lund, Sweden, in 1952, and there Greek Orthodox, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican and free church representatives, and even Roman Catholic observers, rubbed shoulders and discussed problems of ecclesiology with church unity as the ultimate goal.

Most historians of the Pacific Northwest attribute the beginning of Christian missions in the old Oregon country to the appearance at St. Louis, Missouri, in the fall of 1831 of four Nez Perce Indians. According to Protestant sources these Indians were seeking the “Book of Life;” according to Roman Catholics they sought the “Blackrobes,” as the Jesuit missionaries were known. Some modern historians, unable to account for the Indians' interest in Christianity, have even asserted that they had no religious interest at all. The publicity given this event caused the Methodist Church to send out the Reverend Jason Lee in 1834, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to send out the Reverend Samuel Parker in 1835. As a result of these exploratory trips the Methodists established themselves in the Willamette Valley and the American Board sent Marcus Whitman, Henry Spalding and W. H. Gray in 1836 and Cushing Eells, Elkanah Walker and A. B. Smith in 1838 into the area of eastern Washington and Idaho now called the Inland Empire. The Roman Catholic priests, Fathers DeMers and Blanchet, arrived at Fort Vancouver in the fall of 1838.

Several weeks ago I received an appealing letter from a scholar who is presently engaged in making a study of the life and labors of an eminent priest of the Church of England in Colonial New Jersey. The reverend gentleman was the somewhat notorious Uzal Ogden, Junior, missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, stationed in Sussex County. His was one of the most interesting careers of his time. He was a noted evangelistic preacher— so much so that some of his colleagues in the priesthood regarded him with jaundiced eyes as “Methodistical,” and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church drove a spike into his proposed consecration to the episcopate.