When, at an unknown but manifestly early period, speculation regarding the duration and destiny of the world began, the thinkers of those days had two analogies to guide them, and consequently two divergent conclusions were reached. The first was the recurrent cycle of the seasons; the second, the growth, maturity, decay and death of the human and all other animal bodies. Reasoning from the one, some arrived at the conclusion that the world, at least the earth and mankind, had passed and would always continue to pass through a series of epochs, limited in number, which when they had ended would recommence, and so on indefinitely. From the other datum the result was reached that as a man dies and does not come to life again (for even the fairly wide-spread and early doctrine of reincarnation supposed only that the soul would be given a new earthly body of some kind, not that the whole individual would return), so the earth, or the universe generally, would grow old and die and that would be the end of it. It is the purpose of this paper to examine these two ideas and one or two offshoots of them as they are known to have appeared in the two classical civilizations of Europe, and especially in Greece, and if possible to draw some tentative conclusions as to which, if either, can be found more characteristic of native thought.

The subject of this brief note is not new, but good reasons exist for reopening the topic. The evidence for the establishment of this festival in honor of Soter at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus consisted until recently of the decree passed by the Nesiotic League (The League of Islanders) agreeing to send theoroi to it, which has been regularly dated to ca. 281–279 B.C. In 1954 I published two fragments of a decree, in identical terms, from Delphi, according recognition to the festival, and agreeing to send theoroi, emanating from the Amphictyonic Council. This decree I dated on the basis of the Nesiotic decree, which, after a detailed discussion, I placed, in the usual way, in 280–279 B.C. In 1958 the situation was altered by the publication by J. Bousquet of what he claimed to be the prescript of the decree published by myself, containing the date in the form of the eponymous Delphic archon Pleiston, whom he assigned to 266–265 B.C. (or less probably to 270–269).

A recent book on St. Edmund makes remarkable advances in the knowledge of this outstanding saint and scholar. The author, C. H. Lawrence, has sifted the mass of evidence produced by Edmund's canonization and reduced it to an understandable corpus, identifying the authorship of some pieces and tracing their relationships. He has edited much of this evidence so that it is now accessible for use. Edmund's biography stands out somewhat clearer. It was known, of course, that Edmund came of a borough family, had a long period of study and teaching in arts and theology before he came into prominence as Treasurer of Salisbury and Archbishop of Canterbury. The author shows that Edmund's family was really rich in children and property, that Edmund deserves more credit for more effective political leadership than he has received and that, at the end of his life, he was merely making a routine trip to Rome rather than retiring into exile at Pontigny. Further clarification of Edmund's life is possible within the limits of the evidence without conjecturing unreasonably.

May I begin with a personal introduction to the theme of this evening's lecture, the encounter between continental pietism and New England Puritanism? I began teaching Church history at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg in 1932. There I had the opportunity to study the archives of August Hermann Francke, in the old library of Francke's orphanage. These archives were in a state of highly inspiring disorder, for there were chances of all kinds of unforeseen discoveries, both in the many boxes containing Francke's correspondence and on the shelves holding all the books sent to this head of pietism by his friends all over the world. At first, I studied his correspondence with ministers, scholars, bishops and generals in Russia and the Baltics, publishing an article about Francke in Russia. Then I came across some boxes which held an enormous mass of material connected with New England, letters to German ministers and German communities in Pennsylvania, diaries of emigrants, together with letters in English from Puritan theologians and New England missionaries. I was especially interested in Francke's correspondence with Cotton Mather.

Since 1825, when Bishop Sumner issued the first edition of John Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, the Arianism of that treatise has become an all but unanimously accepted fact. Although reviewers of Sumner's two quarto volumes divided in praising or lamenting Milton's tenets on the Trinity, they united in pronouncing them unorthodox and Arian; and later scholars have generally accepted this nineteenth-century verdict. In 1959, consequently, students of Milton were surprised when William B. Hunter, Jr., under the title “Milton's Arianism Reconsidered,” devoted some twenty-five pages to the argument that “we may assert positively that Milton was not an Arian” even though “modern judges are unanimous in branding him one.” And more recently, Roland M. Frye, praising Mr. Hunter's work, has gone on to state that “Milton could never be convicted, before a fair and competent theological court, of trinitarian heresy in Paradise Lost.” With these assertions of the orthodoxy of Milton and his epic I cannot agree; and at the cost of controversy with two close friends, I must argue 1) that Mr. Hunter is wrong in believing that Milton's view of the Son accords with that stated in the Nicene Creed; and 2) that Mr. Frye violates an established principle of textual interpretation when he denies the Arianism of Paradise Lost.

Professor Bredvold's view of Dryden as a philosophic sceptic in the general tradition of Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, and Montaigne, or as a “fideist” after the fashion of certain Roman Catholic apologists, continues to be the generally accepted one. Samuel Monk, in summing up the direction that Dryden studies have taken, says: “Dryden's naturally sceptical temper found support in the various scepticisms of Montaigne, of the Royal Society, and of Catholic apologetics.” It is this scepticism, so the story goes, which drove Dryden to the shelter of the Roman Catholic Church.