If we are correct in saying that for the Arians the relationship of the Logos-Son to the Father was primarily a cosmological problem and for the Catholics primarily a soteriological problem, we should be able to go on and point to corresponding differences in the liturgical ethos of the rival parties and more specifically to divergent conceptions and practices connected with the Eucharist, resulting from differing conceptions of the role of Logos-Son. We do find, despite the meagre materials on the Arian side, divergent emphases that will be seen to bear on the behavior of the two parties in the ecclesio-political struggle of the fourth century.

A student of the history of Oriental Christianity is particularly fascinated by the role Syrian monasticism has played, not only in the religious, ecclesiastical, spiritual, literary, and cultural life of the Christian Syrians, but also far outside the confines of the territory of Aramean Christianity. To be sure, Syrian monasticism has been exaggeratedly ascetic. But paradoxically, the same psyche which has passionately longed for mortification and relentless chastisement has showed a remarkable flexibility. It has released energies to direct them towards various tasks which serve the Christian community, proving its sympathetic and even warm participation in the multifarious responsibilities of human life. Its missionary activities, zeal and enthusiasm to reach faraway countries are well-known. Its achievements, particularly in Eastern Asia, are admirable. What the bilingual monument of Si-nganfu has immortalized is only one luminary among other achievements which probably have not been carved in stone so explicitly. Other aspects are no less important. In one study I have already sketched the profile of Syrian monasticism in the light of philanthropic activities in Mesopotamia and Persia. I have also had the opportunity to show its share in the history of education and schools, learning and literary life, and even in the history of the New Testament text. The traces which have been left behind are not traces in sand, but have been carved in human hearts. These traces are still visible to anyone who studies the history, literature and mythology of the nations in Middle and Eastern Asia. These are only the most important aspects amongst others, which depict peculiar features in the physiognomy of Syrian monasticism.

After the Calas Case of 1762–64 the more severe of the anti-Protestant laws fell into disuse. Raids on the open-air religious meetings ceased; few if any clergy were executed; no laity were sent to the galleys; and no property apparently was seized. The Protestant pastors became bolder and, in the 1780's, Paul Rabaut and his son Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the two foremost of them all, lived without disguise and without molestation as they served their flock in the city of Nîmes. The pastor Frossard, whose name has passed down to us as the author of an able antislavery pamphlet, worked without harm in Lyons, where he was visited by Brissot in 1782. Court de Gebelin, son of the daring pastor Antoine Court and himself a pastor, lived openly in Paris from 1763 to 1784 without annoyance, became secretary of the celebrated Freemason's Lodge of the Nine Muses frequented by Voltaire and Franklin, and acquired some reputation as a writer and scholar. And when at length he died (in 1784) his funeral was unmolested, and Quesnay de SaintGermain, a councillor at the Parlement of Paris, and the pastor Rabaut Saint-Etienne addressed the assemblage. Even earlier, in 1748, Simon Louis de Ry, son of a Protestant refugee at Cassel, came to Paris and studied architecture. Either the government did not know or care who he was. Likewise his sister, married to a French Protestant refugee named Le Clerc, returned to Paris for a period of three months in 1773 without molestation. The Protestant physician Paul Bosc went to Paris in the 1750's and not only lived untroubled but even became a court physician, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was sent on a government mission to England. He died a noted scientist in 1784. As a youth he had even been a Protestant pastor. What did that matter? Paris did not care. Paris throughout the eighteenth century was perhaps the safest place for a Protestant in France.

The Great Awakening of 1740–41, which set for a century and a half the basic patterns of American revivalist religion, was itself shaped by earlier outpourings of the Spirit. The most influential of these was undoubtedly the revival of 1734–35 in Jonathan Edwards' congregation at Northampton, a revival which spread widely in western Massachusetts and even south into Connecticut. Edwards' preaching methods were copied and his congregation's conversion experiences emulated not only in the immediate revival but, through Edwards' Faithful Narrative of them, in the Whitefield and subsequent awakenings. The Northampton awakening had been in process of preparation for two or three years under Edwards' preaching. But its first overt manifestation coincided with Edwards' two lectures on justification by faith alone, sermons preached avowedly against Arminianism and in spite of the warnings and censure of some of his influential kinsmen.