In evaluating recent literature pertaining to the Catholic Renaissance regard must be taken rather to choice selection than complete coverage; furthermore, the period must be strictly defined, for the number of books that have been written is veritably immense. I shall therefore first of all restrict myself to the late rather than to the early Renaissance, i. e., roughly speaking from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia (1500–1648); or to put it in another ecclesiastico-historical way, from the pontificate of Julius II (1503–1513) to Innocent X (1644–1655). I shall further restrict myself to the Catholic controversies arising from, and following in, the immediate wake of Protestantism; reaction taken to the Protestant Reformation by the Catholic or Counter-Reformation, e. g., by the Council of Trent with its re-affirmation and re-definition of traditional Catholic dogmas and practices, with corresponding condemnation of all new teachings opposed to such traditional doctrines; to certain controversies among Catholic scholars occasioned by the capitula and canones of the Council of Trent, e. g., those referring to the compatibility between the necessity of grace for every supernatural act and the required co-operation of man's free will for a meritorious act (Congregatio de auxiliis gratiae) under Clement VIII and Paul V, etc.

Many people in the United States today feel that England is fighting a battle that is also their own. The English people, on the other hand, note with great satisfaction and gratitude the sympathy that the United States displays for their life and death struggle. A similar mutual interest existed between the American colonies of the seventeenth century and the England of the age of the Revolution. We have only to look at the many impassioned controversies on both sides of the Atlantic. They tell us a lively story of the exchange of ideas between Old and New England. Robert Baillie, Samuel Rutherford, William Twiss, three outstanding members of the Westminster Assembly, engaged in long arguments with John Cotton on various problems of doctrine and church government. John Cotton and other New England ministers in long pamphlets answered any reproaches of heresy made by the English or Scotch Presbyterians. It is safe to say, furthermore, that the controversy between John Cotton and Roger Williams, with which we are here concerned, would never have been started without Williams's participation in the debates of the Long Parliament in 1643/44.

From 1640 to 1660 England passed through a succession of extremes in religion which were unusual, abnormal, and very racking to poise and confidence. These years might in a sense be compared to the reigns of Edward and Mary one hundred years before. Both periods were very unlike England's customary course of easy continuity. By 1660 these extremes were reaching some moderation, some compromise, some tendencies toward integration, which would probably have come to a modus vivendi before long had not the unwise Restoration, with the customary excesses of reaction, restored a rigid and persecuting Anglicanism wholly out of line with the age. It is the purpose of this paper to point out some of these trends toward integration.