All too frequently writers have been tempted to over-simplify the German Reformation. The literature in the field is enormous, contradictory, kaleidoscopic, and infinitely complex, requiring decades to master the more important sources and standard works. Such labels as “Reformation,” the “Protestant Revolt,” and the “Protestant Revolution” are, in a large measure, propaganda terms presupposing fundamental assumptions and lines of reasoning not entirely supported in fact. Often the casual reader in this field receives the impression that Reformers like Wyclif, Hus, Savonarola, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were merely out of step with the accepted, centuries-old teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. He is not aware of the fact that he is reading history in reverse.

The contributions made to American Presbyterianism during the colonial period by those of its members who were of New England stock have never been adequately recognized. For various reasons this contribution was so greatly minimized during the nineteenth century that even today an essentially false picture of the origins of American Presbyterianism has become currently accepted. Typical of the nineteenth-century propaganda which was later to be accepted as fact, was the attitude of Samuel Miller, the first professor of Church History at Princeton Seminary. In 1833, Miller wrote a series of open letters to Presbyterians as part of the Old School party's polemic against the New England element in the Church.