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AUGUST

    
15, 1613 --England. At Cambridge, Jeremy Taylor is born to a fairly well-educated barber. He will be best known for his literary works, Holy Living and Holy Dying.

15, 1652 --Holland. England is at war with Holland. Roger Williams in England has delayed an armament intended for use against New Netherland. Today the Dutch West India Company dreading an attack from New England instructs the Governor of the colony "to engage the Indians in his cause." But the friendship of the Narragansetts for the Puritans will not be able to be shaken. "I am poor," said Mixam, one of their sachems, "but no present of goods or of guns, or of powder and shot shall draw me into a conspiracy against my friends the English."

15, 1682 --England. The Non-Conformist preacher, John Flavel, writes from London, "I am hurried hither out of Devonshire by the fury of the storm that lies hard upon me; my estate is pursued as a prey by an outlawry, my liberty by a capias" --i.e. a paper authorizing an officer to arrest him.

15, 1742 --Scotland. The revival in Cambuslang continues with the town of nine hundred people swelling to thirty thousand who come to hear the Word of God. Three thousand will observe the Lord's Supper. Songs will be heard through the night.

15, 1832 --Scotland. "Little done, and as little suffered. Awfully important question: 'Am I redeeming the time?'" --Robert Murray McCheyne

15, 1859 --England. In his speech today at the laying of the foundation stone of the future Metropolitan Tabernacle, Charles Haddon Spurgeon declares, "We believe in the five points commonly known as 'Calvinistic.' We look upon them as being five great lights which radiate from the cross of Christ."
     At the opening of the Tabernacle in 1861, addresses will be given on Human Depravity, Election, Particular Redemption, Effectual Calling, and Final Perseverance of believers.

16, 1689 --Switzerland. Tonight after prayer by Pastor Henri Arnauld, fifteen boats will slip into the waters of Lake Geneva. They are remnants of the Waldensians, and joined by some compassionate Huguenots, some eight hundred in number, who meet across the lake at two o’clock in the morning. They divide into nineteen companies. Their purpose is to invade France, their native land from whence they have been hunted down band murdered and all but exterminated. Their crime: they do not adhere to the king's religion. They will wage so persistent a struggle against fifty times their strength they will cause Duke Victor Armadeus II to break off his alliance with Louis XIV, king of France. On June 4th next year, the duke will allow all Waldensians and all other French refugees to return to the valleys, and he will release their brethren still in prison or in the galleys.

17, 1585 --Belgium. The city of Antwerp surrenders thus ending the siege by Alexander of Parma. Though an honorable surrender, it fails to recognize Protestantism.

17, 1635 --Massachusetts. After suffering near shipwreck, Richard Mather arrives in Boston Harbor.

17, 1662 --England. The Act of Uniformity requiring every clergyman "unfeigned assent to all and everything contained" the Book of Common Prayer, as well as absolute submission to the king has been passed by Parliament. "Non-Conforming" or "Dissenting" ministers will lose all their emoluments and be prohibited from preaching or lecturing in any place in England. Today, two thousand ministers are turned out of their pulpits. This will be known in history as the "Great Ejection."
     Today the ejected ministers will preach the last sermons. Crowds assemble and aisles, standing-places and stairs are filled to suffocation. People are seen clinging to open windows like "swarms of bees." Overflowing throngs are to be seen in churchyards, and in the streets. There are stifled sobs, and deep silence.


 

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