July_163

“He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

“In every state of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

“The king is but a servant to execute the law of God and not to rule after his own imagination. He is brought to the throne to minister and to secure his brethren and must not think that his subjects were made to minister unto his lusts.”
-William Tyndale

4, 1804 --Massachusetts. In Salem, Nathaniel Hawthorne is born. He will be known for his novels and short stories most of which are found in the setting of Puritan New England. He labors under the guilt of knowing his great grandfather served in the Witchcraft trials. Best known among his works will be his Scarlet Letter, and an allegory entitled The Celestial Railroad.

4, 1812 --Virginia. On the Peachy Plantation on the James River, Fluvanna County, John Jasper is born. He is the twenty-fourth child of Philip and Nina Jasper. As he is born a slave, he will become a stemmer in the tobacco factory of Mr. Samuel Hargrove, a Baptist. He will become converted while a young man and will commence preaching. When he is set free, he will gather a congregation around him until thousands will flock to hear him. He will become famous for his pulpit oratory.

4, 1821 --Massachusetts. John Quincey Adams declares, “From the day of the Declaration, they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.” His epitaph reads, “Here lies all that could die of John Quincey Adams.”

4, 1833 --Pennsylvania. A second convention of Sunday school workers is held in Philadelphia and urges religious instruction to be given to inmates of jails, prisons, and alms-houses. If favors private Sunday Schools be held in homes with irreligious parents and recommends sermons be preached for teachers and members of Sunday schools, as well as the training of children in mission work.

4, 1907 --Italy. Pope Pius X issues the decree “Lamentabili Sane Exitir” in which is listed sixty-five propositions taken from the writings of liberals and condemns them as errors. Included in the condemnation is the claim that scientific research, even in theological matters, ought to be free, from ecclesiastical control and the claim that denies Biblical inerrancy. It condemns a subjective notion of Revelation, as well as religious pragmatism as an evolutionistic conception of the dogmas and institutions of the church. It further states that the objective character and absolute value of the church is denied by modernism.

4, 1913 --Washington, D.C. Woodrow Wilson declares, “Here is the nation God has builded by our hands.”