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JUNE

   20, 404 --Turkey. John Chrysostom bids farewell and takes a ship bound for Asia Minor where he has been banished. His preaching has angered the clergy and the Empress. The Church Father drove out the “spiritual sisters” of the clergy with whom they had lived in nominal marriage. He checked their habit of clinging hold to the wealthy while cutting down on ecclesiastical expenses to give it to hospitals. He deposed six bi-shops at the Council of Ephesus in 400, because they had bought their bishoprics. Moreover, he has angered the Empress by vehemently preaching against luxury in women’s apparel.
 

20, 1665 --France. Louis XIV prescribes penalties to those who once having been “converted” to Roman Catholicism should relapse. In 1680, he will forbid marriages between Huguenots and Roman Catholics.

20, 1730 --France. Duke Victor Amadeus II orders all who have been born or baptized into the Roman Catholic Church before 1686, or who have been Roman Catholics but who have subsequently apostatized, must either become Roman Catholic within six months or leave the country.

20, 1736 --England. George Whitefield is ordained a deacon.

20, 1782 --Washington, D. C. The American Seal is approved by Congress and contains the
“Eye of God” directly above the pyramid. The words “Annuit Coeptis” signify, “He hath favored our undertaking.”

20, 1791 --Rhode Island. Monday, At Providence, Francis Asbury writes, “I visited some serious families that truly love and fear God. The afternoon I spent very agreeably with the old prophet, Mr. Snow, aged about seventy years. He was awakened by the instrumentality of Gilbert Tennant, whose memory I revere. He told me much about Mr. Whitefield, and old times, and of the ministers of old times—of himself, his awakening, and conversion to God—of his riding thirty miles to Newport in exceeding cold weather to bring Mr. Tennant to Providence.

     “Having obtained more knowledge of the people, my subject was Galatians 6:14 --plain and pointed: my audience was serious and attentive. I endeavored to show—

     I. What is it for a man to glory in a thing.
     II. What men glory in, which is not the Cross of Christ.
     III. What it is to Glory in the Cross of Christ.
     IV. How persons may know when He glories in the Cross of Christ—namely, the world’s being crucified to him and he unto the world . . ..”

20, 1883 --South Africa. At Durban, Natal, Bishop John William Colenso dies. In 1863, Bishop Gray of Cape Town put him on trial for heresy and deposed him, for impugning the authority of the Pentateuch by denying their historical accuracy and authorship.

21, 1630 --Scotland. Five hundred people ascribe their conversion to one sermon preached today by John Livingstone at Kirk of Shorts.

21, 1788 --Virginia. With much difficulty, the required nine states have ratified the Constitution, but the two largest states of Virginia and New York are opposed, and there can be no union without them. Through the influence of James Madison, a promise is made of an addition of personal freedoms, the foremost being that freedom guaranteeing the freedom of worship.

       “In the ancient Greek republic, the state existed before the individual and absorbed the individual, Thought, religious opinion, worship, conscience, amusements, joys, sorrows, all activities were regulated by the state; the individual lived only as subordinate to the state. A declaration of rights is a declaration of those liberties of the individual which the state cannot justly control. The Greek system of law knew nothing of such liberties; the Greek citizen never spoke of the rights of man; the individual was merged in the body politic. At last a government founded on consent could be perfected, for the acknowledgment that conscience has its rights has broken the unity of despotic power and confirmed the freedom of the individual.” Such was the observation of George Bancroft.

 

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