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OCTOBER
 

19, 1735 --Massachusetts. At Braintree, John Adams is born. He will become the second President of the United States. A fiery Protestant, he will declare in 1765, "The people, the populace as they are contemptuously called, have rights antecedent to all earthly government; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the great Legislator of the Universe." He will trace the improvement of human society from the absolute monarchy of the earliest ages and will see in the Reformation the uprising of the people under the benign Providence of God against the confederacy of priestcraft and feudalism of spiritual and temporal despotism.

George Bancroft quotes him as follows --

     "This great struggle peopled America. Not religion alone, a love of universal liberty projected, conducted, and accomplished its settlement. After their arrival here, the Puritans formed their plan both of ecclesiastical and civil government indirect opposition to the canon and feudal systems. They demolished the whole system of diocesan episcopacy. To render the popular power in their government as great and wise as their principles of theory, they endeavored to remove from it feudal iniquities and establish a government of the state, more agreeable to the dignity of human nature than any they had seen in Europe.
     "Convinced that nothing could preserve their posterity from the encroachments of the two systems of tyranny but knowledge diffused through the whole people, they laid very early the foundations of colleges and made provision by law that every town should be furnished with a grammar school. The education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner unknown to any other people, ancient or modern; so that a native American who cannot read and write is as rare an appearance as a comet or an earthquake.
     "There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot in Great Britain to enslave all America. Be it remembered, Liberty must at all hazards be defended. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the trust is insidiously betrayed or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents. We have an indisputable right to demand our privileges against all the power and authority on earth.
     "The true source of our sufferings, has been our timidity. Let every order and degree among the people rouse their attention and animate their resolution. Let us study the law of nature, the spirit of the British constitution, the great examples of Greece and Rome, the conduct of our British ancestors, who have defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against kings and priests. Let us impress upon our souls the ends of our own immediate forefathers in exchanging their native country for a wilderness. Let the pulpit delineate the noble rank man holds among the works of God. Let us hear that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust. Let the bar proclaim the rights delivered down from remote antiquity; not the grants of princes or parliaments, but original rights, coequal with prerogative and coeval with government, inherent and essential, established as preliminaries before a parliament existed, having their foundations in the constitution of the intellectual and moral world, in truth, liberty, justice and benevolence. Let the colleges impress on the tender mind the beauty of liberty and virtue, and the deformity and turpitude of slavery and vice, and spread far and wide the ideas of right and the sensation of freedom. No one of any feeling, born and educated in this happy country, can consider the usurpations that are meditating for all our countrymen and all their posterity, without the utmost agonies of heart and many tears."

19, 1781 --Virginia. At Yorktown, British General Charles Cornwallis surrenders his army of seven thousand two hundred and forty-seven regular soldiers and eight hundred and forty sailors to General George Washington. When letters are sent to Congress announcing the capitulation of the British, its members will march in procession to the Dutch Lutheran Church to return thanks to Almighty God.

20, 1587 --France. The Eighth Huguenot War rages. Otherwise known as the "War of the
Henry,'" it is a three-pronged war between Henry Navarre, who has been tolerant, even friendly to the Huguenots, Henry Ill and Henry Guise. The latter is the leader of the League, a confederacy of Catholic nobles supported by the Pope and Philip of Spain. This League published a Manifesto on March 30, 1585 reprimanding Henry's (III) toleration of "heresy." Today, Henry of Navarre nearly annihilates the main forces of his enemies at the Battle of Coutras.

20, 1640 --England. John Ball dies. Richard Baxter says of him he was "deserving as high esteem and honor as the best bishop in England." In the third edition of his Treatise of Faith, Richard Sibbes will write an introduction. Mr. Ball is one of the fathers of Presbyterianism in England.

20, 1646 --Austria. The Peace of Lint is confirmed today between George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania and Emperor Ferdinand III, king of Hungary. Mr. Rakoczy has levied a large army due to the oppression of the Church in Hungary. The Peace of Lint deals primarily with complete liberty for the Evangelical Church in Hungary, to use their churches, burial places and bells. Those compelled to accept Romanism are allowed to return to their faith. Pastors are no longer liable to expulsion from their churches and those churches confiscated by the Papists are to be restored.

20, 1738 --Georgia. General James Oglethorpe, the "Father of the commonwealth of Georgia" has just returned from England after an absence of a year and a half, and is presented with a petition requesting the allowance of slaves into the colony. Mr. Oglethorpe steadfastly refuses declaring if Negroes were introduced into Georgia, "he would have no further concern with the colony," and will use his power as civil and military head of the state, the founder and delegated legislator of Georgia, to interdict Negro slavery. Though many planters, believing success impossible with "white servants," will prepare to desert the colony, the trustees will applaud his decision.

20, 1872 --Switzerland. Jean Henri Merle D'Aubigne dies here in Geneva. He has studied here under Robert Haldane and while in Berlin under Neander. He leaves behind him a monument of history of the Reformation: History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, and History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, as well as others.

 

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