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APRIL

15, 1661 --England. Twelve Presbyterian ministers with nine assistants and twelve Anglican bishops with their nine assistants will meet at the Savoy Palace to resolve their differences concerning the Prayer Book. The Proposals of the Puritans and embodied by Richard Baxter in his Liturgy, will never be adopted for use. After fruitless debates, on July 24, 1661, the sectarian spirit of the Anglicans will refuse to allow uniformity in essential doctrines, and toleration in things of lesser importance. The Episcopal system of church government will be reinstated by Parliament on December 20, 1661.
     As a result of the Council of Savoy, all ministers who have not been ordained by bishops are commanded to receive episcopal ordination, declare themselves unreservedly to the Prayer Book, and take an oath of obedience to the Church of England. They are also commanded to reject the doctrine of the lawfulness of taking up arms against the king or any of his commissioners for any reason.
     Two thousand ministers, among whom will be Richard Baxter and William Law, will be ejected from their pulpits in one day in 1662 for refusing to conform.


15, 1661 --France. A Commission is appointed by the king to investigate the permission of public worship, and will result in the closing of one hundred and forty Protestant churches in 1663, forty more in 1641 sixteen more in 1666, and so on, and often on the most absurd and arbitrary pretexts. The building of new churches is prohibited.


15, 1831 --France. Adolphe Monod is dismissed from his office as preacher because of a strong sermon he has delivered against those who despise the Lord's Supper.


16, 1521 --Germany. Martin Luther and his colleagues arrive in Worms. His friends have begged him not to come here at all, but Luther has been heard to say he would enter Worms, "despite the gates of Hell, and the powers of darkness ... though there be as many devils in it as there are tiles on the roofs of its houses."
     When he approaches the Diet, he is met by a valiant knight, the celebrated general, George of Freundsberg, who seeing Luther pass clasps him on the shoulder, then shaking his head kindly says to him, "Poor monk, poor monk, you have before you a march and an affair, the like to which neither I nor a great many captains have ever seen in the bloodiest of our battles, But if your cause is just and you have full confidence in it, advance in the name of God and fear nothing. God will not forsake you."





 

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