"OF WHOM THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY"
-31-
JANUARY
“Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual; our prayers have
been rejected with disdain; reconcilations is now a fallacious dream.
Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature; can
you hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath
carried fire and sword into your land? Ye that tell us of harmony, can
ye restore to us the time that is past? The blood of the slain, the
weeping voice of nature cries, ‘tis time to part. The last cord is now
broken; the people of England are presenting addresses against us.
“A government of our own is our natural right. Ye that
love mankind, that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand
forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression; Freedom
hath been hunted round the globe; Europe regards her like a stranger;
and England hath given her warning to depart; oh, receive the fugitive,
and prepare an asylum for mankind.”
In 1787, he will return to England where in 1791-1792
he will publish his Rights of Man, his famous reply to Mr. Edmund
Burke’s Reflections Upon the French Revolution. When it causes
him much trouble, he will flee to Paris where he will be elected to the
National Convention. When the Convention tries the king, Louis XVI, Mr.
Paine will side with the king and will offend Maximilien Francois Marie
Isidore de Robespierre. He will therefore be imprisoned eleven months.
In his Age of Reason, he will decry atheism and
Christianity and will advocate Deism. Consequently, when in 1802 he will
return to America, and having rejected the God of his father, he will be
left without foundation in his philosophical reasoning, He will die a
drunkard’s death in New York.
29, 1772 --England. At Liverpool, Leigh Richmond is born. While a child
he will be permanently crippled when he leaps from a wall. He will hear
the unusual testimony of a dairyman’s daughter and will write the book
so entitled. It will be printed into more than forty languages.
29, 1793 --New Hampshire. In 1788, Elder Job Seamans founded the first
Baptist church in New London. Today, he writes to Mr. Isaac Backus,
“This town consists of about fifty families, and I hope that forty and
fifty souls have been translated out of darkness into God’s marvellous
light, in this town, besides a number in Sutton and Fisherfield, who
congregate with us. Fifteen have been baptized and joined to the, church
and I expect that a number more will come forward in a short time.
Indeed I know not one of them but what is likely to submit to Gospel
order nor one person in the town who stands in any considerable
opposition. We have lectures or conferences almost every day or evening
in the week. Our very children meet together to converse and pray with
each other; and believe I may safely say, that our young people were
never a quarter so much engaged in frolicking as they now are in the
great concerns of the soul and eternity. Some things in this work have
exceeded anything I ever saw before. Their convictions have usually been
ever clear and powerful, so that industrious men and women have had
neither inclination nor strength to follow their business as usual. And
they freely acknowledge the justice and sovereignty of God. They also
have desires beyond what I have ever before known, for the universal
outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”
30, 1164 --England. Henry II calls an assembly at
Clarendon at which he presents sixteen principles later called the
“Constitutions of Clarendon.” In them he demands the clergy abandon
their connection with Rome. Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury,
is the only one to refuse.