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JUNE

25, 1805 --Ireland. The Synod of Ulster meets and declares, “Mr. (Alexander) Carson being cited by the moderator to attend the meeting of Presbytery in May, wrote an official letter saying he declined all connection with and subjection to the Synod of Ulster, assigning some of his reasons.”
      1.) “Many of them indeed have raised very high hedges around the Lord’s Table, enjoined very rigid forms of communion, but in none of them, I believe, is creditable evidence of the new birth a test of membership. The gate is indeed shut against the openly profane, but the decent worldling may pass by. At the same time, the child of God is excluded if he cannot digest all the peculiarities of the sect, and load his soul with a mass of human obligations. I believe that debarring or fencing the tables and giving of tokens like all other human expedients in religion have been of most serious injury. It is a bungling expedient to supply the want of Scriptural discipline on an apostolicly constituted church. If none but those creditably Christian were admitted to the church membership, what need would there be for tokens of admission or debarring? They will take their seats around Christ’s Table as naturally as children will naturally seat themselves unasked around the table of their earthly father. Who dare debar any such? and who dare invite any other? When I see a human invention employed to prop an ordinance of Christ, I judge it has no good foundation.”
        “Christ’s laws are not at all calculated to govern the Devil’s subjects! If there are unregenerated members admitted and retained, they will throw everything into confusion.”
          2.) “I cannot be a member of the General Synod without renouncing my Christian liberty; and subjecting my conscience to be ruled and forded over by man. I am not allowed to be ruled by my own conscience in the service of the Lord. I might get drunk frequently, associate with the most profligate, spend Sabbath afternoons in gay parties, follow the world the week with my whole heart, preach the peculiar doctrines of Revelation, deny the very Lord and Saviour of men, and still my brethren would extend their charity to me, but if I were to preach the Gospel out of my own bounds, or admit an evangelical minister of another denomination to occupy my pulpit, dreadful would be the thunder that would be hurled against me. I cannot submit to this tyranny without calling men my master contrary to the express commands of Jesus.”
       3.) “I do not find myself justified in recognizing ministers whom I consider as destitute of the qualifications deemed essential by an apostle.”
       4.) “A Calvinist, and a Socinian, and an Arian cannot with propriety worship together.
They do not address the same being, though they use the same name. How can we cooperate seeing our principles are so entirely opposite? If each of us be conscientious, we must be at constant war.”
      5.) “By remaining in the Synod, I contribute to deceive the public as to the radical differences between my principles and by those of many in the Synod. My example by continuing in that connection might be the means of keeping some of the people of Christ under the ministry of those who corrupt the Gospel. The generality of private Christians in the Synod have no conception that we differ so materially. If I think any ministers of that body are wolves in sheep’s clothing, not feeding but devouring the flock, I am a partaker of their soul murder if I fail to give the alarm and warn the sheep to fly.”
      6.) “My connection to the Synod is contrary to the law of love and to ...the members of it as men. If I believe that ‘except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God,’ and if I believe that few of them evidence such a change, nay, that many of them deny and ridicule this truth as enthusiasm, I would not be their friend if I led them to believe their condition is any less dangerous than I know it in reality to be.”
        7.) “I cannot conscientiously join in licensing and ordaining those whom I know do not meet the prerequisite qualifications pointed out in the Word of God. If it be improper to appoint newly converted men to the charge of a flock, how dreadful must be the sin of appointing the blind to lead the blind and unregenerate men to feed the flock of Christ. Those that give their sanction to unworthy men to preach the Gospel are partakers of their sins, I Timothy 5:22, and I Timothy 3:10. As a member of the General Synod, I may be forced in licensing men whose characters and doctrines I condemn. If I believe the doctrines I preach, I must be convinced 1 am sending out a murderer and not a physician.”
       8.) “I have a positive and express command to separate from a corrupt church. Though classical presbytery were of God’s appointing, yet if there be but one disorderly person as a member it would be my duty to withdraw, otherwise, I am a partaker of his sins.”

25, 1810 --Massachusetts. A petition has been drawn up to be presented to the General Association of Massachusetts. Adoniram Judson and his associates have drafted the document. It springs from what is known as the “Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1808” between some students at Williams College here in Massachusetts. Among these students we find Mr. Judson, Mr. Luther Rice) and Mr. Samuel Nervell. The result of this petition will be the first American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and is commonly referred to as the birth of American Missions, though missionary activity has gone on for years, though on a smaller scale.

25, 1962 --Washington, D. C. In the case involving Engle versus Vitale, the United States Supreme Court votes six to one that it is a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution to offer Prayer in a public school.
 

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