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OCTOBER
 

6, 1520 --Germany. Martin Luther publishes his famous treatise, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.

6, 1536 --Belgium. While at lunch, William Tyndale has been arrested in "a street in Antwerp. A friend has betrayed him. Mr. Tyndale has been shamefully neglected while in prison, and today, at Vilvorde, near Brussels, he is chained to a wooden stake, and first strangled, and then burned. His fiendish crime is that of having translated the Word of God into the English language.
     When asked for his last request before his strangulation, he prays, "Oh Lord, open the eyes of the king of England that he may see every subject needs a copy of the Word of God." In seventy-five years, the King James Version will appear of which ninety per cent will come from his translation. He has coined such words as "scapegoat," "mercyseat," "Passover," "longsuffering," and "tender mercies of God" --all of which were non-existent before in the English language. He made his translation from the original tongue.
     In 1529, he escaped by shop from Antwerp to Hamburg having with him his translation of the Pentateuch. When he was shipwrecked, he made his way to safety, but lost his translation in the process.
     He has stated, "The king is but a servant to execute the law of God, and not to rule after his own imagination. He is brought to the throne to minister unto and to secure his brethren, and must not think that his subjects were made to minister unto his lusts." Thus as George Bancroft observes, English Calvinism reserved the right of resisting tyranny.

6, 1683 --Pennsylvania. Thirteen families from Crefeld, Germany today occupy land on the Delaware River, which they have purchased from William Penn. They will call it "Germantown."

6, 1892 --England. Alfred Lord Tennyson dies leaving behind him his famous poem, "Crossing the Bar." He will be buried in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey.

6, 1934 --Germany. The Nazi government makes its first arrests of the "confessing church" leaders. The "Confessing Church" is composed of Lutherans who have set up their own Free Synod in an attempt to keep the Protestant church clean as Luther intended. Today Bishop Theophil Wurm of Wittemburg is placed under house arrest. When popular fervor rises, the Nazi government, fearing rebellion, will withdraw its guards from around his house.

7, 1370 --Switzerland. The Pfaffenbrief is passed whereby the cantons of Zurich, Lucerne,
Zug, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden unite to oppose foreign spiritual and secular jurisdiction, and to preserve national peace. All cases within the confederation except matrimonial and ecclesiastical must be tried before the local judge, who has jurisdiction, even over aliens. It even forbids waging wars without the consent of the government. Though ecclesiastical jurisdiction is not annulled, clergy are required to take the Oath of Allegiance, which tends to subordinate them to the State. It is the first real attempt by the Swiss to restrict by means of the secular law the unlimited extension of ecclesiastical power.

7, 1573 --England. At Reading, William Laud is born. His father is a clothier. Upon the death of James I, he will seek to make the next king an instrument to force his own church views upon the body of Christ. He will be a staunch adherent for an alliance between Church and State and will stress the doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings." He will be a harsh persecutor of the Puritans who will regard him as an enemy both to civil and religious liberty.

7, 1691 --Massachusetts. A second charter is granted the colony. It allows equal liberty of conscience to all Christians, except Papists.


7, 1747 --New Jersey. At Elizabeth, Jonathan Dickinson dies. He has served as the first president of Princeton, the College of New Jersey, and has sided with the Tennents and Jonathan Edwards in favoring the evangelistic endeavors of George Whitefield. He has befriended David Brainerd and his Indian missions.
     He leaves behind a defense of the Five Points of Calvinism under the title of True Scripture Doctrine Concerning Some Important Points of Christian Faith, Particularly, Eternal Election, Original Sin, Grace in Conversion, Justification by Faith and the Saints' Preservation Represented and Applied In Five Discourses. According to Philip Schaff, it is one of the soundest expositions of Calvinism produced in America.

7, 1776 --Virginia. The General Assembly of Virginia meets for the first time under its new Constitution. The Assembly is besieged by petitions from non-Anglicans urging the removal of all restrictions upon religious freedoms. The Anglicans have countered with petitions for the continuance of the Establishment, and the Methodists still in communion with the Church of England, lend their support for the same.
     Thomas Jefferson writes, "The first Republican legislature which met in 1776 was crowded with petitions to abolish this spiritual tyranny. These brought on the severest contests in which I have ever been engaged. Our great opponents were Mr. (Edmund) Pendleton and Mr. Robert Carter Nicholas, honest men, but zealous churchmen. The petitions were referred to the committee of the whole house on the state of the country; and, after desperate contests in that committee almost daily from October 11th to the 5th of December, we prevailed so far only as to repeal the laws which rendered criminal the maintenance of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to church, or the exercise of any mode of worship; and further, to exempt dissenters from contributions to the support of the established church; and to suspend, only until the next session, levies on the members of that church for the salaries of their own incumbents. For although the majority of our citizens were dissenters, ...a majority of the legislature were churchmen."

7, 1904 --New York. In New York City, the Hungarian Reformed Church in America is organized.

 

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