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OCTOBER
 

9, 1524 --Germany. This afternoon, Martin Luther preaches for the first time in the black gown of scholars. The Surplice, or white gown, will be prescribed in Prussia by the royal ordinance of January 1, 1811.

9, 1555 --Germany. In Eisfeld, Saxe-Memingen, Justus Jonas dies. His given name is Jodocus Koch. In 1546 he accompanied Martin Luther on his last journey to Eisleben. He stood beside his deathbed and delivered his funeral oration.

When the Schmalkald War broke out, he assailed both the Emperor and Maurice of Saxony. When Maurice captured Halle in November of 1546, Mr. Jonas was thus compelled to flee, and when he captured the city a second time, and forced Mr. Jonas to flee, his health was seriously weakened.

9, 1635 --Massachusetts. At Newtown, later to be renamed "Cambridge," the General Court of Massachusetts Bay exiles Roger Williams. It is pronounced under its Governor, Mr. John Haynes. Thomas Hooker has failed to convince Mr. Williams of his "errors," Mr. John Cotton, minister here, and teacher in the Boston Church has played the major role in the prosecution.
     As pastor of the Salem Church since September 1634, Mr. Williams has taught his people:

     1.) Land patents of the King, awarding lands to English settlers, are illegal because the true owners are the Indians, and English subjects possessing such lands should repent and make suitable restitution to the natives driven from the land.
     2.) It is unlawful to call upon an unsaved person to swear an oath or pray to God. He even includes those who refused to renounce their allegiance with the Church of England.

     3.) It is unlawful to bear any of the ministers of the parish assemblies in England.
     4.) Civil Magistrates' power extends only to bodies and goods and inward states of men. He has said civil government has no power to enforce the first Table of Commandments because the first four deal with man's relationship to God.
     These are his "errors."    

     Friends will rally to hear him preach, and therefore magistrates will send a delegation to bring him to Boston for immediate exile on a ship already in harbor. He will escape, however, before they arrive and accompanied by a few devoted followers, he will plunge into the wilderness. "I was sorely tossed for one fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season not knowing what bread or bed did mean." Friendly Indians will save him from death.
     The following year, he will purchase land from the Indians and will found Providence, Rhode Island, and America's first Baptist church. Rhode Island's democratic government will be the first of its kind on either side of the Atlantic where citizens enjoy complete freedom of conscience and complete separation of Church and State --in short, genuine political democracy. Therefore, he may be called the "Father of American Religious Freedom."
   After their Incorporation in 1644, the people of Rhode Island immediately enact a law that "Every man who submits peaceably to civil government in this colony shall worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience without molestation."
     But there is a sequel to the banishment of Mr. Williams: at an early date he gave John Milton lessons in Dutch in exchange for lessons in Hebrew, and "God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit." As a result, he lodges with the Narragansett Indians "in their filthy, smoky holes ...to gain their tongue." It is at this time that he discovers the powerful Pequod Indians are seeking to enlist the Mohicans and the Narragansetts in a confederacy to exterminate the Massachusetts colonists. Mr. Williams notifies his former persecutors of the danger. "I did even from my soul honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me." Alone, in a poor canoe, every moment at the hazard of his life on account of the winds and high seas, he hurries to the house of the sachem of the Narragansetts. For three days and nights he lodges amidst the Pequod ambassadors who are reeking with the blood of fresh murders. It causes him much alarm expecting their knives will be at his throat at the next instant. Nevertheless he successfully negotiates with the Narragansetts not to be a party to such a treaty. As a result, the Mohicans drop out of the potential league and leave the Pequods alone to fight the English. Thus Mr. Williams will preserve alive the men, their wives and children who showed him no mercy.
 

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