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OCTOBER

24, 362 --Turkey. Julian "the Apostate" has issued an edict permitting exiled bishops to return to their churches. He hopes to create confusion in the Church to the profit of Paganism, but finding Athanasius a hindrance to religious unity by his immovable stand against the anti-Trinitarian views of the Arians, Julian issues a special edict commanding him to leave at once. His reason is given that the man of God has returned from exile without personally receiving permission to return. This is the fourth banishment of Athanasius.

24, 1648 --Germany. The Peace of Westphalia ends thirty years of war against the German Protestants. Among other things, this peace is a triple agreement between the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran and the Presbyterian churches not to persecute each other. On November 26, 1648, Pope Innocent X will promulgate the bull "Zelo Domus Dei" in which he will declare the treaty null and void because it was adopted without the approval of the Papal see.
       Although the formal exchange of ratification of the treaty will not take place until February 8, 1649, Martin Rinkart will pen as a hymn of praise,

Now thank we all our God,
With hearts, and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In Whom His world rejoices.
 

24, 1665 --France. Louis XIV declares little children who are claimed by priests to have been "converted" by using words that are interpreted as implying a preference for Roman Catholicism, though never so young in years, that such children are to be forcibly taken from their parents to be reared in the alleged preferred faith. In August 1669, the king will forbid Huguenots to leave the country.

24, 1671 --England. John Bunyan, still a prisoner in the Bedford jail is formally ordained to the office of Elder of the Baptist Church in Bedford.

24, 1776 --Virginia. The Hanover Presbytery submits their Memorial to the Virginia Assembly arguing for full religious freedom on the basis that it is one of man's natural rights.

24, 1821 --New Jersey. At Burlington, Elias Boudinot dies. At the Continental Congress of 1778-1779, and again in 1781-1784, he represented the state of New Jersey, and in 1782, he was elected President of that Congress. He was the Director of the United States Mint between the years of 1795 and 1805, and was the first President of the American Bible Society.

24, 1852 --Washington, D. C. Daniel Webster will die today while serving under President Millard Fillmore as Secretary of State.
     In the presence of professor Sanborn of Dartmouth College, having laid his hand on a copy of the Scriptures, he confessed, "This is THE Book. I have read through the entire Bible many times. I make it a practice to go through it once a year. It is THE BOOK OF ALL OTHERS FOR LAWYERS as well as divines; and I pity the man that cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and rules for his conduct. It fits men for life --it prepares him for death."
     At the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument on June 17, 1843, he delivered the address. In it when referring to the Pilgrim Fathers who came to the New World, he declared "They brought with them a full portion of the riches of the past, in science, art, morals, religion, and literature. The Bible came with them. The Bible is a Book of Faith and a Book of Doctrine; it teaches man his own responsibility, his own dignity and his equality with his fellow man."
     At Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1820, he exclaimed, " ...More than all, a government and a country were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion . . .. Who would wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun? ...Let us not forget the religious character of our origin."

24, 1869 --New Hebrides. John Paton, pioneer missionary, arrived on the island of Aniwa in November of 1866. Today he conducts his first communion. In 1904, he will publish his translation of the book of Acts into Aniwan.

 25, 451 --Turkey. The Council of Chalcedon today requires all faithful Christians to acknowledge "our one Lord Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect man... of one substance with the Father as touching His Godhead, of one substance with us as touching His manhood ...in two natures without confusion, without change, without distinction, without separation," in such a way that "the difference of natures is in no way abolished by the union, but rather properties of each nature are preserved and united in one person and one mode of being."
 

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