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OCTOBER

25, 1765 --Massachusetts. This morning when Congress with delegates from Massachusetts,
New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland with the assent of New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina and Georgia set their hands to become "a bundle of sticks which could neither be bent nor broken" the Massachusetts legislature assembles in Boston and declares, --

      "Of the power of parliament, there undoubtedly are boundaries. The church, in the name of the sacred Trinity, in the presence of King Henry III, and the estates of the realm, solemnly denounced that most grievous sentence of excommunication against all those who should make statutes, or observe them, being made contrary to the liberties of Magna Carla. Such acts as infringed upon the rights of that charter were always repealed. We have the same confidence in the rectitude of the present parliament. To require submission to an act as a preliminary to granting relief from the unconstitutional burdens of it supposes such a wanton exercise of mere arbitrary power as ought never to be surmised of the patrons of liberty and justice.
     "The charter of the province invests the general assembly with the power of mating laws for its internal government and taxation; and this charter has never yet been forfeited.
     "There are certain original inherent rights belonging to the people, which the parliament itself cannot divest them of: among these is the right of representation in the body, which exercises the power of taxation. There is a necessity that the subjects of America should exercise this power within themselves; for they are not represented in parliament, and indeed we think it impracticable.
     "To suppose an indisputable right in parliament to tax the subjects without their consent, includes the idea of a despotic power.
     "The people of this province have a just value for their inestimable rights, which are derived to all men from nature, and are happily interwoven in the British constitution. They esteem it sacrilege ever to give them up; and, rather than lose them, they would willingly part with everything else.
     "The stamp act wholly cancels the very conditions upon which our ancestors, with much toil and blood and at their sole expense, settled this country, and enlarged his majesty's dominions. It tends to destroy that mutual confidence and affection as well as that equality which ought ever to subsist among all his majesty's subjects in this wide and extended empire; and what is the worst of all evils, if his majesty's American subjects are not to be governed according to the known and stated rules of the constitution, their minds may, in time, become disaffected."

26, 1631 --Wales. Lewis Bayly dies. His renowned book, The Practice of Piety, has awakened John Bunyan and will be one of the two books which Bunyan's wife carries with her.

26, 1751 --England. Today is Saturday. Philip Doddridge dies at forty-nine years of age. As a writer he has written the Family Expositor, and the Rise and Progress of Religion In the Soul. The latter will be read by William Wilberforce and will guide him to the Saviour. It will be largely through the labors of Mr. Wilberforce that slavery will be abandoned in England fifty years before the American War Between the States.
     Mr. Doddridge has also written the lyrics of such hymns as "O Happy Day," "Awake, My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve." He is a veteran pastor and the founder of an academy.

26, 1814 --England. Samuel Eyles Pierce declares, "I have completed reading the whole Bible through since January 1st. I began it on the first day of the present year, and finished it on the 26th of October. I have read it in that space four times, and not without real profit to myself. I always find in it something new; it being like its Author, infinite and inexhaustible."

27, 1553 --Switzerland. In Geneva, Michael Servetus is burned. A Spanish physician, who had published a book denying the doctrine of the Trinity, Mr. Servetus has come to Geneva to propagate his errors. Arrested and imprisoned, he has not been daunted. Amidst tears and pleadings of John Calvin, he has refused to renounce his errors. He has been promised liberty if he would leave the city of Geneva, but has remained inflexible in his determination to remain. Lest the youth of the city be led astray by the heretic, he is delivered to the flames. Even the mild mannered Philip Melancthon approves the action. It is reasoned that if the wolf tracks the sheep to their fold, and when captured is penned up with an open door by which he may escape, it is the fault of the wolf himself if he remains to be destroyed.

27, 1659 --Massachusetts. Four Quakers have been brought to trial and given the option of voluntary exile or of being hanged. Mary Dyar and Nicholas Davis have chosen banishment, but Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson have denounced the wickedness of the court. Mr. Robinson has declared "Blessed be God Who calls me to testify against wicked and unjust men." Both Mr. Robinson and Mr. Stephenson have been sentenced to death.
     Mary Dyar a disciple of Anne Hutchinson having shared her exile, has exclaimed, "The will of the Lord be done." From prison she will write, "Were ever such laws heard of among a people that profess Christ come in the flesh? Have you no other weapons but such laws to fight against spiritual wickedness as you call it? Woe is me for you! You are disobedient and deceived. Let my request be as Esther's to Ahasuerus. You will not repent that you were kept from shedding blood, though it was by a woman." She has returned from her banishment and has been condemned as well.
     Today the men are hanged, but Mary Dyar, after the rope is adjusted around her neck is reprieved, only to be banished once again. “Let me suffer as my brethren unless you will annul your wicked law." She is conveyed beyond the limits of the colony, but she immediately returns and is executed.
     The court will apologize for the proceedings by stating, "We desired their lives absent rather than their deaths present."

 

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