OCTOBER 26
WALTER OF MERTON GAVE ENGLAND AN EDUCATION SYSTEM (1277)
“Let him be condemned to be led to Champel, and there burned alive, and let him be executed tomorrow, and his books consumed.”
Wylie, James Aitken. The History of Protestantism, vol. 2. London: Cassell & Company, Limited.
Beware covetousness (1803)
Take heed and beware of coveteousness—Luke 12:15 (KJV). It is said, if a person seeks for the philosopher’s...
Events
366
One hundred and thirty seven of Ursinius’s followers are massacred in their Basilica by Damasus’s supporters in one of the battles that ensued after rival popes were elected.
Authority for the date: Frend, W. H. C. The Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965.899
(Probable date) Death of Alfred the Great, ruler of Wessex, England. His defeat of the Danes ensured Christianity’s survival in England, but he is also known for his ecclesiastical reforms and his efforts to revive learning in his country.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1277
Walter of Merton, bishop of Rochester, changes his will to leave his fortune to Merton College, Oxford, England. Most of his endowment is intended to assist his numerous cousins and nephews.
Authority for the date: White, Henry Julian. Merton College, Oxford. London: J.M. Dent, 1906.1633
The Puritan congregation at Newton (now Cambridge), Massachusetts, chooses Thomas Hooker as its pastor. Hooker had fled persecution in England.
Authority for the date: http://bereanbibleheritage.org/extraordinary/hooker_thomas.php1751
Death of Philip Doddridge, famed for his book The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul that led William Wilberforce and others to Christ. He had been plagued with poor health all his life. Offered a free education at Cambridge if he would be ordained as an Anglican, Doddridge declined, becoming a non-conformist instead and author of over four hundred hymns, including “O Happy Day.”
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1775
Phillis Wheatley, a slave in Boston who has written Christian poems, sends George Washington a few lines in which she describes him as “first in peace and honors.”
Authority for the date: Dobler, Lavinia and Toppin, Edgar A. Pioneers in Protest. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965.1834
The Episcopal Church under Rev. Isaac W. Hallam organizes its first Chicago parish. In 1837, they will erect Chicago’s first brick church.
Authority for the date: Stockwell, A Better Class of People1928
Death of Reuben A. Torrey, an Independent Congregationalist educator and evangelist, who had pastored Chicago’s Moody Avenue Church and served as the first superintendent of both the Moody Bible Institute and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola). Torrey had also been an editor of The Fundamentals, a magazine which helped unite fundamentalists.
Authority for the date: Martin, Roger. R. A. Torrey: Apostle of Certainty. Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1976.1929
Arrest of the Orthodox priest Innocent Semyonovich Popov. The following year he will be sentenced to death because “during the anti-religious campaign he conducted intensified agitation for the preservation of the church, organized illegal meetings in his flat, and by his actions elicited massive disturbance amidst the population.” Eventually his sentence will be commuted to five years in prison.
Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.1944
Death of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been notable for his promotion of social justice, for war-time radio broadcasts, and for ecumenism. Among his more memorable writings were Nature, Man and God and The Faith and Modern Thought.
Authority for the date: Episcopal Church. Holy Women, Holy Men.