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Devotional

We need clean hearts

Create in me a clean heart, O God —Psalm 51:10 (KJV). If I am to give my heart to the Lord, it must be a “cl...

Events

1476

Pope Sixtus IV issues the bull Salvator noster, which claims to extend indulgences to cover purgatory and to allow the merits of the saints, Mary, and Christ to become effective for those suffering there: “The souls, that is, for whose sakes the stated quantity or value of money has been paid in the manner declared.” Many Catholic theologians protest, noting especially the potential for financial abuse.

Authority for the date: British Library. Incunabula Short Title Catalogue.

1492

Friday at dawn the Santa María and its companion caravels commence the historic voyage which will bring Europeans to America. The expedition’s leader, Christopher Columbus, has both missionary and trade ambitions.

Authority for the date: Johnson, Rossiter, Editor-in-Chief. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8.

1521

An order of the French parliament is published throughout Paris to the sound of trumpets, commanding all booksellers, printers, and others with Luther’s books in their possession, to give them up within eight days or face imprisonment and fine.

Authority for the date: Baird, Henry Martyn. The Rise of the Huguenots.

1785

Samuel Seabury, having obtained ordination in Scotland, is publicly recognized as Bishop of Connecticut in a convocation at Middletown, Connecticut. He thus becomes the United States’ first Anglican bishop (soon reorganized as the Episcopal Church).

Authority for the date: Episcopal Church. Holy Women, Holy Men.

1823

Henry Williams arrives in New Zealand where he will become head of the Church of England’s mission.

Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.

1872

Lord Shaftesbury, a notable British philanthropist, lays foundations for a new housing project for the poor.

Authority for the date: Dictionary of National Biography.

1897

Death in London of Emily Elizabeth Steele Elliott, hymnwriter. “Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne” will be her best known hymn.

Authority for the date: www.ccel.org/ccel/nutter/hymnwriters.ElliottE.html

1898

Leo Tolstoy, Russia’s famous novelist, enters pantheistic and anti-trinitarian sentiments into his diary that are contrary to his nation’s Orthodox Church: “I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything . . . ”

Authority for the date: Townsend, James. “The Theology of Leo Tolstoy.” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society 11 (Spring 199

1902

Gregorio Aglipay founds the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Independent Filipino Church), after the Roman Catholic Church refuses to consecrate any Filipino bishops.

Authority for the date: kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1489/today-in-philippine-history-may-5-1860-gregorio-aglipay-was-born-in-batac-ilocos-norte

1920

Death of Bishop L. H. Holsey in Atlanta, Ga. He had been one of the first bishops of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

Authority for the date: Phillips, C. H. The History of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America.

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