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Here are some encouragements and challenges from the past.

The monk Columba sailed from Ireland, with 12 companions, and after a perilous journey landed on the island of Iona in 563. He founded a monastery there to train young men for the evangelisation of the North Picts.

General

A famous letter was written in AD 112 by Pliny, the governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, to the Roman emperor Trajan, asking for advice concerning the attitude to take in relation to groups of Christians in his province. This is a fascinating and vital piece of evidence concerning the activities of early Christians and the attitude of the Roman authorities to them.

Thomas Helwys founded the first Baptist congregation in Spitalfields, London, in 1612. He advocated the principle of religious liberty, and for this was thrown into Newgate prison, where he died by 1616.

Famous books

The Authorised Version of the Bible (or the King James’s Version) was published in 1611. The precise date when copies began to roll off the presses of the King’s printer seems to be unknown, but it must have been early in the year, as two further editions followed in 1611. It was first published as a large folio volume, intended for public reading in church, and was sold loose-leaf for ten shillings or bound for 12 shillings. It was the work of teams of scholars, whose brief was to revise the Bishops’ Bible of 1568, itself largely based on the work of William Tyndale.

Famous events

Pierre Viret, a Swiss/French Protestant Reformer, was born in 1511 at Orbe, a small town now in the Swiss canton of Vaud, and was converted from Roman Catholicism while studying at the University of Paris. A close associate of John Calvin, he was dubbed ‘The Smile of the Reformation’ for his sweet and winning demeanour and preaching.

Famous books

John Knox’s book, God’s Eternal Predestination, was published in Geneva in 1560.

The Geneva Bible was published late in 1560 by a group of English people who had been exiles there during the persecution of Queen Mary I and led by William Whittingham. A handsome quarto volume, convenient for personal and family use, it had illustrations and marginal explanatory notes. It became the most widely used Bible of the English Protestants.

Famous books

The final Latin version of Calvin’s Institutes was published in 1559. The six chapters of the first edition (1536) had now become 80, assembled in four books. This has been called ‘the most influential theological work of the Protestant Reformation’, but it is nevertheless accessible, interesting and inspiring to the 21st-century general reader.

C.I. Scofield’s dispensational, pre-millennial Bible was published in 1909, and gained a wide circulation.

Famous books

John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was published in 1558. This splendid title was an attack on the ‘unnatural rule of women’, namely Mary I of England and Mary of Lorraine, the dowager queen of Scotland.

Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live … from the Living God was published in 1658.

Famous books

The Geneva New Testament was published in English (the first English New Testament printed in Roman type, with verse divisions) in 1557.

Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted was published in 1657.

Famous books

Three notable books were published in 1656: Blaise Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales, John Bunyan’s Some Gospel Truths opened, and Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor.

Isaac Watts’s Horae Lyricae was published in 1706.

Thomas Tallis was born in 1505. One of the first composers of English Protestant church music, his music is still much performed and recorded.

1555 was the peak year for the burning of Protestants under Queen Mary Tudor, some of whom are mentioned individually below. In all, about 290 died this excruciating death - men, women and even young people, and preponderantly working-class - and thereby ensured that Mary's attempt to re-establish Roman Catholicism died with her.

General

Robert Bruce, Scottish minister, was born in 1554. Having opposed King James VI's design to introduce bishops into the Church of Scotland, he was banished from Edinburgh and for several years confined to Inverness, but great crowds attended whenever he was able to preach.

James Buchanan, Scottish Free Church theologian, was born in 1804. Like most Scottish evangelicals, he left the established church in 1843, and became minister of St. Stephen's Free Church, Edinburgh, and later professor in New College.

Anniversaries for 2003

General

Robert Estienne, the leading printer in Geneva at the time of the Reformation, was born in 1503. He printed Bibles in French, using roman type rather than the heavy 'Black Letter' type, which made for greater ease of reading, and from 1551 introduced the practice of numbering individual verses, which has been followed in English translations.

Lilias Trotter, missionary to Algeria, was born in London in 1853. A gifted painter and sensitive writer, she formed the Algiers Mission Band (now Arab World Ministries).

General

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 affirmed that the divine and human natures are united in the person of Christ.

The Officers' Christian Union was founded in 1851.