1 June 1791 AD. Scottish Anglican divine and hymnwriter, Mr. (Rev.) Henry Francis Lyte, is Born.

1 June 1791 AD.  Scottish Anglican divine and hymnwriter, Mr. (Rev.) Henry Francis Lyte, is Born.  Two famous hymns continue in our midst to this day:  (1) Praise My Soul the King of Heaven and (2) Abide With Me Fast Falls the Eventide 

We post the u-tube renditions, respectively:  (1) From St. Paul’s, London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d9RJMOP9Tw and (2) From King’s College, Cambridge:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deJDkU6qiGE.  Gems to be conserved and transmitted in the covenantal generations, hymns bespeaking literacy, good doctrine, piety, decorum, decency, balance and honor.  Now, for the brief on the Anglican divine.

The source for our bio-note is below.

No author. “Short History of Henry Francis Lyte.”  All Saints Brixham Church. N.d.  http://www.allsaintsbrixham.co.uk/index.php?PageID=biography.  Accessed Apr 25, 2014.

Short History of Henry Francis Lyte - one time Vicar of All Saints Brixham

Henry Francis Lyte (June 1, 1793 - November 20, 1847) was a Scottish Anglican divine and hymn-writer.

He was born to Thomas and Anna Lyte on a farm at Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland.^[1] Thomas Lyte deserted the family shortly after making arrangements for his two oldest sons to attend Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Anna moved to London, where both she and her youngest son soon died.

The headmaster at Portora, Dr. Burrowes, recognized Henry Lyte's ability, paid the boy’s fees, and "welcomed him into his own family during the holidays. Lyte was effectively an adopted son, and he never forgot Burrowes' generosity and compassion.^[2]

Lyte then studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He took Anglican holy orders in 1815, and for some time held a curacy in Taghmon nearWexford. In 1817 he was a curate in Cornwall married to Anne Maxwell, who came from Monaghan in Ireland. They had two daughters and three sons, one of whom was the chemist and photographer Farnham Maxwell-Lyte, born on 10 January 1828 in Brixham.^[3] Because of bad health Lyte moved to England, and after several changes settled, in 1823, in the parish of Lower Brixham, a fishing village in Devon where he helped educate Lord Salisbury, later British prime minister.

In poor health throughout his life, he developed consumption. He visited continental Europe often and continued to write, mainly religious poetry and hymns. While in Brixham, Lyte wrote his most famous hymns. Three of the best known are paraphrases of psalms, taken from Lyte’s book, The Spirit of the Psalms (1834). “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven” is Lyte’s version of Psalm 103; “God of Mercy, God of Grace” is based on Psalm 67; and “Pleasant are thy courts above” is a paraphrase of Psalm 84.^[4] In 1844 Lyte's health finally gave way. After his last service, he penned his most famous hymn Abide With Me after watching the sun set over Torbay. Lyte died just two weeks later in 1847 in Nice, southern France, and was buried there.^[5]

Lyte's first work was Tales in Verse illustrative of Several of the Petitions in the Lord's Prayer (1826), which was written at Lymington and was commended by Wilson in the Noctes Ambrosianae. He next published (1833) a volume Poems, chiefly Religious, and in 1834 a little collection of psalms and hymns entitled The Spirit of the Psalms. After his death, a volume of Remains with a memoir was published, and the poems contained in this, with those in Poems, chiefly Religious, were afterwards issued in one volume (1868).

His best known hymns are:

Praise my soul the KIng of Heaven
Abide with me fast falls the eventide

1 June 1661 A.D. Noose-Operations: Mr. (Rev.) James Guthrie, Scots Covenanter, hung-by-the-neck.

1 June 1661 A.D.  Mr. (Rev.) James Guthrie, Scots Covenanter, hung-by-the-neck.  Hat tip to the English King, the non-head and non-governor of Christ’s Church, as if Christ needed an English King or any earthly King for that matter.  Christ is the King of little kings.

Graves, Dan. “James Guthrie Hanged for Christ.”  Christianity Today.  Apr 2007.  http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/james-guthrie-hanged-for-christ-11630135.html.  Accessed Apr 25, 2014.

At the close of his defense to the Scottish Parliament, James Guthrie said, "...My conscience I cannot submit to you. But this old crazy body and mortal flesh I do submit, to do with it whatsoever you will, whether by death, or banishment, or imprisonment, or anything else; only I beg you to ponder well what profit there is in my blood. It is not by killing me or many others that you will kill the Covenant or the work of the Reformation..." [language modernized]

However, his enemies were determined to execute him. On May 28, 1661, the order went forth: James Guthrie was "to be hanged at the cross of Edinburgh, on the first of June, and Mr. Guthrie's head to be fixed on the Nether-bow, his estate to be confiscated, and his [coat of] arms torn..." The Scottish Presbyterian minister was to be executed for publishing a work which declared God's wrath was coming upon Scotland for, among other things, setting up the King of England as head of the church. Only Christ could fill that role.

James was well-born and well-educated. At school, he met the godly and profound pastor named Samuel Rutherford, attended non-conformist prayer meetings, and was converted to Christ. After that, he became a zealous preacher of the gospel, but at the same time the kind of steady man who cannot be drawn into hot arguments.

Although he led a busy life as pastor and writer, he always made time for Christ. It was the same on the day of his execution. He got up at four in the morning so that he could meditate and pray. When his children visited him for the last time, he assured them that he died for a worthy cause.

James went to the scaffold on this day, June 1, 1661. There he preached his last sermon. "... I do believe that Jesus Christ came into the World to save sinners of whom I am the chief, through faith in his righteousness and blood, have I obtained mercy, and in him and through him alone have I the hope of a blessed conquest and victory over sin and Satan, and hell and death, and that I shall attain unto the Resurrection of the just and be made a partaker of eternal life; I know whom I have believed, and he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." He urged his listeners to seek Christ's free grace.

The dying man gave a copy of this last speech to a friend to keep, asking him to pass it on to his little boy when he was old enough to understand what it meant. Then the napkin was put over his face and shortly afterward, James swung into space. Just as ordered, his head was placed on a pike over the gate. There the skull bore its testimony for 27 years, until a daring student risked his life to climb up, take it down, and bury it.

Bibliography:

1.      Guthrie, James. "The True and Perfect Speech of Mr. James Guthrey, Late Minister of Sterling as it was delivered by himself immediately before his execution, on June 1, 1661 at Edinbrough."

2.      Howie, John. "Life of James Guthrie." Biographia Scoticana. http://www.truecovenanter.com/ bio/howie_bios_guthrie_james.html

3.      "James Guthrie." http://www.freechurch.org/fair/fair1.htm

4.      Smellie, Alexander. Men of the Covenant. Revell, 1903.

5.      Whyte, Alexander. "James Guthrie." Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings. http://www.puritansermons.com/ruth/rwhyte16.htm

1 June 1661 A.D. Mr. (Rev.) James Guthrie, Scots Covenanter, hung-by-the-neck.

1 June 1661 A.D.  Mr. (Rev.) James Guthrie, Scots Covenanter, hung-by-the-neck.

Dr. Rusten tells the story.  Rusten, E. Michael and Rusten, Sharon. The One Year Christian History. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Christian-History-Books/dp/0842355073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393302630&sr=8-1&keywords=rusten+church+history

James Guthrie was born to a well-to-do Anglican family in Scotland in 1612. He attended St. Andrews University.  He attended weekly prayer meetings and became friends with Scotland’s famous theologian, Samuel Rutherford.  He left St. Andrews in 1638 to enter the Presbyterian ministry.

In 1638, he signed the National Covenant, a coalition to uphold the Reformed faith and Presbyterian government.  The Emperor, south of the Scottish border, Charles II and his Arminian bully, Mr. (Canterbury) Billygoat Laud, were attempting to enforce episcopalianism on the nation…along with Laud’s deviant theology full of oddities and Arminianism.  The Covenant was also designed to keep the church free of state control, something that never succeeded south of the border…even to this day.

Mr. Guthrie served as a Pastor through the 1^st and 2^nd English Civil Wars (1642-1648).

Emperor Charles II was executed by the English Parliament in 1649.

Upon restoration of the monarchy, England’s new Emperor, Charles II, restored and enforced episcopalianism on Scotland.

Mr. (Rev.) Guthrie led 12 Scotsmen to petition the Emperor to keep his earlier promises prior to accession.  Charles II had Rev. Guthrie thrown in jail.

He was tried before the “well-named Drunken Parliament.”  He was sentenced to be hanged, his head to be placed on a pike, and his inheritance and property to be confiscated.

Before his hanging on 1 Jun 1661, he told the crowd:

“I take God to record upon my soul, I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace and mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain.  Blessed by God who has shown mercy to me such a wretch, and has revealed His Son in me…Jesus Christ is my Life and my Light, my Righteousness, my Strength, and my Salvation and all my desire.  Him! O Him, I do with all the strength of my soul commend to you.   Bless Him, O my soul, from henceforth even forever.  Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

He head was cut off and placed on a pike.  It stayed on that pike high above Netherbrow Port of Edinburgh for 27 years.

Sources

Douglas, J.D. “Guthrie, James.” DSCHT. 381.

Howie, The Scots Worthies. 257-68.

Purves. Fair Sunshine. 13-21.

Smellie. Men of the Covenant. 88-99.

1 June 1233 A.D. John Blund’s Election to Archbishopric of Canterbury Quashed

1 June 1233 A.D.  John Blund’s Election to Archbishopric of Canterbury Quashed

John Blund (or Johannes Blund, Iohannes Blondus, Iohannes Blundus; circa 1175–1248) was an English scholastic philosopher, known for his work on the nature of the soul, the Tractatus de anima, one of the first works of western philosophy to make use of the recently translated De Anima by Aristotle and especially the Arab philosopher Avicenna's work on the soul, also called De Anima.^[1] He taught at Oxford University^[2] along with Edmund of Abingdon. David Knowles said that he was "noteworthy for his knowledge of Avicenna and his rejection of the hylomorphism of Avicebron and the plurality of forms.",^[3] although the problem of the plurality of forms as understood by later scholastics was not formulated explicitly in Blund's time.^[4] Maurice Powicke calls him the "first English Aristotelian."^[5]

He was a royal clerk by 1227 and studied at Oxford and Paris, and was at the University of Paris when it was dispersed in 1229.^[6] He was a canon of Chichester before 1232. He was archbishop of Canterbury during a brief reign, having been elected on 26 August 1232.^[7] He was supported by Peter des Roches, but did not receive papal approval and the election was quashed because of alleged pluralism on 1 June 1233.^[8] Probably it was the support of des Roches that doomed his election to Canterbury, and the pluralism charge was cover for the real reason.^[9] He was appointed chancellor of the see of York before 3 November 1234, and died in 1248.^[10]

Notes

1.       Jump up ^ Blund Tractatus de Anima

2.       Jump up ^ Knowles Evolution of Medieval Thought p. 280

3.       Jump up ^ Knowles Evolution of Medieval Thought p. 287

4.       Jump up ^ Dales Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century p. 45

5.       Jump up ^ Powicke Thirteenth Century p. 56

6.       Jump up ^ British History Online Canons of Chichester accessed on 11 September 11, 2007

7.       Jump up ^ Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 233

8.       Jump up ^ British History Online Archbishops of Canterbury retrieved on 11 September 2007

9.       Jump up ^ Lawrence "Blund, John (c.1175–1248)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

10.   Jump up ^ British History Online Chancellors of York accessed on 11 September 2007

References

• Blund, Iohannes (1970). Daniel Callus and R. W. Hunt, ed. Tractatus de Anima. 
• British History Online Archbishops of Canterbury retrieved on 11 September 2007
• British History Online Canons of Chichester accessed on 11 September 2007
• British History Online Chancellors of York accessed on 11 September 2007
• Dales, R. C. (1995). The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century. Leiden. 
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 
• Knowles, Dom David (1962). The Evolution of Medieval Thought. London: Longman. 
• Lawrence, C. H. (2004). "Blund, John (c.1175–1248)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (May 2006 revised ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2711. Retrieved 8 November 2007.  (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Powicke, F. Maurice (1962). The Thirteenth Century 1216–1307. 

Further reading

• Josiah Cox Russell, "Master Henry of Avranches as an International Poet," Speculum, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Jan., 1928), pp. 34–63.

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by John of Sittingbourne	Archbishop of Canterbury Election quashed 1232

June. Remembering Tertullian.

June.  Remembering Tertullian.

http://www.tertullian.org/ .  This resource looks very rich, although we have not had a chance to dig around.  Here’s an introductory article.

No author. “The `Noddy’ Guide to Tertullian.”  The Tertullian Project. N.d. http://www.tertullian.org/readfirst.htm. Accessed 3 May 2014.

The 'Noddy' guide to Tertullian

Tertullian lived in the ancient city of Carthage in what is now Tunisia, sometime around 200AD. Very little is known about his life - that little comes either from writers two centuries later¹, or from the scanty personal notes in his works². Much of it has been asserted to be untrue anyway by some modern writers ³.

He was born a member of the educated classes, and clearly gained a good education. Life in his times wasn't very different in some ways to the modern day - he indulged his passions as he saw fit, including sex, and like everyone else attended the games where gladiators killed each other and criminals were eaten alive, for the enjoyment of the spectators².

But among the sights he saw, was that of Christians being executed this way. He was struck with the courage with which stupid and contemptible slave men and little slave girls faced a hideous death, against all nature; and after investigating, became a Christian himself, and turned his budding talents to writing in defense of this despised and victimised group⁴.

Tertullian was the first Christian writer to write in Latin ⁵, and was described three centuries later as writing 'first, and best, and incomparably', of all the writers to do so. (by the unknown author of 'Praedestinatus'). His writing is aggressive, sarcastic and brilliant⁶, and at points very funny even after 2000 years⁷. He was deeply conscious of his own failings⁸, and had a burning desire for truth and integrity⁹. He was described by Jerome as celebrated in all the churches as a speaker¹⁰; and his works bear the marks of the need to keep an audience awake!¹¹ His erudition was immense. Much of what he read is lost, but what remains gives a picture of wide reading¹², which was celebrated even in antiquity^12a.

He wrote a great number of works - how many is unknown. Thirty-one are extant; lists of known lost works are elsewhere on this site; but we have no reason to suppose this to be anything like an exhaustive list. Most of those extant have come down to us by the slenderest of threads, and the very nature of Tertullian's terse and ironic style, means that copyists made many errors, and in some cases his text is beyond certain restoration. Not all of his works were ever completed¹³.

His most important work is the Apologeticum, in defense of the Christians. Running it close must be Adversus Praxean, in which the doctrine of the Trinity comes into clear focus for the first time, in response to a heretic who was twisting the biblical balance between the persons of the Godhead. In this work, he created most of the terminology with which this doctrine was to be referred (and is still), such as Trinitas, etc¹⁴.  His discussion of how heretical arguments are in general to be handled in De praescriptio haereticorum also deserves wider recognition.

Tertullian wrote no systematic theology; all of his works are brought forth by a local event, a persecution, or a heretic.

In his time, the church finally decided to reject a movement calling itself 'The New Prophecy', and known later as Montanism¹⁵. The New Prophecy made no doctrinal innovations¹⁶, but said that the Holy Spirit was calling Christians to a more ascetic position. But obeying the prophets inevitably meant a problem, if the bishop did not recognise their authority.

Tertullian had grown angry at what looked like compromise creeping into the church - unwillingness to be martyred, willingness to forgive more serious public sins¹⁷ - and aligned himself with the Montanists. It is unclear whether this involved actually leaving the church ^17a, but his later works are avowedly Montanist, and one or two explictly attack the mainstream church on these points. As such he was not recognised as a Saint, despite his orthodoxy, and his works were all marked as condemned in the 6th Century Decretum Gelasianum.

His later life is unknown, and we do not know if he was martyred or died of old age as Jerome says¹⁸.

Churchmen have not liked him - he is not easy reading for those who prefer compromise and ambiguity to truth, and of ecclesiasticism there is no trace in his works¹⁹. The rhetoric that impressed his contemporaries has been often laid hold of and twisted in misquotations by enemies of the Church²⁰. He is often misquoted²¹ - and as a subtle and ironical writer, is easy to misquote.

He has been called the first Protestant, as the first Christian writer of impeccable orthodoxy to enunciate the unpalatable truth, that the church was not a conclave of bishops, but the people of the Holy Spirit²².

But his legacy was the very shape of Latin Christianity ²³. St Cyprian never went a day without reading him, and called him 'the master'²⁴. He gave Christians the means with which to meet paganism on its own ground and defeat it²⁵. And whenever the errors against which he wrote resurface, as they do from time to time, what Tertullian had to say about them will again be readable; who wrote 'first and best and incomparably' ²⁶ against them.

References

For all works cited, look at the bibliography for a full reference.

1. See St. Jerome's biography.
2. He was brought up a pagan (De paenitentia 1.1), had a relative who turned a philosophical dialogue (the Pinax attributed to Cebes, the friend of Socrates) into a cento of Virgilian verse (De praescriptio haereticorum 39.4), knew the rhetorical schools and could quote the peroration of a popular rhetor, named Phosphorus (Adversus Valentinianos 8.3), delighted in adultery (De resurrectione mortuorum 59.3), and he married a Christian girl after conversion (De uxorem). His movement towards Montanism is attested by notes referring to them (e.g. Adversus Praxean 1) and is discussed by Barnes.
3. Notably T.D.Barnes in his revisionist study. See bibliography.
4. No-one actually knows why or how this bright young pagan came to Christ, as Barnes has pointed out. However many writers (including Bardenhewer, Quasten) have seen Tertullian's description of how the sight of Christians in the arena affects the pagan in the Apologeticum as autobiographical. It is certainly true that Tertullian returned to the theme that the true note of a Christian is the willingness to face martyrdom (De corona, De fuga in persecutione).
5. See Quasten, II. Of course there are earlier scraps of work - the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs - but these are anonymous. See also Vincent of Lerins in 434AD, Commonitorium, 17, where he describes Tertullian as 'first of us among the Latins' (Quasten IV, p.549).
6. General agreement among writers both ancient and modern that have been cited so far on this one.
7. For an example that appeals to me, see Apologeticum 40: "If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? to a single lion?"
8. See the end of De Baptismo, where he asks the newly baptised to pray for "Tertullian, a sinner". Or the introduction to De Patientia, where he describes himself, "always burning with the fires of impatience".
9. The word veritas (truth) is used 162 times in one of his works (Quasten, vol 2, p.247).
10. See Jerome's version of Eusebius' Chronicle, entry for 208AD, here (from Barnes).
11. In my opinion, anyway.
12. See Barnes, p196, for an assessment. See also p.332 of the postscript in the 2nd edition, for a qualification, that Tertullian may have depended more on encyclopedias than he had at first thought. But see also F.G.Kenyon, Books and Readers, p36, for a different view on the need to use compendia of knowledge - cheap papyrus books mean that at that period, there is no real need to suppose the unavailability of the actual texts quoted.
12a.Vincent of Lerins in 434AD, Commonitorium, 17
13. Lists of works are derived from Quasten, and Barnes. Text problems are likewise discussed by both, and in the introductions of the critical editions. For an example of the problems, see T.R.Glover on the Apologeticum, p.xxii ff. For the unfinished nature of Adversus Judaeos and De cultu feminarum I, see Barnes, .
14. For Trinitas, see Quasten, vol 2, p286, who gives ch.2 of Adversus Praxean as the first use of Trinitas as a technical term by a Latin writer.
15. For Montanism, see the references to Eusebius and Epiphanius on my Montanism page. It's a large issue, and only peripheral to Tertullian, so I've not listed much on this. Barnes gives some references, p130ff.
16. According to Tertullian, in the fragment of his lost work De ecstasi quoted by the author of Praedestinatus.
17. De fuga in persecutione, De pudicitia.
17a. The earliest statements in favour of the argument that he did leave are by Jerome and Augustine.  But there are some scholars who do not accept that they had any special knowledge.  It is therefore argued that in view of the way that the early church venerated North African 'Montanists' like St.Perpetua, and the use of Tertullian by St. Cyprian, that he must in fact have never been condemned, or done more than take part in a para-church grouping of those influenced by Montanism.  See Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, pt II for this, and references to other scholars.  In fact this view seems to have become orthodoxy in anglophone circles.  The original article was Douglas Powell, Tertullianists and Cataphrygians (1975).  I understand the issue is discussed in David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church, (Cambridge University Press 1995),xvii+229 pp, 35, on p.27 with full bibliography, but I haven't seen this.
18. Jerome says he lived to an advanced old age, Barnes suggests we do not know this is true, and since his last known works place him about the age of 40, for all we know he may have been martyred (p.59).
19. T.R.Glover, Apologeticum, ix.
20. T.R.Glover, Apologeticum, x-xi, for examples of Gibbon and Matthew Arnold doing just that.
21. See Bartlett's quotations, for both the erroneous and correct versions of De carne Christi 5: "It is certain because it is impossible." NB: Certum est, quia impossibile est. This is usually misquoted, "Credo quia impossibile" (I believe it because it is impossible).
22. Barnes, p84, quoting De pudicitia 21.17.
23. He has been called the Father of Latin Christianity, but I don't have a reference for this. The introductions to Quasten, Souter's editions of Adversus Praxean, Bardenhewer, make his position in Latin Christianity clear.
24. According to Jerome (see above).
25. Barnes, p101-2.
26. Praedestinatus I, 26.