George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, died today in 1691. His revolutionary spiritual idea was that everyone has an inner light from God. This convinced him that the Bible is of secondary importance, that outward rituals such as baptism are pointless, that all people are equal, that women can preach, and not to take his hat off to his betters.
Today in 1547 the Council of Trent published its decree on justification. It rejected Protestant ideas of justification by faith alone (as it understood them), and insisted that being right with God depends on real, lived-out righteousness, rather than fictional righteousness. In fact, behind the misunderstandings and different definitions, there’s little difference between the two sides, but unfortunately it took four centuries for anyone to notice.
The original church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, built by Emperor Constantius (though not single-handedly), was burned down tonight in 532 in a riot in protest against the docrine that Christ had two natures. This made way for the building of Emperor Justinian’s awesome new cathedral of the same name, which still exists, but is now a mosque.
Today is St Mungo’s Day, a 6th-century evangelist who worked mainly in Strathclyde, Scotland. Glasgow Cathedral is dedicated to St Mungo, and his tomb is in the crypt.
Image: Pete Reed