The Regicide of Charles

At two o'clock on the afternoon on this day in 1649, Charles I, King of England stepped upon a scaffold outside the banqueting hall at Whitehall Palace in London. A few moments later he was beheaded by executioner Richard Brandon and England was without a king. His death brought to an end the Civil War between the king and his parliament. It was just four years after the King's royalist forces lost at Naseby to the army led by the Parliamentarian's Oliver Cromwell.

Charles had offended a large majority of his subjects by refusing to accept accountability to Parliament, flirting with Catholicism, and continually raising tax rates. He went so far as to dissolve Parliament on several occasions for several years at a time. The struggle between the Parliament and the Crown erupted in a war in which Charles was opposed by well-trained Roundhead and Cavalier forces. After several contentious battles, Charles surrendered to a Scottish army in 1646. He was convicted of treason in 1648 and finally executed in 1649.

Cromwell was afterwards named Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth—though he repeatedly refused to accept Parliament’s offer of the Crown. The monarchy was restored in 1660 when Parliament invited Charles II to return from exile in France to assume his father’s throne.

The whole tragic episode was fraught with difficulty, controversy, and dissension. Even so staunch a supporter of the cause of constitutional freedom in England as the Anglican bishop of Liverpool J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), could not approve of the regicide. He noted in his book, Light from Old Times,, "It is a vulgar error to suppose, as many do, that the whole Parliamentary party are accountable for that wicked and impolitic act. The immense majority of the Presbyterians protested loudly against it." It was, in fact, the army that took the lead. Ryle was particularly anxious to make it clear that the Puritans "were entirely guiltless of any participation in the trial and death of the King." Nevertheless Ryle admitted that as much as the civil war was to be regretted, "we must in fairness remember that we probably owe to it the free and excellent Constitution which we possess in this country."

Providence Farms

The wonderful calling, the compelling vision, the gracious hospitality, and (of course) the delicious food of Will and Judy Matheny at Providence Farms are all featured in The Tennessean, the metropolitan newspaper of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. The brief profile provides a delightful insight into how a business can be a means by which genuine covenant life is joyously provoked and enhanced.

The Quest for Happiness

"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." --C.S. Lewis

Truly Useless

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
-- John Adams

A Merrier World

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." --J.R.R. Tolkien

God, Have Mercy on Us

Today, President Obama put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of those insidious organizations that aggressively promote abortion services--including the multi-billion dollar infanticide conglomerate, Planned Parenthood. In ordering a reversal of the Mexico City Policy, the president fulfilled his campaign promises to the minions of the vast, tenured, and privileged anti-life lobby. Saying, "It is time we end the politicization of this issue," he only succeeded in radically re-politicizing the issue. Alas, he also simultaneously made every American taxpayer complicit in the horror of an ever-broadening modern holocaust.

Peace and Reconciliation

John Calvin (1509-1564) established Geneva as the epicenter of the Reformation with his profound theological insight and his rich devotional piety. His careful and systematic codification of the Biblical foundations for Reform was like a magnet for the best and brightest throughout Christendom. The city quickly became an island of intellectual integrity and economic prosperity.

A Frenchman who only came to Geneva reluctantly after he was exiled from Paris during a persecution of Protestants there, Calvin nevertheless gave himself heart and soul to his adopted city. It was there that he would write his greatest work, The Institutes of Christian Religion. A massive systematic theology, the work would set the pace for generations of scholars after him and provide the loadstone for reform movements all over the world--from Knox’s Scotland and Whitefield’s England to Mather’s America and Kuyper’s Holland. His weekly preaching was comprehensively Biblical and practically pastoral. As a result, Geneva became a center for Christian scholarship.

In addition though, the city became renowned for its charitable compassion. It was a kind of safe haven for all of Europe's poor and persecuted, dispossessed and distressed. There they found that Calvin had not only instructed the people in such things as the providence of God, but he had also taught them the importance of mercy in balancing the Christian life. On this day in 1555, he reorganized the diaconate of the city for the task of caring for the flood of poor refugees pouring into the city from the persecution in provinces all over Western Europe. Ever since, Geneva has been known as a haven for peace and reconciliation--a reputation it maintains to this day.

Mac@25

On the Nightstand

The Audacity of Hope