Heidelberg Catechism 27, 28

Ursinus (main author of HC)

I am not familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism but in this 450th anniversary year, we are trying to get to know it. These two QAs are excellent.

27. What do you understand by the providence of God?

The almighty, everywhere-present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand.

28. What does it profit us to know that God created, and by His providence upholds, all things?

That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father, that no creature shall separate us from His love, since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.

Anniversaries 2013

Carbon print of a photograph by Thomas Annan
restored by Adam Cuerdon 

I've just been looking around to see what anniversaries are coming up next year, especially of a Christian sort. Perhaps most obvious is the anniversary of the birth of David Livingstone 1813-1873. Then there is the Heidelberg Catechism, the anniversary of which  coincides with the completion of the Council of Trent the same year. That latter event was marked 400 years later by Vatican II, now fifty years back itself. 1963 is also the year when not only Kennedy died but also A W Tozer and C S Lewis (the latter on the same day as the assassination).

Significant Puritan anniversaries include the death of Isaac Ambrose 1604-1663 and the birth of Cotton Mather 1663-1728. In Scotland they will no doubt be marking the birth of the theologian George Gillespie 1613-1648 and the death of the theologian David Dickson 1583-1663. (Jeremy Taylor was also born in 1613). The Christian man's calling by George Swinnock appeared in 1663.

Given the subject, it is perhaps worth noting that Eusebius the first church historian lived c 263-339. In 313 the Edict of Milan was passed giving freedom to Christians in the Roman Empire.