1604 CE
In Ethiopia, 1604 AD, the Jesuits influenced King Zadenghel to propose to submit to the Papacy " Prohibiting all his subjects, upon severe penalties, to observe, Saturday any longer."- Gedde's Church History of Eithiopia p 311 and also in Gibbon's Decline and Fall chapter 47.
1608 CE
The Pilgrim Fathers, who were Sabbatarian Unitarians of the Brownist movement, flee from persecution in England to Amsterdam Holland, later to Leyden and stayed there for almost 12 years
1618 CE
30 Years War commences with the Defenestration of Prague.
The Defenestrations of Prague were two incidents in the history of Bohemia. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618, although the term "Defenestration of Prague" is more commonly used to refer to the latter incident. Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone out of a window (from the Latin: de: out of, with a downward motion implied; fenestra: window).
The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of radical Czech Hussites on July 30, 1419.
Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the Town Hall (Novomestská radnice) on Charles Square. The town council members had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall.[1] The mob became enraged at this event and, led by Jan Žižka, stormed the town hall.
Once inside the hall, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.
The procession was a result of the growing discontent at the inequality between the peasants and the contemporary direction of the [Catholic] Church, the Church's prelates, and the nobility. This discontentment combined with rising feelings of nationalism and increased the influence of radical preachers such as Jan Želivský, influenced by Wycliff, who saw the current state of the Catholic Church as corrupt. These preachers urged their congregations to action, including taking up arms, to combat these perceived transgressions.
The First Defenestration was thus the turning point between talk and action leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The wars broke out shortly afterward and lasted until 1446.
~Catholic Encyclopedia
The Sabbath in England
1618 CE
A violent controversy broke out among English theologians, as to whether the Sabbath of the fourth commandment was in force and, secondly, on what ground the first day of the week was entitled to be observed, as the Sabbath (Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, art. Sabbatarians, p. 602). Mrs Traske, a teacher, was imprisoned in 1618, for fifteen or sixteen years, at Maiden Lane, a prison for those in disagreement with the Church of England. She had refused to teach on the Sabbath and would teach for only five days a week.
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland discouraged observance of Christmas. James VI commanded its celebration in 1618, however attendance at church was scant. Chambers, Robert (1885). Domestic Annals of Scotland. p. 211.
1620 CE
Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, New England. Pilgrim Fathers go ashore. They are persecuted by the later Trinitarian arrivals in America. Within twenty years they have to flee and form a new colony at Rhode Island. They are subsequently persecuted ruthlessly in the US under the later Blue Laws.
1625 CE
The Jacobites were noted as Sabbath-keepers in 1625 in India (Pilgrimmes, Pt. 2, p. 1269).
1628 CE
Despite English attempts to stop him Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, took the French-Protestant stronghold La Rochelle and destroyed the power of the Huguenots.
Puritans (including those who fled to America) sought to remove the remaining pagan elements of Christmas. During this period, the English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas entirely, considering it "a popish festival with no biblical justification", and a time of wasteful and immoral behavior. "Why did Cromwell abolish Christmas?". Oliver Cromwell. The Cromwell Association. 2001. Click here for more information. The (Oliver) Cromwell Association
1633 CE
The Catholic church forces Galileo to say the sun revolves around the Earth (World History Encyclopedia Millennium Edition p. 235).
1638 CE
In 1638 the Catholics insisted that the Socinians be banished.
1642 CE
Civil War began between King and Parliament. From this time onwards, the religious divisions saw the emergence of Unitarian theology in people such as Milton, Isaac Newton and others. Cromwell became the symbol of those opposed to Catholic domination and persecution. In 1645 it was declared a capital offence to be Sabbatarian or Unitarian.
Following the Protestant Reformation, groups such as the Puritans strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic invention and the "trappings of popery" or the "rags of the Beast". Durston, Chris, "Lords of Misrule: The Puritan War on Christmas 1642–60", History Today, December 1985, 35 (12) pp. 7– 14.
1647 CE
Charles I queried the Parliamentary Commissioners and asserted that Sunday worship proceeds directly from the authority of the [Catholic] Church.
For it will not be found in Scripture where Saturday is no longer to be kept, or turned into the Sunday wherefore it must be the Church's authority that changed the one and instituted the other (R. Cox Sabbath Laws, p. 333).
The assumption here is, that to reject the papacy necessarily involves the changes that rest entirely on the Councils of the Church for authority, such as Sunday worship. The logic places Protestantism on a dangerous footing. Milton identified this logic and said:
"It will surely be far safer to observe the seventh, according to express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture to adopt the first" (Sab. Lit. 2, 46-54).
In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England shared radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas. Celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban by the Pilgrims was revoked in 1681 by English governor Sir Edmund Andros, however it wasn't until the mid 1800's that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region. ~When Christmas Was Banned – The early colonies and Christmas. Christmas In Puritan New England.
The Sabbath in America
1664 CE
Sabbath-keeping incurred an almost enforced migration to America. According to Jas. Bailey, Stephen Mumford, the first Sabbath-keeper in America came from London in 1664 (J. Bailey History of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, pp. 237-238). We know this to be untrue as the Pilgrim Fathers were Sabbath-keepers and thus the founders of the American colonies were Sabbatarian Brownists. In 1671 the Seventh Day Baptists had broken from the Baptist Church in order to keep Sabbath (see Bailey History, pp. 9-10). However, the Pilgrim Fathers were from a Sabbath-keeping tradition.
1671 CE
Stephen Mumford (or Momford) organises the Seventh-Day Baptists in Rhode Island.
1686 CE
The year after the Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV sent a letter to his cousin, Victor Amadeus II duke of Savoy, requesting that he persecute the Waldensians, as he was persecuting the Huguenots, as they were taking refuge among the Waldensians. When the persecution commenced, the Swiss Protestants at Basle intervened, offering the Waldensians exile in Switzerland. The Swiss envoys managed with great difficulty, to persuade the Waldensians to accept this exile. On 9 April 1686 the duke signed a decree, permitting the exile. However, in spite of this, some who had accepted exile were seized and imprisoned. The Waldensians resisted after this breach of the terms. War commenced and by the end of the year, 9,000 were killed and 12,000 were taken prisoner, many of whom died in the Piedmont dungeons. There were some 200 left in the mountains and they conducted such persistent guerilla warfare, that they finally obtained the release of all the surviving prisoners and their safe conduct to Switzerland. 3000 survivors were released in 1687. They set off across the Alps for Geneva (an average twelve-day journey), and many perished in the snow. This was done despite the Swiss protest and children under twelve were detained, to be educated as Roman Catholics. They were dispersed as far as Brabdenburg, Prussia, Wurtemberg and the Palatinate, to prevent their attempts to return.
Note: I highlighted "persistent guerilla warfare" to make a point. Evidence among the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals that the early followers of Yeshua did not believe in merely turning the other cheek. The original intent of "turning the other cheek" was to allow the offender the opportunity to repent. But not one scripture commands that believers should take no action when attacked. In fact, there is written evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls that demonstrates these disciples condemned their enemies, especially the Roman occupiers, and had no aversion to using weapons to defend themselves and their land.
1716 CE
Chinese Emperor bans teaching of Christianity.
1733 CE
In the early eighteenth century, scholars began proposing alternative explanations for how Christmas came to be a part of Christianity. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter solstice which the Romans called bruma and celebrated on December 25. Newton, Isaac, Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733). Ch. XI. (Also refer back to the early 4th Century in this chronology.
A sun connection is possible because Christians [Catholics] consider "Jesus" to be the "sun of righteousness" prophesied in Malachi 3:2. Seasonal Festivals of the Greeks and Romans Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 1859.
1738 CE
Sabbath-keepers led by Count Zinzendorf in Moravia. They moved to the USA in 1741.
1743 CE
German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that debased the true church. "Christmas", Encarta, Roll, Susan K., Toward the Origins of Christmas, (Peeters Publishers, 1995), p.130.
1777 CE
Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American Revolution, when it was considered an English custom. George Washington attacked Hessian (German) mercenaries on Christmas during the Battle of Trenton in 1777, Christmas being much more popular in Germany than in America at this time. Andrews, Peter (1975). Christmas in Colonial and Early America. USA: World Book Encyclopedia, Inc.. ISBN 7-166-2001-4.
1789 CE
The suppression of Sabbatarianism continues in the area of Romania, Czecho-Slovakia and the Balkans and the Edict of Toleration by Joseph II did not apply to the Sabbatarians some of whom lost all their possessions.
1811 CE
During the reign of Emperor Alexander I. the sectarians, encouraged by his liberal attitude, gathered new life, and many began openly to announce their principles. They were then called in the Russian official documents "heretics" and "Sabbatarians," who followed certain Jewish dogmas and rites, e.g., the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision. The first official reports about them appeared in 1811, almost simultaneously from the governments of Tula, Voronezh, and Tambov. The Archbishop of Voronezh reported that the sect owed its origin, in 1796, to some Jews who had settled among the Christian inhabitants of those governments, and that its doctrines had taken root in six villages of the districts of Bobrov and Pavlov. In 1818 some of the farmers of the government of Voronezh sent a formal complaint to the emperor Alexander against the oppression by the local civil and ecclesiastical officials of those who confessed the Mosaic faith. Upon the strength of this complaint a strict investigation was ordered concerning bribes which had been accepted by some of the officials. At the same time the secretaries of worship and of the interior were ordered to make a report to the emperor concerning the Judaizing Christians.
From the investigation it became apparent that the Judaizing heresy had spread to the governments of Orel, Tula, and Saratov. About 1,500 members confessed it openly, and many more kept their belief secret. The sect, according to the opinion of the metropolitan, was not a distinctly Old Testament cult, but was characterized by the observance of certain Jewish rites, e.g., the celebration of the Sabbath, circumcision, contracting marriages and dissolving them at will, peculiar burial ceremonies, and manner of assembling for prayer. The sectarians declared that they did not condemn the Christian faith, and, therefore, did not consider themselves apostates; and they insisted that they never had been Christians, but had only adhered to the faith of their fathers, which they would not forsake.
The measures which were taken against the spread of the Judaizing heresy had sad consequences for the Jews. While the leaders of the sect were sent into the army or deported to Siberia, the officials considered it useful to themselves to call the sect in official documents a Jewish sect, and to announce that the sectarians were Jews. They claimed that the name "Sabbatarians" would not convey to the Russian masses a correct idea of the nature of the sect. Its members were intentionally called "Jews" in the statutes so as to expose them to the contempt of the people. Finally a ukase was issued by the synod July 29, 1825 ("Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov" xl., No. 30,436 A), ordering the expulsion of all Jews from those districts in which the Sabbatarians or Judaizing Christians were to be found.
Jewish Encyclopedia
