USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > History of Andover theological seminary, 1933 > Part 2
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While these initial steps were being taken at Andover, the Hopkinsians were cherishing a similar purpose. Their leader was Dr. Samuel Spring, minister at Newburyport. He had been a pupil of both Hopkins and Bellamy, and had been a recognized leader in eastern Massachusetts for forty years. Leonard Woods, a young minister at West Newbury, was his close friend. Through Spring and Woods three laymen were aroused to an interest in theological education. These were William Bartlet, a successful merchant of Newburyport, Moses Brown of the same town, and John Norris of Salem. They were all men of wealth, and though not all church mem-
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bers they were willing to use their money for religious pur- poses, and they soon agreed to support the plans for a theological school at West Newbury. Reverend Nathaniel Emmons at Franklin, one of the most eminent of the Hop- kinsian theologians, was an active supporter.
Here then were two groups of Calvinists, equally deter- mined to establish a stronghold of orthodoxy for the Congre- gational churches of New England, preparing to found two schools of theology within twenty miles of each other, and to appeal to the same denominational constituency. At Andover the foundation was already laid and the Hopkinsians were making progress, when Woods and Morse, who were associ- ated in the publication of the Panoplist, an organ of the Ortho- dox Calvinists against the Unitarian Anthology, discovered each other's enterprise. Immediately it was apparent to both that the two groups ought to combine forces. Both were Cal- vinists and equally hostile to the Liberal movement in Massa- chusetts, and they were agreed in their purpose to provide or- thodox training for the Congregational ministry. It was to require patience, long discussion, sweet reasonableness, and perseverance, before the two parties could be brought to ar- range a merger. The Old Calvinists were especially desirous to have the school at Andover. The Hopkinsians were insistent upon their own interpretation of Calvinism as the doctrinal foundation of the school. Eventually they compromised recip- rocally, but progress toward union was discouragingly slow.
Pearson and Woods labored indefatigably. Pearson's chaise became a familiar object as it traveled back and forth more than thirty times over the highway between Andover and Newbury- port in an endeavor to unsnarl the theological tangle. Woods had an inexhaustible gift of diplomacy which he used to good effect. But there was mutual suspicion. Dr. Spring was doubt- ful about joining with a theological enterprise which would be controlled by the Trustees of the Academy at Andover, who were content with the Westminster standards of doctrine. Some of them, living in Boston, were dangerously liberal. Spring expressed the Hopkinsian suspicion when he wrote: "Our Constitution we must have at Andover independent of
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them; or, a separate trust collected from Andover, making half the united trust provided by our Constitution, must be the condition of our connection, or we cannot safely remove to Andover, nor even then; for we can't before the Millennium govern them any more than we can the Emperor. And they must not govern."
Since the Trustees were not allowed by their charter to hold an estate sufficient to carry out the design of the donors, the Legislature of Massachusetts on June 19, 1807, authorized the Trustees to receive and hold additional property "for the purpose of a theological institution and in furtherance of the designs of the pious founders and benefactors of said Acad- emy." Madam Phillips, John Phillips, Jr., and Samuel Abbot then joined in executing a Deed of Gift, dated August 31, 1807, and embodying sundry rules and regulations which were to be the Constitution of "a public theological institution in Phillips Academy." Madam Phillips and John Phillips, Jr., thus undertook to erect two buildings for the purpose of the proposed Seminary, while Samuel Abbot gave twenty thousand dollars "as a fund for the purpose of maintaining a professor of Christian Theology" in the Seminary. His gift to Andover was the first American foundation for a chair in theology out- side a university, for in 1807 a foundation for purely theologi- cal education was almost unknown in America. In the Middle States the Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian churches had made small beginnings, but in New England the Congrega- tionalists had depended on Harvard and Yale. In a legal sense the new Seminary at Andover was the theological institution in Phillips Academy, but it was so distinct in faculty, buildings, and funds as to be actually a separate school.
The deed of August 31, 1807, was signed in the belief that union with the Hopkinsians was likely to prove impossible. The Trustees immediately voted to "accept the sacred and very important trust devolved upon them by the preceding instru- ment." Among the regulations which the Trustees thus ac- cepted was one to the effect that every professor in the Semi- nary must "be a man of sound and orthodox principles in divinity according to that form of sound words or system of
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evangelical doctrines, drawn from the Scriptures, and denomi- nated the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and more concisely delineated in the Constitution of Phillips Academy." In further regulations it was provided that every professor must at the time of his inauguration solemnly prom- ise to maintain and inculcate the Christian faith as summarily expressed in the Shorter Catechism "in opposition not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Mahommetans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, and to all other heresies and errors, ancient or modern, which may be opposed to the Gospel of Christ, or hazardous to the souls of men," and that every professor must repeat this declaration in the presence of the Trustees once in five years.
The purpose of the Founders, according to their constitu- tion, was to increase "the number of learned and able de- fenders of the Gospel of Christ, as well as of orthodox, pious, and zealous ministers of the New Testament ; being moved, as we hope, by a principle of gratitude to God and benevolence to man." A similar purpose motivated the Associate Founders, the Hopkinsians, who in the Associate Statutes which they drew up said more rhetorically : "To the Spirit of Truth, to the divine Author of our faith, to the only wise God, we desire in sincerity to present this our humble offering, devoutly im- ploring the Father of Lights, richly to endue with wisdom from above all His servants, the Visitors of this Foundation, and the Trustees of the Seminary, and with spiritual under- standing the professors therein, that, being illuminated by the Holy Spirit their doctrine may drop as the rain ; and that their pupils may become trees of renown in the courts of our God, whereby He may be glorified."
For some months it seemed likely that two schools would arise on account of their differences in theological interpreta- tion, unfortunate though such duplication of effort would be. But the idea of affiliation was still at work. In the spring of 1808 the Hopkinsian promoters met and on the twenty-first of March adopted their series of associate statutes, and as Associate Founders submitted their constitution to the Trus-
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tees of Phillips Academy. Their project carried with it an offer of ten thousand dollars each from Brown, Bartlet, and Norris, and a promise of an additional ten thousand from Bartlet. These sums were intended to provide for the support of two professors and for student aid. These were tempting offers, but the statutes drawn up by the Associate Founders contained three provisions which caused hesitation among the Founders.
The Hopkinsians had drawn up a creed for their school which contained articles interpreting their theology, and they would not compromise with the Founders at Andover upon this point. In order to safeguard their tenets they prescribed that every professor should be a Hopkinsian and at his inaugu- ration should subscribe to the creed. Then, to make doubly sure, it was stipulated that a board of visitors should be ap- pointed, after the example of the Overseers at Harvard, to examine, when necessary, the orthodoxy of the members of the Faculty, to see that the funds were not misused, and to control the Trustees in their administration of the property. The Founders had agreed that the Associate Founders might prescribe additional statutes and appoint visitors to enforce such statutes, but it was not anticipated that the visitors would be their masters. The third provision of the Associate Stat- utes was that the alliance should be subject to revision at any time during the first seven years, even to the withdrawal of the Associate funds. .
The patience and pertinacity of Pearson and Woods had brought about a tentative agreement in the preceding Decem- ber. They kept steadily at work and were rewarded at length on the tenth of May when seven out of eight of the Trustees present agreed to accept the terms of the Associate Founders and the affiliation was completed. It was prophetic of the habit of affiliation which Andover was to acquire later.
The compromise which was reached provided that the Semi- nary should be located at Andover, and the Trustees of the Academy should hold and administer the endowments under their charter. The original Constitution of the Founders was to stand, and the Associate Statutes of the Hopkinsians to be of equal authority. Every occupant of a chair endowed by
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the Associate Founders should be a Hopkinsian. Madam Phillips and her son were to erect the building for the Semi- nary, Phillips Hall, and the donations offered were accepted, twenty thousand each from Abbot and Bartlet and ten thou- sand each from Brown and Norris, the last three gifts con- stituting the Associate Foundation and the donors constituting the Associate Founders. A self-perpetuating Board of Visi- tors was given power to review the acts of the Trustees, to interpret the Creed and the Associate Statutes, as occasion might arise, and to preserve the orthodoxy of the Seminary. Appeal might be made from the Visitors to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, if they "should exceed the limits of their jurisdiction and constitutional power," or "act contrary to" the statutes of the Seminary. The Visitors were intended to be censors of the school as long as the sun and moon endure, visiting it at least once a year, and to see, as it was phrased, that the true intentions of the Founders of the Seminary were carried out. The charter of Phillips Academy, enacted by the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1780, provided that the Trustees should not be more than thirteen or less than seven, and that the majority should be "laymen and respec- table freeholders"; and provided further that the Board should be a self-perpetuating body. The Visitors were three in num- ber, two of them clergymen, likewise self-perpetuating. They must subscribe to the Associate Creed. The records of the Trustees were to be open to the public ; those of the Visitors were a closed book.
It was a moot question whether the acceptance by the Trustees of the donations of the Hopkinsians and of the Hop- kinsian Board of Visitors was not in violation of the charter of Phillips Academy. That forbade the Trustees ever to re- ceive any grant or donation, "the condition whereof should require them or any other concerned, to act in any respect counter to the design of the first grantors or of any prior donation." It also provided that the Trustees then in office and their successors should be "true and sole Visitors, Trus- tees, and Governors of the said Phillips Academy in perpetual succession forever."
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The Hopkinsian Creed differed somewhat from the West- minster Confession, omitting a few sections and modifying others. It was in substance an affirmation of belief in the authority of the Bible as superior to reason, in the sovereignty of the divine will, in the election of some to be saved from the consequences of the fall of Adam, in the atonement of Christ intended for all, but really limited to the elect, and in the assured salvation of these few, but the hopeless condemnation of the rest. It was intended to include, as has been said, "just as much of the peculiarities of each party as would not ex- clude the participation in the resultant symbol of the other." It was phrased in an irenic spirit, but it was an effort to com- bine two schools of theological thought which could not be harmonized, and theologically the compromise was destined to prove a tragic failure.
The two orthodox parties agreed against the Liberals that the Scripture was a fixed deposit of truth rather than a pro- gressive revelation, and that reason had no right to contradict ; that man is handicapped from the start and is saved only by the grace of God, mediated through the Cross; that Christ died to satisfy divine justice, and that He was very God Him- self. But the two Calvinistic parties differed at many points themselves. The Hopkinsians maintained the doctrine of divine sovereignty, but they modified the plight of man. They rejected the Old Calvinist doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin, as if Adam were the representative of the human race, and maintained that every man's sin is his own personal responsibility. They made less of human depravity and more of actual sinning. They did not believe that God had closed absolutely the door of hope, because there is in man a certain natural ability to obey God's law. And Christ had died for all men, not as a penal satisfaction to an outraged deity, but as an expression of his universal benevolence. And man should rely on the atoning Christ and not on any outward means of grace.
The Associate Statutes provided that every professor on the Associate Foundation should on the day of his inauguration publicly make and subscribe a solemn declaration of his faith "'in divine revelation and in the fundamental and distinguish-
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ing doctrines of the Gospel" as expressed in the Creed, and that every five years he should repeat the declaration, includ- ing the following : "I do solemnly promise that I will open and explain the Scriptures to my pupils with integrity and faith- fulness ; that I will maintain and inculcate the Christian faith as expressed in the Creed by me now repeated, together with all other doctrines and duties of our holy religion, so far as may appertain to my office, according to the best light that God shall give me, and in opposition not only to atheists and infidels, but to Jews, Papists, Mahommetans, Arians, Pela- gians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians, Uni- tarians, and Universalists, and to all other heresies and errors, ancient and modern, which may be opposed to the gospel of Christ or hazardous to the souls of men; that by my instruc- tion, counsel, and example I will endeavor to promote true piety and godliness ; that I will consult the good of this insti- tution and the peace of the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ on all occasions ; and that I will religiously conform to the con- stitution and laws of this Seminary, and to the statutes of this foundation."
The Hopkinsians lived in continual dread lest the school might be captured at any time by their rivals. Nathaniel Emmons wrote in 1819: "I have feared and do still more and more fear that that richly endowed Seminary will erelong become the fountain of theological errors, and disseminate them through all New England, if not this America. I have for some time been convinced that neither the teachers nor the taught strictly adhere to that excellent Creed upon which the institution was professedly founded. They are fast verg- ing towards the absurdities of the Old Calvinism." So difficult was it to put the mind of man in a strait-jacket. Yet the pro- fessor of theology throughout that period was Leonard Woods, who was so active as a Hopkinsian in the foundation of the Seminary.
The Creed was duly insured and as it seemed placed in safe deposit by the language of the Associate Statutes, which read : "It is strictly and solemnly enjoined, and left in sacred charge, that every article of the abovesaid Creed shall forever remain
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entirely and identically the same, without the least alteration, or any addition or diminution."
In 1842 the Trustees decided that it was unnecessary for the associate professors to subscribe to more than the Creed. Professor William J. Tucker, before signing the Creed in 1880, declared explicitly : "The creed which I am about to read and to which I subscribe, I fully accept as setting forth the truth against the errors which it was designed to meet. No confession so elaborate and with such intent may assume to be the final expression of the truth or an expression equally fitted in language or tone to all times."
There was a single saving clause for the liberal interpreter, "according to the best light God shall give me." Perhaps the attitude of the early Faculty is best expressed by Moses Stuart, whose orthodoxy was undoubted. In a sermon preached at the dedication of Bartlet Chapel in 1818, he said : "We profess to adopt for substance the sentiments of the Westminster Catechism, but it is not our standard of ortho- doxy, nor any other human production. In principle, I be- lieve in practice, we are genuine Protestants. The Bible we regard as the sufficient and only rule of faith and practice. We believe in the doctrines of our Creed, merely because we suppose the Bible teaches them. We profess to shrink not from the most strenuous investigation. I am bold to say, there is not a school of theology on earth, where more free and unlimited investigation is indulged, nay inculcated and practiced. The shelves of our library are loaded with books of Latitudinarians and Skeptics, which are read and studied. We have no appre- hension that the truths which we believe are to suffer by such an investigation."
The Creed was apparently the law within which the prophet was free to range, as the aviator performs his evolutions, al- ways mindful of the law of mechanics. The fathers did not think of theology as a thing of life, and so subject to change ; therefore they made their creed a test of orthodoxy rather than a simple confession of faith. It was a confession of fear of heterodoxy in an age when heresy was one of the cardinal sins of Protestantism, as in the Catholic Church. That they
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could come together at all with their rivals inside the same fold is more remarkable than it is today that schools of differ- ent denominations should affiliate. Their common faith in the true fundamentals of the Christian gospel made that possible. If the Hopkinsian Creed was a wall to keep others out of the Hopkinsian preserves, it was not a wall to shut them in. And when the students of the Seminary greeted one an- other as brethren regardless of their party stamp, the old competition was forgotten. Students never were required to subscribe to the Creed, and several different denominations were represented among them.
One of the first tasks of the Board of Trustees was to choose a faculty. Two men were logical candidates, the two men who had done the most to perfect the union, Pearson and Woods. Pearson had been a prominent teacher, and Woods was the intended professor of theology for the proposed school at West Newbury. Pearson represented the Old Calvinist tra- dition, Woods the Hopkinsian interpretation. In the interests of harmony Samuel Abbot of the Founders selected Woods as the incumbent of the professorship of Christian theology, which he had endowed, and William Bartlet of the Associate Founders accepted Pearson for his professorship of natural theology, with the expectation that he would expound sacred literature. But curiously enough Woods, the Hopkinsian, who should have subscribed to the Associate Creed, signed the Catechism only, and Pearson, whose party stood for the West- minster Catechism, signed only the Creed. At the opening of the Seminary prayer was offered for the two professors that they might be "a lovely, happy pair."
Not only was the control of the Seminary provided for very carefully, but control of Faculty and students was buttressed by numerous regulations. The Associate Statutes contained in all twenty-eight articles. The original Constitution contained thirty-four articles, and to these thirteen articles were added by the original Founders. The Associate Statutes were ac- cepted by the Trustees on May 10, 1808. The rules of the Seminary were published the next year in seven chapters of sixty-five articles; again in 1837 in thirteen chapters of one
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hundred and two articles. Each professor's instruction was regulated carefully for his department. By the professor of natural theology, for example, "the existence, attributes, and providence of God must be demonstrated ; the soul's immor- tality and a future state, as deducible from the light of nature, discussed ; the obligations of man to his Maker, resulting from the divine perfections and his own rational nature, enforced ; the great duties of social life, flowing from the mutual rela- tions of man to man, inculcated; and the several personal virtues deduced and delineated ; the whole being interspersed with remarks on the coincidence between the dictates of reason and the doctrines of revelation, in these primary points ; and, notwithstanding such coincidence, the necessity and utility of a divine revelation stated."
The munificence of the friends of the school established it on equally firm financial foundations. The most liberal donors were the members of the Phillips family. They provided for buildings with gifts of forty thousand dollars, and sixty thou- sand more went for land and endowment. William Bartlet was the most generous single donor. He contributed one-half of the Associate Fund of forty thousand, added fifteen thou- sand later for the Bartlet professorship, and built Bartlet Hall (the Chapel), and three houses for professors. Samuel Abbot brought his total contribution to over a hundred thou- sand dollars. John Norris and his wife gave forty thousand, Moses Brown thirty-five thousand, and there were other gifts amounting to about seventy-five thousand dollars, including scholarships. Altogether about four hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars were available for buildings and endowments within the first half century.
The establishment of the Seminary was a significant event in American church history. The union of the two theological groups of conservatives in the Seminary proved an effective counterpoise to the Unitarian trend in Congregational circles. Naturally the Liberals were not pleased. The Harvard atti- tude was not friendly. Woods reported to Farrar in 1807 that there was "loud murmuring and reproach and imprecation." On his own part Woods did not feel cordial. He wrote to
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Jedediah Morse : "I hate to fight with such creatures as the 'Anthologists.' They can make the loudest noise. They never will feel conquered. They will use instruments and methods of battle which we disapprove and despise. Let not our pages be soiled with their matters." All of which is evidence of the hostilities of the period. The Congregational churches ex- pressed their good will for the school and confidence in it. Most of the ministers were in sympathy with the course that had been followed, and they believed in the principle of theo- logical education. The General Association of Massachusetts in 1808 recorded its satisfaction that an important theological institution had been established in the county of Essex. Two years later its committee on the state of the churches reported that the smiles of God rested on the Theological Seminary. As far away as New York City a lively interest was felt and surprise was expressed at the financial resources and the num- ber of students. The Seminary marked a distinct stage of advance in theological training, and spurred the Congrega- tionalists to establish other institutions for theological educa- tion. Bangor Theological Seminary was opened at Hampden, Maine, in 1816, for students without college training, and was removed to Bangor three years later. Yale Divinity School was founded as a distinct department of the University in 1822, as Harvard Divinity School had been at Cambridge in 1815. Other denominations were soon establishing their own schools on the Andover model.
The foundations at Andover were laid firmly. The super- structure was to be built into the lives and characters of gener- ations of theological students, and the influence of the Semi- nary on the Hill was to be felt around the world. For the first half century it was to train most of the pastors of the Congre- gational churches of Massachusetts and nearly all the foreign missionaries of the American Board, and many Presbyterians who found their fields of labor in the Middle and Western States. Because of its high standards, competent instruction, and thorough discipline, Andover became a recognized leader in theology, in biblical research, and in general contribution to the study of religion.
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