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Introduction
When Puritans thought of a learned ministry, they characteristically thought of one learned in the things of God. This by no means precluded a concern for the education of ministerial candidates in relevant disciplines. When, between 1660 and 1662 (the Great Ejectment) some 2,000 ministers resigned, or were dismissed from, their livings because of their conscientious inability to give their “unfeigned assent and consent” to the Book of Common Prayer, and to use it only in worship, the question arose, How may we provide a higher education for our young men who will not submit to the religious tests imposed by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge? They answered by establishing Dissenting academies, which were open both to those destined for the Dissenting ministry, and to those whose career aspirations led them in other directions. The earliest tutors had themselves been schooled at Oxford or Cambridge. For example, John Woodhouse (c. 1627–1700), who conducted a significant academy at Sheriffhales from 1676 to 1697, was an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge, while Matthew Warren (1642?–1706), of St. John’s College Oxford, was in charge of the Taunton Academy from 1687 until his death. None, however, lived more dangerously than Richard Frankland (1630–1698), who had studied at Christ’s College Cambridge. His academy, begun at Rathmell in 1670 was, owing to authorities intent upon persecution, forced into a peripatetic existence. He removed with his academy on four occasions until 1689 when, with the arrival of the Toleration Act on the statute book, he returned to Rathmell. Despite the difficulties under which he worked he educated no fewer that 304 students, many of whom became the mainstay of the Dissenting ministry in the north of England, while some made a name for themselves as far afield as London.
It might be thought that with the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689 the way ahead for Dissent would be eased, and to a certain extent it was. Orthodox Protestant Dissenters could now worship according to their consciences, build meeting houses, and establish academies. But they were still second-class citizens, barred from the professions. Moreover, throughout the eighteenth century there were those who wished to turn back the clock of toleration, not least where the work of the Dissenting academies was concerned. In this context Caleb Ashworth conducted his significant Daventry Academy—the successor to that of Philip Doddridge at Northampton. Chapter 2 comprises the first full account of Ashworth’s work and influence, and it may represent the continuance into the eighteenth century of the Dissenting academies after the original pattern—albeit Doddridge had introduced teaching through the medium of English rather than Latin, and Ashworth followed suit.
In chapter 3 we proceed to the nineteenth century and cross the border to Scotland, with its strong philosophical tradition in which many ministerial candidates were schooled. In the absence of some acquaintance with this intellectual background it is harder to appreciate the context in which John Oman (chapter 4) and N. H. G. Robinson (chapter 5) learned their trade. Oman taught at the college of the Presbyterian Church of England—a theological college as distinct from a Dissenting academy—which, on its removal to Cambridge took the name Westminster College, and became closely related to the University. Norman Robinson was professor in the Faculty of Divinity at Scotland’s senior university, St. Andrews, at a time when such faculties educated a high proportion of ministers for Scotland and further afield, and did so within the university, rather than the seminary, context.
Returning to England, we come to two chapters on Geoffrey Nuttall, the most distinguished and meticulous historian of Puritanism and Dissent of the twentieth century. He spent his teaching career at New College, London, the Congregational College which resulted from the amalgamation in 1850 of Coward, Highbury and Homerton Colleges. It came to be associated with the University of London; students read for London degrees, and the full-time tutors were members of the Faculty of Theology. The College closed in 1976. Charles Duthie was its last Principal, and the distinguished alumnus from the days of P. T. Forsyth’s principalship, H. F. Lovell Cocks, preached the closing sermon.
For the final chapter we head north to Manchester, where Lancashire Independent College was established in 1843, in succession to Blackburn Independent Academy, which had been founded in 1816. In December 1903 the University of Manchester resolved to inaugurate a Faculty of Theology, the first academic session of which began in 1904. This was “the first entirely free faculty in the kingdom in which theological instruction formed a part of the regular curriculum of the University itself.” Religious tests were eschewed, from the outset provision was made for women to take theological degrees, and the Faculty pioneered the study of comparative religion and, later, Christian ethics. The eight theological colleges in the city in 1904 were involved in the Faculty’s work. The University appointed its own scholars, A. S. Peake among them, and also drew upon such distinguished theological college colleagues as J. T. Marshall (Baptist), W. H. Bennett, W. F. Adeney and Robert Mackintosh (Congregationalists), J. H. Moulton (Methodist) and Alexander Gordon (Unitarian). The New Testament scholars recalled in this chapter epitomize the easy relationship between the University and the theological colleges at the middle of the twentieth century; for while T. W. Manson held the Rylands Chair of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis, W. Gordon Robinson, Owen Evans and Eric Hull all taught both in the theological colleges of their denominations and in the University. Of these, Evans, the Methodist, is the sole non-Reformed/Dissenting scholar to figure significantly in this book.
The soundings taken here indicate the variety of ways in which British Reformed and Dissenting Christians sought, in significantly different socio-political contexts, to educate a confessing ministry: from the early academies offering a general higher education to young men, through the free-standing theological colleges, to the various permutations of college-university relations. In such places a learned ministry was sought and frequently achieved. But while, in what follows, appropriate reference will be made to a significant academy, and to some colleges and universities, this is not primarily a history of institutions. Rather, the emphasis is upon a selection of those whose vocation it was to educate ministerial candidates in these diverse contexts; and it will be noted that the scholars on whom I have concentrated: Ashworth, Oman, Norman Robinson, Nuttall, Manson, Gordon Robinson, Owen Evans and Eric Hull, between them represent what I continue to regard as the core disciplines where the theological education of the ministry is concerned: biblical studies, ecclesiastical history, philosophy, doctrine and systematic theology.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Parsons, R. G. “The Commemoration of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Estab-lishment of the Theological Faculty in the University of Manchester with Some Reference to Its Origins and History.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14 (1930) 53–58.
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Caleb Ashworth of Daventry
His Academy, Church, and Students
If the eternal destination of parents is to any degree conditional upon the adoption by their offspring of correct doctrinal views then Richard and Mrs. Ashworth had some of the most prominent bases covered; for their son Thomas became a Particular Baptist minister, John a General Baptist minister, and Caleb a Congregational or Independent minister. Richard himself is said by Alexander Gordon and W. N. Terry to have been a Particular Baptist lay preacher, and, no doubt, they are reliant upon Caleb Ashworth’s student, Samuel Palmer, who uses that phrase; but the relevant records refer to him as pastor and minister. He was born in 1667, and on a document of 11 February 1705 that records Robert Litchford’s donation of a building in Clough Fold to the Baptists, he is listed among the trustees as Richard Ashworth of Tunstead. He subsequently lived at Carr House, near Rawtenstall, Lancashire, about a mile and a half from Clough Fold in Rossendale. In ...
