ONE

CATHOLICITY AND CONSCIENCE: THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1837

AND THE FRAGMENTATION OF BRITISH-AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

Between 1837 and 1845 most of the leading denominations of North Atlantic Protestantism were rocked by a series of church splits. The Church of Scotland lost nearly half of its ministers to the Free Church Disruption of 1843, as 40% of the church departed in order to maintain the spiritual independence of the church against state interference.[1] In 1844 and 1845 the Methodist and Baptist churches in America divided north and south over the question of whether slavery was sinful. It might appear that these divisions were unrelated, but the American Presbyterian division of 1837 may cast some light on the tendency toward fragmentation that existed in nineteenth-century Protestantism, and indeed, in nineteenth-century culture. The 1830s and 1840s saw the first massive divisions in four of the seven largest British-American denominations. The exceptions were the Congregational churches (which had already split into Unitarian/Trinitarian camps by 1820), the Church of England and the American Episcopal church (both of which were divided internally by the Tractarian movement and the Gorham case but did not separate).[2]

For centuries the concept of the catholicity of the visible church had sufficient symbolic power to hold churches together in the face of significant disagreements. When heresy disrupted the unity of the church, this understanding of catholicity provided for the discipline of heretics, setting the boundaries of orthodoxy for the whole church.[3]

The Protestant Reformation did not reject the idea of catholicity. It simply claimed that the Pope was a usurper, who had arrogated to himself power that did not rightly belong to him. The Reformers insisted that each regional church should be allowed to establish its own creed, church order, and liturgy, maintaining fellowship among regional churches, without requiring organizational unity. The Reformed confessions, catechisms, church orders, and liturgies of the sixteenth century exhibit similar structures, patterns and doctrines.[4] When the Dutch church faced a crisis over the teaching of Jacob Arminius in the early seventeenth century, it called for all the other Reformed churches to send delegates to the Synod of Dordt. When the English Long Parliament sought to unite the British Isles, it called for an assembly of ministers (the Westminster Assembly, 1642-48) to unify the churches in doctrine, government, worship and discipline. The churches of Ireland, Scotland and England would remain separate in structure, but would have common standards.[5]

At least through the seventeenth century, the principle of catholicity remained theoretically intact. The ideal was to have one orthodox church in any given region. But cracks were growing in the practice of catholicity. The Lutherans and the Reformed were only partly in fellowship with each other–and in many places in Germany they co-existed in the same area. In England a group of Independents had split off from the Church of England, and while most Puritans remained within the Anglican Church, there was a growing divide between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. The claims of conscience had been relatively easy to press when the opponent was Rome–one could simply identify Rome as the Babylon of Revelation and call for all true believers to “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins!” But it became more difficult when the opponent was the Church of England–whose Thirty-Nine Articles were reformed, and whose liturgy was formally similar to those of the continental Reformed churches. But the Church of England had retained a few “Popish ceremonies,” and there were some in the Anglican church who plainly preferred certain Roman practices over those of the Reformed. While the vast majority of English Puritans were faithful Anglicans, desirous merely of reforming the church, not a few moved in a more radical direction. The Congregationalists and Independents emphasized the purity of the local congregation and rejected the concept of the regional church. Baptists went a step further and rejected infant baptism as a relic of Romanism. From there it was only another step to the Quakers who rejected ministers and sacraments entirely–or to the Seekers who felt that the church had been entirely destroyed and waited for God to send new apostles to reorganize the church.

It was in this context that the Westminster Assembly declared in chapter 25 of its Confession that “The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” In the fourth section they stated that “This catholic church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.” The phrase “particular churches” commonly referred to the national or regional churches such as the Church of Scotland, or the Church of Saxony.

1. The New “Catholicity”

It was in America that this older understanding of catholicity utterly disintegrated. While Europe was trying to maintain catholicity through established churches that “tolerated” dissent, Americans faced a new challenge. Most of the early settlers of the New World were in favor of church establishment–but only if they were the established church! New England Congregationalists quickly established the Congregational church in New England, while Anglicans were established in the South, and after the Dutch Reformed Church’s brief establishment in New Amsterdam, the Anglican Church also took over New York.

The one region where establishments did not take root in the colonial era were the middle colonies. Pennsylvania and New Jersey both had large Quaker populations (which rejected establishments altogether) while Maryland sought toleration for Roman Catholics, which under British rule meant toleration for all dissenters. It was particularly in Pennsylvania where America’s religious future was anticipated. In Pennsylvania all of the old established churches of Europe met: the German Reformed from the Church of the Palatine, Lutherans from the Church of Saxony, Presbyterians from the Church of Scotland, Anglicans from the Church of England, together with the dominant Quakers, a few Welsh Baptists and a scattering of Mennonites.

There was some talk of merger. The Dutch and German Reformed nearly merged with the Scottish Presbyterians. But the Lutherans and Anglicans were not interested in this. Radicals, such as the Baptists, Mennonites and Quakers, argued that denominational pluralism was good–and as time went on, the old established churches began to agree. Each denomination tended to attract “its own” people–the Presbyterians were overwhelmingly Scots-Irish, the Lutherans were German and Scandinavian, the Anglicans and Baptists were generally English (and Welsh). The old idea of catholicity–one church per region–had broken down.

But American Protestants were not willing to surrender the idea of catholicity.[6] When Roman Catholics accused them of being divided and divisive, Protestants replied that they were still united in doctrine and fellowship. After all, in the early Republic there was a general Reformed consensus in American Protestantism. The Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists–and even Methodists–were confessionally similar to the Presbyterians–the most significant differences were in polity.[7] Such newspapers as the True Catholic (edited by Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists in the 1840s) emphasized the consensus among evangelical Protestants against both the high church exclusivists (Roman and Anglo-Catholics) as well as the schismatics on the radical wing–both denying the catholicity of the church.

By the 1840s the alignment of American Protestants had changed. The Baptists were no longer on the fringe–they had come into the mainline, as the Disciples of Christ and a whole array of smaller radical groups had emerged (Mormons, Millerites, Swedenborgians, etc). The mainstream of American Protestantism attempted to maintain a sort of catholicity that was not organizational, but based upon a general harmony of doctrine and piety–especially piety.

The Old School vision of catholicity included a sense of common conscience (or confession) on the denominational level, insisting that each denomination should maintain high confessional standards, but allowed for liberty of conscience by recognizing other denominations as fellow churches with whom they maintained fellowship. Presbyterians sought to remain in fellowship with Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists (as well as the German and Dutch Reformed). Since their official standards of doctrine were generally harmonious–the Thirty Nine Articles for Methodists and Episcopalians, and various modified versions of the Westminster Confession for Congregationalists and most Baptists–Presbyterians sought to maintain fellowship with them.

But problems developed. Methodist preachers were famous for preaching anti-Calvinist sermons, and often accused Presbyterians of all sorts of awful teachings. Some of their most popular hymns were overtly anti-Calvinistic, mocking the doctrine of predestination.[8] How could Presbyterians maintain fellowship with a sister church that mocked them? Many Baptists refused to accept transfers from Presbyterian churches without rebaptizing people. How can two churches remain in fellowship without a common recognition of each other’s sacraments? Then the Anglo-Catholic movement hit the Episcopal church, and some Episcopalians (who had generally been closest to the Presbyterians in the early 19th century) started insisting that Presbyterian ministers were not validly ordained because they had not been ordained by a bishop.

2. The New “Conscience”

If the older understanding of catholicity maintained a tenuous existence in the early nineteenth century (experiencing gradual erosions from the middle of the seventeenth century), the concept of conscience had been undergoing a revolution of its own. “Conscience” referred to an understanding of the right of the individual to decide what he or she believes on any given subject. The nineteenth century saw conscience gradually become a more central symbol than catholicity in defining religion and morals, resulting in the inward and outward fragmentation of Anglo-American Protestantism.

The older understanding of catholicity did not deny the rights of conscience, so much as it gave a corporate context for the exercise of conscience. The Reformers affirmed the right of private judgment (insisting that human laws could not bind the conscience), but also insisted that human laws could indeed bind practice. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, following a traditional medieval distinction, both affirmed and limited the rights of conscience:

This new section, added in 1789, had the effect of altering the meaning of the Confession’s statement on the catholicity of the visible church (25.2-5), rendering the older concept of one church per region untenable. Prior to this revision, the magistrate was to suppress blasphemy and heresy, and to ensure that the worship of God was conducted in accordance with the Word of God (original Westminster Confession 23.3). But in 1789 American Presbyterians not only eliminated this section of the Confession, but also removed the clause in their Larger Catechism which condemned “tolerating a false religion” (question 109), thereby endorsing the principle of religious liberty.[13]

The changes in the wording of their confession paralleled developments in the discussion of conscience among moral philosophers. Samuel J. Cassells, principal of Chatham Academy in Georgia, explained that conscience was variously referred to as “the moral principle” or a faculty or power of the soul “by which it perceives the difference between right and wrong, approving the one and condemning the other.”[14] While objecting to the utilitarianism of Paley and Bentham, Cassells acknowledged that the conscience had become the driving force of modern moral philosophy. Most Old School Presbyterians still hoped to form the conscience according to a communal norm–as exemplified by their regular endorsement of the shorter catechism as a tool in training children.[15]

Conscience’s ability to trump catholicity can be seen in the Disruption of the Free Church, where the spiritual independence of the church was considered a principle too sacred to compromise,[16] as well as in the Baptist and Methodist schisms in the 1840s over slavery. While southerners eschewed the personal liberty laws of the north in the 1850s, Eugene Genovese has pointed out that they concurred with the “higher law” doctrine in principle–they admitted that if it was a matter of conscience, then the individual had no choice but to disobey the unacceptable law.[17]

While this distinction between catholicity and conscience is an explicitly theological one, the implications for politics and culture are significant. As had been the case for millennia, religious thought and political thought were intertwined. The shift from catholicity to conscience signaled a change in the symbolic world paralleled by the trends in political thought toward democratization, and in economics toward the individualism of the market. Indeed, while he does not refer to “catholicity” per se, Nathan Hatch’s whole argument in The Democratization of American Evangelicalism rests upon this movement from catholicity to conscience.[18] Further, the idea of catholicity easily transferred into political discourse, and not surprisingly many Americans found it easier to discuss the catholicity in nationalistic terms.[19]

3. Catholicity, Conscience, and the Division of 1837

Old School Presbyterians lived in this new symbolic world. But more than most other mainline denominations, they retained a significant attachment to the older concept of catholicity. In an increasingly fragmented religious world, they clung to the older ideal in the hope that they could stave off the disintegration of their own tradition. But ironically, their conscientious stand for catholicity entailed the division of their church.

The actions and statements of Old School Presbyterians in the division of 1837 need to be read in the context of the sweeping changes occurring in the symbolic world of antebellum America. What did it mean to be one denomination among others? As American culture was becoming increasingly democratized and populist, did that mean that the churches would invariably follow? Or did their theological tradition provide a middle way that they could steer between the Scylla of High Church Episcopalianism and the Charybdis of Baptist populism.[20]

A. Catholicity and the Plan of Union

In 1801, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America and the General Association of the State of Connecticut entered into a “Plan of Union” in order “to promote union and harmony in those new settlements which are composed of inhabitants from these bodies.”[21] Settlers from the Congregational church of Connecticut and the Presbyterian church would work together in planting churches, and not allow minor differences in polity to result in the establishment of two different denominations in the same region. Since both bodies agreed in doctrine–except in ecclesiology–the plan arranged for Congregational ministers to pastor Presbyterian churches, and vice versa. Indeed, the plan succeeded beyond the expectations of its framers when in 1808 the Congregational Middle Association accepted an invitation from the Presbyterian Synod of Albany to become a presbytery within its bounds. Throughout the state of New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio, Congregationalists flocked to the Presbyterian churches until by the 1820s there were hardly any separate Congregational churches left west of New England. At least within the British Reformed world, catholicity had triumphed.

Or had it? Part of the older doctrine of catholicity included the idea that even rules of human invention should be followed (though they could not bind the conscience). And if they could not be followed, they should be changed in an orderly fashion–or else the dissenter should quietly submit. Rumors began to spread that the “presbygational” churches of New York and eastern Ohio were violating terms of the Presbyterian constitution. Even worse, doctrinal innovations from Yale College, in New Haven, Connecticut, regarding the nature of the atonement, original sin, and human ability seemed to find echoes in those portions of the church that stemmed from the Plan of Union. To top it off, Charles Finney’s radical revivalism took these new doctrines and gave them a most unpleasant form in its “new measures” and perfectionist tendencies.[22]

Simultaneously, questions began to be raised regarding the voluntary associations established to promote joint missions and education between the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians (including some Dutch Reformed and Associate Reformed churches). The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810), the American Education Society (1815), and the American Home Missionary Society (1826) had all been formed as joint endeavors among Reformed Christians in order to conduct the work of missions and ministerial training in a co-operative fashion. Their supporters claimed that these organizations were simply “the church in her organized and social capacity,” and pointed to their immense success in spreading Presbyterianism throughout the West.[23] Catholicity was being defined as individual cooperation between Christians.[24]

But as New York and New England tended to support the “American” boards, the Presbyterian church also established agencies of the General Assembly in order to plant churches and oversee ministerial training. The General Assembly organized boards of Domestic Missions (1816–reorganized with greater powers in 1827) and Education (1819–likewise reorganized in 1829) in order to supervise missions and the education of ministers. Foreign missions, however, continued as a joint endeavor through the ABCFM, although the Synod of Pittsburgh (one of the strongest bastions of Scottish Presbyterianism in the United States) started the Western Foreign Missions Society in 1831, which quickly drew support from Old School synods in the south and west.

New School advocates claimed that the catholicity of the visible church was replaced by the Old School with a narrow sectarianism that focused on the institutional church. Indeed, this was the question: does the catholicity of the visible church simply mean unity among individual Christians in missionary and reform efforts across denominational boundaries (the New School vision)? Or does it mean cordial relations among denominations while each pursues its own missionary efforts in different regions (the Old School vision)?[25]

Of course, to ask the question in this fashion is to reveal the fact that the older concept of the catholicity of the visible church was already dead. It was impossible for antebellum Presbyterians to affirm the older vision of the church, because they no longer believed in that older idea that each region should have only one church. The idea of “catholicity” had been redefined: the New School grounded the concept of catholicity in the invisible church (harmony between individual Christians), while the Old School emphasized the visible church (harmony between denominations).

B. Orthodoxy and Catholicity

The Plan of Union was intended as a means of furthering orthodoxy. But as New England’s orthodoxy was called into question, the Plan of Union became increasingly problematic. The center of the controversy swirled around the question of human ability. Did fallen, sinful human beings have the natural ability to do what God commanded or not? Would God condemn human beings for failing to do something that they could not do apart from his grace? The “New Divinity” rising in New England suggested modifications to traditional Calvinist language to say that while human beings had the natural ability to obey God, they lacked the moral ability on account of sin. This raised subsequent discussions regarding original sin, immediate versus mediate imputation of sin and righteousness, and a host of related issues.[26] For orthodox Calvinists, the New Englanders sounded as though they were moving closer and closer to the dreaded heresy of Pelagianism.[27]

Concern regarding the orthodoxy of New England was voiced as early as 1798 when the Presbyterian General Assembly “reprimanded Hezekiah Balch” of Tennessee “for espousing the views of Samuel Hopkins.”[28] In 1817 the pastoral letter of the Synod of Philadelphia warned against the “heresy” of Hopkinsianism. The General Assembly, however, warned the Synod that such expressions were “offensive to other denominations” (especially Congregationalists), and might “introduce a spirit of jealousy and suspicion against ministers in good standing.”[29] Throughout the 1820s the concern over New England theology grew, and from 1829-1837, the Princeton Review remonstrated with its New England neighbors against their novel views.[30]

If the New Divinity had remained a New England and New York phenomenon, most Presbyterians would have left it alone. But when the New School majority at the 1831 General Assembly suggested bringing the Presbyterian Boards of Education and Missions under the interdenominational AES and AHMS, a number of Philadelphia ministers and elders wrote a circular letter to like-minded Presbyterians urging the claims of immediate action. The danger, in their minds, was that the institutions of the church would be “perverted from the intention of their orthodox founders,” and that the doctrines of the church’s confession would be overrun.[31] If the American Home Mission Society began sending out heretics, the Presbyterian Church could not stop them. The AHMS was providing a significant amount of funding for the Plan of Union synods in New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio–as well as those further down the Ohio River in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois. If New England trained and funded ministers took over the west, then what would become of the Presbyterian Church?

And to make matters worse, the Plan of Union synods were already making it clear that they had no intention of following Presbyterian church order. Hundreds of “presbygational churches” followed congregational practices while retaining their membership in the Presbyterian church. In such churches lay committees took over the functions of ruling elders, allowing men who had never agreed to Presbyterian doctrine and church order to govern Presbyterian churches. In 1833 the General Assembly admonished the Western Reserve Synod for declaring that ruling elders were not essential to the existence of the Presbyterian Church.[32]

One of the first projects of the Old School was to establish periodicals that would defend traditional orthodoxy against the tide of New England theology and practice.

Old School Periodicals

Founded Name Editor Seminary Birthplace

Weekly

1829 Pittsburgh Christian Herald Rev. Thomas D. Baird M Waddell 1812 Ireland

1831 The Standard (Cincinnati) Rev. John Burtt PTS 1823 Scotland

1831 Presbyterian (Philadelphia) Rev. William M. Engles Covenanter 1818 PA

1835 So. Christian Herald (Cheraw, SC) Rev. R. S. Gladney private 1830s SC

Monthly

1835 Baltimore Lit & Religious Magazine Rev. R. J. Breckinridge PTS 1832 KY

1835 Western Protestant (Bardstown, KY) Rev. Nathan L. Rice PTS 1832 KY

New School Periodicals

Weekly

Cincinnati Journal

Ohio Observer (Western Reserve)

New York Evangelist

1825 Philadelphian Rev. Ezra Styles Ely

Neutral Periodicals

Weekly

1822 Southern Religious Telegraph (VA) Rev. Amasa Converse PTS 1826

1823 New York Observer Sidney E. Morse

1827 Charleston Observer (SC) Rev. Benj. Gildersleeve PTS 1818 CT

1835 American Pbn (Nashville) Rev. John T. Edgar PTS 1816 DE

Quarterly

1829 Biblical Repertory & Princeton Review Rev. Charles Hodge PTS 1819 PA

The New School and the moderates originally controlled most of the Presbyterian press. The Cincinnati Journal, the Ohio Observer and the Philadelphian, were overtly New School, while the New York Observer and the Southern Religious Telegraph professed to be neutral, but had plain New School sympathies. The Princeton Review was notoriously moderate in its tone, as Joshua L. Wilson of Cincinnati said derisively of Samuel Miller and the Princeton professors: “They are broken reeds which will pierce the hand that rests on them for support.”[33] So in 1831 Old School papers were started in Cincinnati and Philadelphia with the urging of Joshua L. Wilson and Ashbel Green, respectively. The Southern Christian Herald followed in the South Carolina backcountry in 1835, due to perceptions that the New England-born Benjamin Gildersleeve was too moderate in his Charleston Observer.[34] These three papers were fiercely partisan in their Old School rhetoric. In contrast the American Presbyterian of Nashville, Tennessee was also started in 1835, but on a more irenic platform. Its editor, John T. Edgar, was firmly committed to Presbyterian orthodoxy, but hoped to accomplish Old School goals through more moderate means.[35]

Under its founding editor, John Burtt, the Presbyterian quickly established itself as the leading voice of the Old School. By March of 1832, it had started using the labels “Old School” and “New School” to describe the two groups in the church: “The Old School feel a cordial and firm attachment to the Confession of Faith and Catechisms of the Church, as exhibiting a correct and lucid view of the doctrines of the Scriptures,” and also defended Presbyterian government. “Whereas the New School think lightly, and sometimes speak lightly, of our Standards, and manifest a disposition to loose themselves from their obligation to teach and preach according to them.”[36]

For just over a year (from November 28, 1832 to January 2, 1834) the paper came under the editorial control of James W. Alexander, son of Archibald Alexander of Princeton Seminary. During his tenure the paper moved in a somewhat more moderate direction, publishing Samuel Miller’s “Letters to Presbyterians, on the Present Crisis in the Presbyterian Church in the United States,” in an attempt to use the history of the Presbyterian church as an argument for peace and union, not division.[37]

Upon Alexander’s departure, the Rev. William M. Engles embarked on his 33 year tenure as editor of the Old School’s flagship newspaper. Pronouncedly Old School in his views, he nonetheless rejected the division of the church as a goal. In reply to “A Layman of the New School” who suggested amicable division in 1835, Engles replied: “Our aim has been its reform, and return to the well established principles of Presbyterianism. If division should result, the fault will not rest with those, who have uniformly adhered to Presbyterian doctrine and government.” Recognizing that he might well end up in the minority, he concluded that “If we shall fail in our attempt, and as a reward be forcibly ejected, we trust we have so far counted the cost as to take ‘the spoiling of our goods joyfully,’ for Christ’s sake.”[38]

But Engles was confident that if the whole church could only hear what the radical New Schoolers were saying, they would rally behind the Old School banner. Therefore he often published the most extreme articles from the New School papers, such as a an article in the Ohio Observer, written by a New School Presbyterian from the Western Reserve Synod, which argued that the Presbyterian church should completely alter its confession. “The symbols of the Presbyterian Church have in effect been changed by the license which is now allowed in explaining their meaning. . . . .But would it not be better that the Church should alter and expunge, until they have formed a creed in which all the followers of the Lord Jesus can unite.” While disagreeing with that desire, Engles could not but endorse the next sentence–which made his point better than he could say it himself: “There is danger moreover that those who are in the habit of straining and torturing language for the sake of expressing different sentiments by the same formula, will do the same with the Bible, and make it a nose of wax to be moulded into any shape which will suit the interpreter.”[39]

But while the Old School sought to convince the moderates of the immediate dangers, they could not allow what they considered grave errors to continue unchecked. Since Old School Presbyterians were convinced that the New England doctrines departed significantly from the church’s Confession, they charged some of the New School leaders with heresy in the church courts. There was no attempt to go after every “heretic.” Instead Old School Presbyterians targeted the leaders. The idea was that those who were not influential were not seen as a threat. Here we see an assumption of the older idea of catholicity and conscience: if the church draws a clear boundary in the case of an influential heretic, those who may sympathize with his views will feel constrained to bring their practice into line with the common conscience of the church. They saw no need to prosecute every one with erroneous doctrine. The issue was the general direction of the church–isolated exceptions were not a problem so long as they did not stir up controversy. Hence the targets of heresy charges were invariably either professors or pastors who published their views.[40]

And even though the trials usually ended in acquittal, not all of the Old School was discouraged. The New School was being forced to think carefully about how it stated Christian doctrine. An article in R. J. Breckinridge’s Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine hoped that the 1836 General Assembly would sustain the Synod of Philadelphia in its condemnation of Barnes, but did not insist that Barnes himself be censured, so long as the truth was clearly vindicated. “If the Assembly clearly and firmly denounces error, let us not care too much for personal results. If Mr. Barnes is content to escape; there is no very great importance in preventing it. It may be on the whole, the best thing that could happen--that error should become rediculous [sic], instead of being seriously punished.”[41] Even after the Assembly cleared Barnes, Charles Hodge commented that the New School seemed more and more eager to prove their orthodoxy: “We think there is truth as well as humour in the remark attributed to good old Dr. Wilson of Cincinnati, that ‘if we have a few more prosecutions, the new-school men will become more orthodox than the strictest of us.’”[42]

Nonetheless, the failure of the General Assembly to convict New School men of heresy frustrated the leaders of the Old School. They read the doctrines coming out of New England, and knew that these doctrines were heresy, but it was difficult to find an unequivocal statement of those views in the Presbyterian Church–and when they thought that Barnes or Beecher had crossed the line, the alleged heretic quickly disavowed any heretical intention and nimbly hopped back into the orthodox camp. Meanwhile, the practical effects of those doctrinal positions were gaining ground. The AMHS was still sending hundreds of ministers into the Presbyterian synods in the west, and the mixed presbygationalism of western New York and eastern Ohio suggested that if the orthodox were not careful, the whole Presbyterian Church could be overwhelmed by the New School. So far, even when the New School had a majority, they had politely voted Old School men to fill vacancies in the General Assembly’s Boards–but if they took control of the Board of Domestic Missions, they could effectively make it an auxiliary to the AHMS. And what of the seminaries at Princeton and Allegheny? If New School men controlled the home missions and ministerial training of the church, then it was only a matter of time, they feared, before the historic Presbyterian tradition would be swept away.

The third agent of Old School reform consisted of a joint declaration circulated throughout the churches. In 1834 a group of Old School ministers and elders, led by Robert J. Breckinridge, drew up the Act and Testimony, a declaration of principle that called the Presbyterian Church to renounce the encroaching errors of the New School and return to historic Presbyterian doctrine and practice. The document was published by William M. Engles, the editor of the Presbyterian, in early 1835, with the signatures of 359 ministers and 1,704 ruling elders, and the imprimatur of the synods of Philadelphia, Mississippi & South Alabama, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Kentucky, along with the presbyteries of Newton (NJ), Madison (IN), Indianapolis (IN), Oxford (OH), Bedford (NY), Lancaster (OH), Miami (OH), Concord (NC), Richland (OH), and Kaskaskia (IL)–along with several presbyteries within the bounds of the aforementioned synods. Some have argued that southern support for the Old School was late in coming, and that it was only the issue of slavery that swung them into the Old School camp.[43] This support for the narrowly doctrinal “Act and Testimony” demonstrates that even by 1834–before the main slavery agitation of 1835-1836–the Old School had broad support throughout the South.

While Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were the main repositories of Old School strength, the synods of Cincinnati, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Mississippi & Southern Alabama all had between 23-31% of their ministers sign the “Act and Testimony.”[44] Nonetheless, while some southern synods quickly signed on to the “Act and Testimony,” indicating their support for the Old School’s doctrinal stance, others were reluctant to support radical measures which might divide the church.[45]

An even more important question for the Old School was not whether they could rely upon the South, but such borderline synods as New York, Albany, New Jersey, and Virginia. Princeton’s moderate position carried great weight in all these regions, since Virginia’s ear was turned to Archibald Alexander, and the northeastern synods were the largest financial supporters of Princeton. If they could convince Princeton and the upper South of the need for immediate action, the Old School could gain the necessary majority.[46]

The “Act and Testimony” insisted that since the General Assembly had refused to testify against the errors of the New School, the only remaining appeal was to Christ and to the ministers, elders and members of the church, in an attempt to convince the moderates to act. By adopting the “Act and Testimony” the signatories pledged themselves to “endeavour to exclude from her [the church’s] communion those who disturb her peace, corrupt her testimony, and subvert her established forms.”[47] This appeal from the Assembly to the whole church was an exercise in opposites: they were conscience-bound to try to exclude the New School, in order to further an Old School style of catholicity.

The authors of the “Act and Testimony” claimed that the New School sought to interpret “the doctrines of our standards in a sense different from the general sense of the Church for years past.” The Old School insisted that this was dishonest, and averred that “they who adopt our standards, are bound by candour and the simplest integrity, to hold them in their obvious, accepted sense.”[48] The Old School did not appeal to a supposed “original intent” of the Confession, but to the mind of the church–the “general sense of the Church for years past.” Many New England trained ministers seemed to be saying that they agreed with the Confession, but then taught things that to the Scottish-minded Old School sounded like a direct contradiction of what the church had understood the Confession to say.[49]

Breckinridge was concerned to accurately depict the New England errors (especially since the General Assembly of 1834 had refused to condemn the list of errors presented by the Rev. Samuel C. Jennings of the Presbytery of Ohio–pastor of the Sharon and Mt. Pisgah churches near Pittsburgh), so he went to Princeton to confer with Charles Hodge, professor of Oriental and Biblical Literature at Princeton Seminary, and one of the leaders of the moderate party. Breckinridge hoped to persuade Hodge to sign the Act and Testimony, or at least help draw up the doctrinal errors that the General Assembly should condemn. Hodge believed that the Act and Testimony was the wrong approach, but agreed to help rewrite the specifications of error in order to reduce the misrepresentation which he believed had hampered the Old School cause. The resulting specification of errors consisted of a simple statement of seven errors: