داع INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, Robert BY THE REV. R. WALLACE, PROFESSOR OF CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY. BEING THE FIRST OF THE SERIES OF INAUGURAL LECTURES IN THE THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, DELIVERED BY THE SEVERAL PROFESSORS AT THE OPENING OF THE COLLEGE, IN OCTOBER, 1840. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT; AND J. GREEN, NEWGATE STREET. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO THE COURSE ON CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY. THAT a course of preparatory study in the various branches of Theology is essential, to qualify the Christian divine for an efficient discharge of his duty, is every day becoming more apparent. We see proofs of this, in the efforts which our dissenting brethren of various denominations are making, for the establishment of academical institutions; and every such instance in other religious bodies supplies a motive for renewed exertions in our own. It is surely no time for apathy and indifference on a subject, which so nearly concerns our prosperity, if not our very existence, as a separate denomination of Christians, when we see those, who till recently professed to hold in little estimation, if not actually to despise a learned ministry, making such strenuous, and (in a pecuniary point of view) successful efforts, to obtain for their preachers the advantages of a regular academical education. This is one of those signs of the times, from which, if we neglect to take warning, we may expect soon to follow, instead of leading our dissenting brethren of other denominations, in the career of knowledge, and in the pursuit of whatever is sound, enlightened and liberal. We live in an age, in which no kind of knowledge remains stationary. New discoveries in philosophy are events of daily occurrence. New fields of investigation are constantly presenting themselves in every walk of literature. Nor does Theology form an exception to that universal law of progression, to which all other kinds of knowledge are subject. If these move, that cannot remain fixed. If the minds of men are allowed to make natural science the object of free and unlimited investigation, vain will be every attempt to arrest the progress of inquiry on the many deeply interesting subjects embraced by the study of Theology, and to circumscribe it within the narrow bounds to which it was confined in the age of the Reformation. The English Presbyterians, with whom Manchester New College originated, and by whom it has hitherto been chiefly, if not exclusively supported, have always ranked an enlightened theological education among the indispensable qualifications of the Christian ministry; and if their attempts to secure such an education for their ministers have not been at all times equally successful, this at least can with perfect truth be said of them,-that they have ever manifested a laudable desire for the general diffusion of knowledge, unrestricted by tests and subscriptions. After the ejection of the Bartholomew Divines, on the 24th of August, 1662, the Presbyterian section of the Nonconformists, deprived of the benefit of a university education, began to devise other means of training up a succession of young men for the pastoral office; and some of them were induced to open private seminaries, with a view to perpetuate the advantages of a learned ministry, as far as that object could be secured, under the altered circumstances in which they found themselves. These seminaries formed the basis of our Dissenting Academies; and the character for sound theological learning, which some of the more eminent nonconformist ministers of the last century acquired, may be traced chiefly to the instruction afforded them in these Among the non-subscribing ministers were some of the most accomplished scholars of the seventeenth century, who, by their labours as instructors of youth, did much to cherish a taste for theological literature. The arbitrary act, which deprived the Church of England of their services, opened to them new, and unexpected sources of usefulness; and the stores of erudition which they had acquired, while the two great national seats of learning were accessible to them, preeminently fitted them for the office of tutors, and enabled them to diffuse the benefits of a learned education among those, who were shut out, by their own conscientious scruples, from a participation in the advantages afforded by Oxford and Cambridge. In the seminary of the Rev. John Woodhouse, an ancestor of the late Rev. John Simpson, of Bath, the students, besides being carried through an extensive course of general, or profane literature, were instructed in Hebrew, and in the elements of Christian Theology; and were required to read, and be examined in Grotius's treatise, "De Veritate Christianæ Religionis," and other approved works on the Evidences of Christianity. The Rev. Philip Henry, from whom several English dissenting families of the Presbyterian denomination are justly proud to trace their descent, made it his more particular object to ground in a knowledge of the Bible young men, who had gone through the ordinary course of college instruction elsewhere; and professed to teach them no other learning than scriptural learning. Similar establishments sprang up in different parts of the kingdom; and among others who devoted themselves to the office of instructors of youth, mention is made by the Non-conformist Historians of the Rev. Henry Newcome, of Manchester, who "united with the character of the pastor, that of the teacher of academical literature;" and who was succeeded in these offices by the Rev. John Chorlton, a native of Salford. But I refrain from entering more at length upon the history |