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The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740) Father of Nonsubscription in Ireland and Defender of Religious Liberty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Richard B. Barlow
Richard B. Barlow
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

The British theological world was stirred at the beginning of the eighteenth century by what the learned and staunchly orthodox Presbyterian historian James Seaton Reid has called “latitudinarian notions on the inferiority of dogmatic belief and the nature of religious liberty.” In the 1690s John Locke had published his Reasonableness of Christianity and Letters on Toleration, followed by John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. In 1710 “Honest Will” Whitson, Sir Isaac Newton's successor as Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from the University for embracing Arian views. His departure was accompanied by rumors—long since substantiated—about his great predecessor's heterodox theology. Traditional theologians were shocked next by the appearance of Dr. Samuel Clark's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity which resulted in the author's arraignment before Convocation of the Church of England in 1714. The very same year John Simson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, was first tried before the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for teaching Arian and Pelagian errors. In 1729, after three more trials, Simson was suspended from his professorship for denying the numerical oneness of the Trinity. Fierce doctrinal contentions also began to occupy English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, erupting during the famous Salters’ Hall meeting early in 1719.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 78 , Issue 3-4 , October 1985 , pp. 399 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1985

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References

1 Reid, James Seaton, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (Belfast, 1867) 3. 111.Google Scholar

2 Simson had been a fellow student of John Abernethy and of James Kirkpatrick at Glasgow College, and throughout his life he maintained a correspondence with these founding members of the Belfast Society on matters of doctrine. See Coutts, James, A History of the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1909) 210–36Google Scholar, for an account of these heresy trials. Since Simson delivered all his lectures in Latin, it was difficult for lay elders to pass judgment on the finer points of his theology.

3 See Thomas, Roger, “The Non-Subscription Controversy amongst Dissenters in 1719: The Salters’ Hall Debate,” JEH 4 (1953) 162–86.Google Scholar

4 Abernethy's interest in medicine and reputed aptitude for healing was vindicated in the career of his famous grandson. His first wife Susannah Jordan, who died in 1712, left him with two daughters and a son who vanished into historical oblivion. Shortly after he moved to Dublin in 1730, Abernethy married the daughter of John Boid of Rathmore near Antrim. It was the son of this marriage, John Abernethy III, a prosperous London merchant, who fathered John Abernethy IV (1764–1831) the famous surgeon, anatomist, and physiologist, founder of St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, and Fellow of the Royal Society.

5 George Campbell at Edinburgh and James Woodrow at Glasgow, between them, had a virtual monopoly on theological instruction at the university level in Scotland during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. See Bower, A., The History of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1817) IGoogle Scholar; and Reid, H. M. B., The Divinity Professors in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1923).Google Scholar Little is known about the actual content of Campbell's teaching during the decade of his professorship (1691–1701) because he published nothing.

6 Minutes of the Route Presbytery, 1701–1706, 7–28, now in the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland (hereafter PHSI), Fisherwick Place, Belfast. See William Campbell, Adversaria (Armagh, 1778; William Campbell MSS, PHSI) for an indication of the rigorous educational standards expected of eighteenth-century Presbyterian ministers.

7 History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 112.

8 James Duchal, “Preface” to John Abernethy, M.A., Sermons on Various Subjects (London, 1748) xxxvii.

9 Ibid., xxxiv.

10 “The People's Choice, the Lord's anointed: A Thanksgiving Sermon” (Belfast, 1716) 2–3.

11 “A Sermon Recommending the Study of Scripture-Prophesie” (Belfast, 1716) 11–12.

12 Duchal, Preface, xli.

13 Ibid., xliii-xliv.

14 Benjamin Hoadly, Sermons (London, 1754) 1. 285.

15 Duchal, Preface, xlvi. Leading members of the Belfast Society were: Dr. James Kirkpatrick and Mr. Samuel Haliday both of Belfast, Mr. Michael Bruce of Hollywood, Mr. Thomas Nevin of Downpatrick, Mr. John Mears of Newtown, Mr. Harper of Moira, Mr. John Henderson of Duane, Mr. Theodore Shaw of Abghill, Mr. William Taylor of Carncastle, Mr. Josias Clugston of Larne, and Mr. Thomas Wilson of Ballyclare.

16 The sermon was published in Belfast in 1720 and reprinted in Scarce and Valuable Tracts and Sermons occasionally Published by the late Reverend and Learned John Abernethy, M.A. (London, 1751) 217–53. See 252–53.

17 Ibid., 234.

18 Ibid., 246–47.

19 John Malcome, Personal Persuasion no Foundation for Religious Obedience: Friendly reflections on a Sermon by John Abernethy (Belfast, 1720) 1. See also Malcome's The Dangerous Principles revealed by our Modern New Lights (Belfast, 1726).

20 Records of the General Synod of Ulster (Belfast, 1897) 2. 31.Google Scholar

21 See William McMillan's excellent two-volume unpublished M.A. thesis: “The Subscription Controversy in Irish Presbyterianism from the Plantation of Ulster to the Present Day with Reference to Political Implications in the Late Eighteenth Century,” (John Rylands Library, Manchester University, 1959) 1. 86ff. As Mr. McMillan remarks: “In the Mecca of Calvinism itself—Geneva—subscription to human tests of Faith was abolished in 1706 by a decree of the Grand Council of State.”

22 Samuel Haliday, Reasons against the Imposing of Subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, or any such Human Tests of Orthodoxy, together with the Answers to the Arguments for such Impositions (Belfast, 1724) v.

23 Records of the General Synod, 32–36.

24 Seasonable Advice to the Protestant Dissenters in the North of Ireland, reprinted in Scarce and Valuable Tracts, 160.

25 Ibid., 207.

26 Thomas Nevin, A Letter to the Reverend William Smith (Belfast, 1724).

27 See The Trial of Thomas Nevin, M. A. (Belfast, 1725) for Nevin's own account of the proceedings against him and his response. It must be remembered that heterodoxy in Christian doctrine was still regarded as a threat to the established order of society and that denial of the Trinity remained a civil offence until the nineteenth century.

28 See Charles Mastertown, An Apology for the Northern Presbyterians in Ireland … requiring Subscription to the Westminster Confession … in answer to the Seasonable Advice (Glasgow, 1723).

29 John Abernethy, A Defence of the Seasonable Advice (Belfast, 1724) 143, 160.

30 Records of the General Synod of Ulster 30ff.; Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church, 200. The anonymous Narrative of the Seven Synods (Belfast, 1726) contains a detailed account of all these proceedings from the nonsubscribers' point of view.

31 Records of the General Synod of Ulster, 105. See also William Campbell MS, Sketches of the History of Presbyterians in Ireland (Campbell MS; PHSI; written between 1784 and 1803). Campbell interviewed “some old men” who attended the Synod of 1726, and reported on their recollections (216–18).

32 A Letter to Mr. John Malcome (Belfast, 1726) 14.

33 Witherow, Thomas, Historical and Literary Memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland, 1623–1731 (London and Belfast, 1879) 197.Google Scholar

34 See Beckett, J. C., Protestant Dissent in Ireland, 1687–1780 (London: Faber & Faber, 1948) 91.Google Scholar

35 See Manning, B. L., The Protestant Dissenting Deputies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952).Google Scholar Abernethy's two pamphlets were: The Nature and Consequences of the Test Considered (Dublin, 1731), and Reasons for the Repeal of the Sacramental Test (Dublin, 1731), both of which were reprinted in London in the year of their original appearance.

36 Abernethy, Reasons for Repeal, 4.

37 Ibid., 11, 19.

38 Ibid., 21.

39 Ibid., 32.

40 Ibid., 61–62.

41 Jonathan Swift, The Advantages Proposed by Repealing the Sacramental Test Impartially Considered (Dublin, 1732) 1–2.

42 Ibid., 4.

43 Ibid., 12.

44 The Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1796) 4. 70.

45 Ibid., 87. For a detailed account of the inner workings of Irish politics, which prevented even a Parliamentary debate on repeal of test legislation for Protestant Dissenters, despite the British government's support of the measure, see Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, “Letter to the Duke of Newcastle, Dublin, December 18, 1733,” and “Letter to the Bishop of London, Dublin, December 20, 1733” in Hugh Boulter, Letters (Oxford, 1770) 2. 108–14.

46 See Barlow, R. B., Citizenship and Conscience: A Study in the Theory and Practice of Religious Toleration in England during the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962)Google Scholar for a detailed account of the five English repeal campaigns in 1736, 1739, 1787, 1789, and 1790.

47 Abernethy, Sermons on Various Subjects, 1. 73–75.

48 See “Draft of a Deed for a Fund for the support of Non-subscribing Ministers,” (Northern Ireland Public Record Office) T. 831.

49 Abernethy, Scarce and Valuable Tracts, 276–77.

50 John Abernethy, Discourses concerning the Being and Natural Perfections of God (2 vols.; London, 1740) 2. 369–70. Abernethy's Discourses went through two other London editions in 1743 and 1757, three Dublin editions in 1742, 1743, and 1746, and a fourth edition published at Aberdeen in 1776.

51 John Abernethy, Sermons on Various Subjects (4 vols.; London, 1748–52).

52 Ibid., 4. 193.

53 Ibid., 197–99.

54 McMillan, The Subscription Controversy, 1. 272.

55 A. W. Godfrey Brown, “Irish Presbyterian Theology in the Early Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Queen's University, Belfast, 1977) 306. See also Godfrey Brown's perceptive article: “A Theological Interpretation of the First Subscription Controversy (1719–1728)” in Hairie, J. L. M. ed., Challenge and Conflict: Essays in Irish Presbyterian History and Doctrine (Antrim: W. G. Baird, 1981) 28–43.Google Scholar

56 Abernethy, “Of Natural, Moral and Civil Liberty,” in Sermons on Various Subjects, 1. 54.