James Henley Thornwell: Presbyterian defender of the old South

JAMES HENLEY THORNWELL

Presbyterian Defender of the Old South

BY THE

Rev. Paul Leslie Gabber, Ph. D.,

Pastor of the Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church,

Durlwm, North Carolina.

\

JAMES HENLEY THORNWELL

Presbyterian Defender of the Old South1

By the Rev. Paul Leslie Garber, Ph. Dv

Pastor of the Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church,

Durham, North Carolina.

I, Biographical

In the eighty years since his death no Southerner has con-
tributed as much to American Presbyterianism as did James Henley
Thornwell. His life spanned an inter-war period in American
history, 1812-1862. He was born December 9, 1812 on a planta-
tion in Marlborough District, South Carolina, the second of four
children. His father was an English-born plantation overseer and
manager, a man who provided well for his family. James' mother
was of Welsh Baptist stock. Her staunch Calvinistic faith during
the years of privation the family knew after the father's death,
December 30, 1820, together with the refined character of the
home James knew during the first eight years of his life, left in-
delible marks upon the later thought of the first-born son.

James' first formal education was begun in an "old field"
school under a respected classical scholar, Peter Mclntyre. Shar-
ing Mclntyre's interest in young Thornwell's intellectual precocity
were two wealthy residents of the neighborhood, General James
Gillespie, an elderly planter, and William H. Robbins, a promising
young lawyer of Cheraw, who together financed his further educa-
tion. For a time Robbins himself was Thornwell's tutor. Later

1The introductory portion of a thesis, "The Religious Thought of James
Henley Thornwell," submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences of Duke University, Durham, N. C, 1939.

the boy was enrolled in a private academy in Cheraw to complete
his college preparation.

In January, 1830, Thornwell became a member of the junior
class at South Carolina College (now the University of South
Carolina). His studies there were classical in nature. Most of
his courses were in Greek and Roman literature and the rudiments
of philosophy. He acquired the reputation of being the college's
outstanding student debater. It was with first honors in his class
that he graduated in December, 1831.

Thornwell remained at the college for a while after graduation
in a financially unprofitable experiment with tutoring. He wanted
to continue his studies in the classics, but for financial reasons he
was forced to accept appointment as principal of the Cheraw
academy, where he remained for two years, 1832-1834. In this
period Thornwell made confession of his faith and united with the
Presbyterian church.

The materials available are adequate for only a partial account
of Thornwell's adolescent religious development. At thirteen years
of age he is reported to have defended his mother's Calvinism
against a kinsman's Methodist Arminianism. When he was seven-
teen he stated that the way for him "to glorify God" was by fol-
lowing the profession of a theologian. His fellow-students at the
college thought his talents pointed to the practice of law, to which
profession his benefactors, Gillespie and Robbins, had also urged
him. But Thornwell's aim at that time was to be a man of letters.
His decision to enter the ministry evidently was made simul-
taneously with his affiliation with the Presbyterian church, for on
December 2, 1833, the Presbytery of Harmony received Thornwell
as a candidate for the ministry. Just how Thornwell's attention
was drawn to the Westminister Confession of Faith may not be
definitely known, but there is little doubt that he was led to the
Presbyterian Church and to its ministry by his personal study of
this body's doctrinal standard. The following summer he went
to Andover, Massachusetts, to begin his seminary education. After
a brief stay he removed to Harvard, where for six weeks he studied

[ 2 1

privately in Divinity Hall. Ill-health forced him to return to South
Carolina.

Thornwell had planned to enter the senior class in the theo-
logical seminary at Columbia. But, as there was a current scarcity
of ministers, within a month after his return to South Carolina
Thornwell was licensed by his Presbytery and, in the spring of
1835, was ordained and installed as pastor of the newly organized
church at Lancaster. He served this parish for almost three years,
during which time he began to take his place in the courts of the
Church.

In December, 1835, Thornwell married the sister of his college
classmate, James H. Witherspoon, Nancy White Witherspoon.
She was a grandniece of John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister
and president of the College of New Jersey, the only clergyman
to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Thornwell left Lancaster to begin his duties as a professor at
South Carolina College in January, 1838. He was to serve his
alma mater for the next eighteen years save for two short pastoral
intervals. He was professor of rhetoric and belles lettres for two
years. From 1841 to 1851 he was chaplain and Professor of Sacred
Literature and Evidences of Christianity. In 1852 he was made
president of the college, which position he held until 1856. From
1856 to his death in 1862 Thornwell was Professor of Systematic
Theology at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Columbia.

Two of his colleagues on the faculty at the college later acquired
national reputations. Francis Lieber, the political scientist, was
on familiar terms with Thornwell until 1855, when, Lieber charged,
Thornwell's religious bigotry defeated his election to the college's
presidency. Joseph LeConte, one of South Carolina's famous men
of science, recorded in his autobiography that Thornwell was one
whose society at Columbia had stimulated his intellectual activity.

The scope of Thornwell's accomplishments within the brief
fifty years of his life is remarkably significant. Certain of his boy-
hood aspirations were fulfilled in startling fashion. He confessed
that from his earliest self-reflection the ambition to be a man of
learning had worked like a passion within him. At a dinner party
in New York in 1856 Professor George Bancroft of Harvard pre-

[ 3 ]

sented Thornwell a fine copy of Aristotle's works on the fly-leaf
of which he had inscribed in Latin, "A testimonial of regard to the
Rev. J. H. Thornwell, the most learned of the learned." In college
days Thornwell's hope was that he should be a man of letters who
should not die unsung like a beast in the field. He left the world
of scholarly research four large volumes of his writings, another
of his letters and other printed articles and several manuscripts.2
His ambition to be a theologian, conceived at the age of seventeen,
defined itself in 1834 at Harvard: "I wish to establish a literary
character in my native state: for I have an eye on a Professorship
in the Theological Seminary at Columbia." When he died it was
to his influence more than to the influence of any other one man
that this institution owed its national reputation.

II. Channels of Thornwell's Influence

Thornwell's religious thought was most popularly known
tthrough his preaching. On his journeys to various points in the
United States as a commissioner to General Assemblies, and on re-
peated trips through the South and Southwest, he preached to large
congregations. Yet he was not a preacher for the masses. His
language was too academic and his arguments were too closely knit
in Aristotelian logic for them. Not that his preaching was cold
and unemotional. As he wrestled with problems, and as he ex-
pounded his convictions of truth and error, his enthusiasm mounted.
Once when he was preaching in Charleston on the Last Judgment,
it is recorded, "the whole congregation appeared terror-stricken
and unconsciously seized the backs of the pews." A young man
present on the occasion testified that "he was never so frightened
in all his life."3

2J. B. Adger and J. L. Girardeau, eds. The Collected Writings of J. H.
Thornwell, D. D., LL. D. (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publi-
cation, 1871-1873), 4 vols.; B. M. Palmer, The Life and Letters of J. H.
Thornwell, D. D., LL. D. (Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1875).
Most of the extant mss. are to be found in the Historical Foundation, Mon-
treal N. C, and in the University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill,
N. C.

3Thomas H. Law in the Centennial Addresses (Spartanburg, S. C. :
Band- White, 1913), p. 16.

[ 4 ]

Dr. Addison Alexander, professor at Princeton Seminary, said
of one of Thornwell's General Assembly sermons that it was "as
fine a specimen of Demosthenian eloquence as he had ever heard
from the pulpit, and that it realized his idea of what preaching
should be." John C. Calhoun in 1843 campared Thornwell to his
teacher at Yale, Timothy Dwight, and commented on Thornwell's
thorough acquaintance with topics generally familiar only to states-
men. After having heard Thornwell at South Carolina College
in 1847, Daniel Webster is reported to have exclaimed: "Greatest
pulpit orator I have ever heard." As a preacher Thornwell was
to the South of his day what Charles Hodge or Albert W. Barnes
was to Presbyterians of the North.

Through his active participation in the official life of the Presby-
terian Church during a critical period of its history, Thornwell's
religious thought had a wider influence than has often been credited
to him. He attended Synod first in 1836, a time when the break
between the Old School and New School parties was beginning
to manifest itself as irrepressible. He attended General Assembly
for the first time in 1837, when that schism was consummated.
By the time of his next Assembly, 1845, his reputation had been
made by his writings. From that year he was named a commis-
sioner to almost half the Assemblies held during his lifetime. In
1847 he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly, the
youngest man before or since to hold that high office. He was
thirty-four years old. In all of the Assemblies he attended after
1845 he was a prominent figure, being named to important com-
mittees and commissions and being invited several times to preach
before that national body. All of the Southern Presbyterians and
many of the Northern members of that Church probably would
have agreed with Henry Ward Beecher's comment : "By common
fame, Dr. Thornwell was the most brilliant minister in the Old
School Presbyterian Church, and the most brilliant debater in the
General Assembly. This reputation he early gained and never
lost. Whenever he was present in the Assembly, he was always
the first person pointed out to a stranger."4

4First printed in The Independent. Quoted in Jos. M. Wilson, ed., The
Presbyterian Almanac for 1863, pp. 211-212.

[ 5 ]

Although he confessed to Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, his
intimate friend, an aversion to writing, Thornwell left posterity
sufficient evidence that the influence of his religious thinking
through the printed page was considerable. His early magazine
articles appeared in religious publications edited by Breckinridge.
In 1846 he joined B. M. Palmer and John B. Adger in establish-
ing The Southern Presbyterian Review. The prospectus for the
quarterly indicated that it was to be partly literary and partly
theological in character. Its purposes were to expound and defend
the doctrines and polity of the Presbyterian Church, to devote no
small amount of its pages to controversies with Roman Catholic
and Protestant heresies and to propound the principles of a sound
moral philosophy. During the fifteen years between the establish-
ment of this quarterly and his death, Thornwell supplied it with
twenty-five major articles. He was, according to a later editor
of the magazine, "Its main pillar ; . . . he . . . did more to give
it reputation than any other regular contributor, or, possibly, than
all other contributors combined." Certain of his articles were
sharply polemic in tone — against Romanism, against "novelties"
in Presbyterian polity, against heretical theologies and against
infidel philosophies. Many of these were in the form of book re-
views. Others concerned current topics of debate in church circles.
Some of the later ones had important political implications. Some
were sermons. Excerpts from some of these articles were reprinted
by a number of the religious weekly newspapers then circulated
throughout the South.

The Southern Quarterly Reviezv was established in 1842 under
the editorship of William Gilmore Simms. During the 1850's,
through Simms' friendship with the Virginia Tory, Beverley
Tucker, the journal acquired a political reputation. In 1856, when
financially the magazine was ready to collapse, Thornwell assumed
its editorship. He issued three numbers, April and August, 1856,
and February, 1857, before, through lack of patronage, the publi-
cation came to its undeserved end. In those three issues Thornwell
had five articles, — a review-essay on American higher education,
an essay in memory of his professor of philosophy, Robert Henry,
an essay on Plato's philosophy, a review-essay on miracles and a
series of brief reviews.

[ 6 ]

During his lifetime Thornwell published certain of his critical
articles and sermons in book form. The one on the validity of the
Apocrypha, 1844, was his part of a series of heated articles ex-
changed with a Roman Catholic priest of Charleston on that sub-
ject. The other, Discourses on Truth, 1855, was a series of sermon-
essays which he delivered as chaplain of South Carolina College.

It was one of Thornwell's youthful dreams to do something
concerning what he considered the deplorable state of Southern
literature. In 1836 his Synod named him on a committee to in-
vestigate the possibilities of establishing a Southern theological
review. In his writings noted above he did his share toward ful-
filling these dreams and thereby also widened measurably the circle
of influence for his own thought.

Not much is known concerning Thornwell's activities in secular
politics. Nevertheless the influence of some social aspects of his
religious thought in this regard is worthy of note.

There are three institutions in whose traditions Thornwell's
thought was implanted. The University of South Carolina honors
the name of Thornwell with a scholarship and a dormitory. Colum-
bia Theological Seminary prides itself in the fact that Thornwell's
theology and polity remain its tradition and its teaching. In what-
ever manner the Southern Presbyterian Church may have departed
from the ideals he defined for it in its establishment in 1861, that
denomination remains to an extent the lengthened shadow of James
Henley Thornwell as the Scottish church is of John Knox.

III. Thornwell the Philosopher

England and Europe in the 19th century produced extensive
philosophical literature in which the typical concepts and principles
of earlier periods were carefully reconsidered. This is equally
true of 19th century philosophy in America. Philosophical thought
here during this period followed two lines. The one was Emer-
sonian transcendentalism. By and large this sort of thinking as a
system of philosophy influenced only a select few of the New Eng-
land aristocracy. The other line of development was a continua-
tion of Scottish common sense realism, which remained, at least
until about the opening of the 20th century, the basis of our

[ 7 ]

academic philosophy! It was not until near the close of the 19th
/ jbentury that any (Jerman philosophy was systematically presented
in American college class-rooms. Before the late 1800's the name
of Kant was rarely heard.

The American interpretation of Scottish common sense realism

became widely accepted after the Civil War through the influence

'of James McCosh at Princeton and Noah Porter at Yale. Just

low much influence this type of thought had prior to this time,

^holarly research has yet to discover. It is known, however, that

is influence upon American thought was considerable. John

ritherspoon, who in 1768 came from Scotland to be President of

the College of New Jersey, (now Princeton University), and his

;essor, Samuel Stanhope Smith, firmly implanted the tenets

Scottish realism as that institution's traditional and almost
official philosophical doctrine. Levi Hedge, appointed by Harvard
in 1810 as America's first full-time professor of philosophy, taught
metaphysics and logic along lines indicated by Scottish realism.
Francis Wayland, President and Professor of Moral and Intel-
lectual Philosophy at Brown University from 1827 to 1855, fol-
* lowed Butler, Reid and Stewart in metaphysics, epistemology,
psychology and ethics. In 1855 Wayland published the first edition
of his Moral Science. This work passed through many revisions
and editions. By 1868, 137,000 copies had been sold. The South
gave it a warm reception.5

H. G. Townsend, in Philosophical Ideas in the United States,
makes no mention of philosophical developments in the South.
Nevertheless these developments are significant, particularly in
relation to the influence of Scottish realism. The philosophical
background of the Scotch-Irish immigrants who made their way
down the Atlantic seaboard to settle was as important a contribu-
tion to the indigenous culture of this area as other elements in
their heritage. The College of New Jersey, with its philosophical
tradition of Scottish realism, was patronized by Southerners in
such numbers that until the 1850's the institution was considered
by North and South alike as Southern in its sympathies. Graduates

t

5Wm. E. Drake, "Higher Education in North Carolina before 1860,"
University of North Carolina Ph. D. thesis. Mss. Typescript collection,
U. of N. C. Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

// ; . (

of Princeton' were responsible for leadership in, and in many cases

were responsible for leadership in, and in many cases
^ for the actual founding of, institutions of higher education in the
South. The intellectual dominance of the Presbyterian denomi-
nation on the Atlantic seaboard up to the middle of the 19th century
made prevalent the theology of Scottish Calvinism and with it the
philosophy of Scottish realism.

"The men of the South have been men of action and seldon
philosophers," wrote a prominent historian of the South, U. B
Phillips, in 1904.6 More recent research is tending to modify this
judgment. The early movement in this country for state-supported
colleges and universities was fostered chiefly in the South. The
higher type of Northern journalism received substantial patronage
from the South. The general level of education may have been
lower and information may have been less widely disseminated
in the South than it was in the North, but the Old South did have
its philosophical interests among "the chosen few." One of the
intellectual interests it shared with the North was that of main-
taining the academic philosophical traditions of this country, —
Scottish realism.

Thornwell's first knowledge of Scottish realism did not come
through the American interpretation which, as had been indicated,
was prevalent in the North during his student days. His access
to Scottish realism was more direct than that. Thornwell in-
herited a fondness for both things and ideas British. He spoke
with hearty approval of "the sturdy common sense of Englishmen."
Before he was twelve years of age he had read Locke's Essay Con-
cerning Human Understanding. Soon afterward he discovered
Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
in the library of his benefactor. The reading of this work, he later
confessed, first gave him an inclination to philosophy. Before he
entered college, Thornwell had memorized long passages from
Stewart, Jonathan Edwards and John Owen. During his col-
lege years, he read Berkeley, Hume, Swift, Brown and Shaftes-
bury, as well as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in the original lan-
guages. Shortly after graduation from college he projected a

r

6U. B. Phillips, "Conservation and Progress in the Cotton Belt," South
Atlantic Quarterly, vol. iii, no. 1 (January, 1904), p. 2.

[ 9 ]

critical review of Sir James Mackintosh's View of the Progress of
Ethical Philosophy.

The philosophical tradition of South Carolina College was set
by its first president, the Rev. Jonathan Maxcy, D. D., a New
England Baptist minister. He had been for ten years President
of Brown University, his alma mater, and for two years President
of Union College, Schenectady, New York, before coming to South
Carolina. President Maxcy had a reputation as a scholar of meta-
physics. Little is known of his philosophical position other than
what can be inferred from the fact that he had had his training
in a center of New England Scottish realism and from the fact
that he had established a tradition in South Carolina College for
that type of philosophical thought.

That tradition was modified markedly by Maxcy's successor,
the colorful Thomas Cooper, M. D. Cooper was an Englishman,
an Oxford-trained industrial chemist. Interested in social ex-
periments, Cooper visited Paris for a first-hand observation of
the French Revolution in 1792. Here he was greeted by Robes-
pierre and other Jacobins. It has been conjectured that Cooper
was a member of this party. In England he was related both by
friendship and marital ties to Joseph Priestley, a Deist and a dis-
ciple of Bentham in ethical thought.

Cooper came to America with Priestley. Locating in Pennsyl-
vania, he took up a political career, during the course of which he
served two prison terms : one for slander of John Adams, Presi-
dent of the United States, and a second for conduct in office un-
becoming a judge. After this he was Professor of Chemistry at
Carlisle (later Dickinson) College and at the University of Penn-
sylvania. The University of New York conferred upon him the
honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine. Thomas Jefferson wrote :
"Cooper is acknowledged by every enlightened man who knows
him, to be the greatest man in America, in the powers of mind,
and in acquired information and that, without a single exception."
In 1817 Jefferson had Cooper elected to the chair of chemistry in
the newly organized University of Virginia, but Presbyterians of
that state, under the persistent leadership of Dr. John Holt Rice,
succeeded in preventing Cooper's installation at Charlottesville on
grounds of his religious unorthodoxy and intolerance.

[ 10 ]

^-7

It was at this point in his career, when he was sixty years of
age, that Cooper was brought to South Carolina College. — ^ithin
a year he was made president. Shortly thereafter thfe liberality/of
his religious views became apparent. A member in goc4-s&mding
in the Episcopal church at Columbia, he was commonly considered
to hold Socinian or Unitarian views. Later he was interpre
a Deist.

The criterion for religion, Cooper publicly stated, should be
"laid down by Christ himself, 'By their fruits shall ye know them.' "
In ethical theory he tended toward the utilitarianism of Jeremy
Bentham. He could find no excuse for metaphysics. In psy-
chology Cooper, proposing a roughly formulated materialism based
upon the premise that the brain-mass was adequate to account
all mental activities, concluded that the hypothesis of an immaterial
soul was unnecessary. He was not altogether friendly to the in-
stitution of slavery. His political theories, which he publicized
widely, have led to his being termed "the father of nullification in
South Carolina." His intellectual abilities and attainments were
impressive; his nature, benevolent. So frank and simple was he
in his manners that, despite all those elements within his thought
which tended to make him unpopular in South Carolina in the
1820's, the State maintained him as president of its college.

Thornwell admitted that these same qualities led to personal
admiration for him. Early in Thornwell's college career a friend
in writing to him referred to Cooper as "your idol." By 1831, how-
ever, Thornwell was so firmly convinced of the errors in Cooper's
views that, when a resolution to support Cooper against the charges
brought against him publicly was presented to the senior class,
Thornwell led the movement to defeat it. There is some ground
for considering Thornwell's acceptance of a teaching position at
the college in 1838, after he had been ordained as a Presbyterian
minister, as his effort to counteract the Cooper religious and philo-
sophical influence at South Carolina College.

The apprehension with which Thornwell as a student came to
view Cooper's philosophy may have led to his appreciation of
Robert Henry. At any rate, Thornwell claimed that conversations^^
with this man constituted the main benefit he enjoyed in college.
Later he stated: "To him more than tojany other man ... we

[ 11 ]

•'

_

are indebted for the direction of our own studies, and for what-
soever culture our mind has received."

Robert Henry, Charlestonian by birth, was educated in Eng-
land. He received a Master of Arts degree from the University
of Edinburgh in 1814. His studies in philosophy were pursued
under the direction of Thomas Brown. Sir William Hamilton
was his fellow-student. After a year of European travel and
another of preaching in a Charleston French Calvinist church,
Henry was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at
South Carolina College. That was in 1818. Until 1854, when
he retired, with but one brief interruption he remained a professor
at the college. The influence of this man and of his type of
philosophy upon the traditions of the institution was obviously
large.

With the exception of politics, in which field they were agreed,
Cooper and Henry differed widely. Thornwell claimed that on
every point in ethics, philosophy and religion they were poles
apart. Henry devoted no little attention to metaphysics. In that
subject he followed Thomas Brown. He criticized points made
both by Reid and by Hamilton. Henry had great admiration for
Berkeley. He said, Thornwell reported, that if given the alterna-
tive he would find it easier to maintain the non-existence of matter
than the non-existence of mind. Although well versed in the
German language, Henry knew little of German philosophy. He
thought little of Kant and less of Kant's disciples.

Henry taught courses in the evidences of Christianity. These,
Thornwell wrote, were not without their effect in saving the faith
of men who were tempted by the heresy of Cooper. He also taught
the history of philosophy. He was the first professor in the college
to give logic a preeminent place in the curriculum. Thornwell
gave Henry the credit, thus, for establishing a tradition in logical
thinking for which South Carolinians were to become nationally
famed.

In ethics Henry evolved a system of his own, one in which
duties were regarded as arising out of the social nature of man
and of God. Moral truth is discoverable by rational processes.
Conscience is simply an emotional sanction for moral convictions.
He also gave courses in political philosophy. Thornwell accorded

Mm the distinction of being the first to introduce thisx subject intc
American collegiate instruction. Henry's background in this field
was his study at Edinburgh of Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart.

It was, then, under the training of a man who had pursued
studies with the great masters of Scottish realism that Thornwell
formulated his own philosophical point of view. In the light of
this background it is not particularly startling that he should have
adopted the position of Scottish realism. Thornwell wrote of
James McCosh's The Method of Divine Government: "We regard
it as one of the first productions of the age." In 1890 Noah Porter
wrote : Thornwell "published many able and important discussions
on Philosophical Theology and Ethics." His disciple, colleague
and successor at the theological seminary in Columbia, John L.
Girardeau, wrote to B. M. Palmer, Thornwell's biographer, "You
are correct ... in assigning him, in the main, to the Scotch
School of Philosophy."

Judging from the foot-note references to philosophical books
in Thornwell's Collected Writings, he possessed a large number
of major works in this field. Among the classical writers repre-
sented are : Aquinas, Aristotle, Bacon, Plato and Cicero. Thorn-
well referred to two German histories of philosophy, Brucker and
Schwegler. He read Kant both in translation and in the original.

Thornwell's writings reveal little knowledge of American
authors in philosophical subjects. He did refer to works by Jasper
Adams, President of Charleston College, William Ellery Channing,
Jonathan Edwards and James McCosh. He referred to three or
four works by his contemporary, the French philosopher, Victor
Cousin.

In the main, however, Thornwell's philosophical taste ran to
English and Scotch thought. He possessed many volumes of both
the Bampton and the Boyle Lectures. The names which appear
most frequently in the four volumes of Thornwell's Collected
Writings are: Berkeley, Butler (whose Analogy was termed a
masterly treatise), Sir William Hamilton, Hume, Locke, John
Stuart Mill, J. D. Morell, William Paley, Dugald Stewart, Jeremy
Taylor, William Whewell and Richard Whately.

[ 13 ]

IV. Thornwell the Theologian

Nineteenth century American Calvinistic theology may be
viewed as having developed along two lines. One of these began
with Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). By his acceptance of a
Berkeleyan-like idealism, Edwards modified the strict Calvinism
of New England Puritanism. Further qualifications were offered
by Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), Timothy Dwight (1752-1817),
Nathaniel W. Taylor (1786-1858) and Charles G. Finney (1792-
1875). This type of modified Calvinism was characteristic of Con-
gregationalism and of more liberal Presbyterianism and during the
19th century was referred to as the New England or New School
theology.

Calvinism as the original English Presbyterian-Puritans re-
ceived it, claiming to have been more directly derived from the
doctrines of Augustine and Calvin, was distinguished as Old
School. Its characteristic emphases were placed upon the
sovereignty of God and upon the guilt of inherited depravity.
Charles (1797-1878) and A. A. Hodge (1823-1886) at Princeton
Seminary and Robert J. Breckinridge (1800-1871) at Danville,
Kentucky, Seminary, with Thornwell, were among the strongest
advocates of Old School theology.

In 1801 a part of the Congregational Church and the Presby-
terian Church consolidated forces under a Plan of Union with a
view to the evangelization of the West. The followers of Princeton
and the Old School theology became increasingly apprehensive
of the Plan of Union. They were convinced that this association
was injecting theological error into the Presbyterian Church. On
the common grounds of theological apprehension and a conserva-
tive attitude toward slavery, the Old School combined forces North
and South. By 1837 the Old School was sufficiently strong in
the Assembly to demand and receive action whereby it was hoped
New England opinion and influences would be largely removed
from the Presbyterian Church. The following year the New
School Presbyterian Church formed a separate organization.

There was a certain amount of New School influence in the
South during this controversy. In general, however, this section
was conservative in its theology, as it was in its social thought.

t 14 ]

By 1836 the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, patron of the
seminary, had become definitely Old School. Thornwell indicated
in a letter to his wife written during his first meeting with that
Synod in 1836 that the Old School party had determined to push
action toward exscinding New Schoolism and that he would sup-
port the movement. In a similar letter, written in 1837 from the
meeting of General Assembly after the excluding action had been
taken, Thornwell expressed his conviction that the New School
members were never constitutionally and regularly a part of the
Church. The exscinding act he considered simply a legal state-
ment of that fact.

As far as the South is concerned, the popularity of the con-
servative Old School theology may be viewed as a part of a larger
movement of thought. The first four decades of the 19th century
brought the beginnings of widespread criticism by Southerners
of Jeffersonian liberalism in all fields of thought. The liberalizing
modifications of Calvinism offered by the New School theology
were unacceptable to most Southern Presbyterians. Some would
have made Jonathan Edwards the infallible test of orthodoxy.
Others were critical even of Edwards' Calvinistic variations. The
latter increasingly returned to the touchstone of Calvin's works as
interpreted by the early English Puritan thinkers and the conti-
nental reformed theologians of the Calvinistic sort. James H.
Thornwell was the leader of the latter group. Such was his in-
fluence that as late as 1916 a representative of Columbia Seminary
wrote : "The theology of Thornwell and Girardeau must always
be the type for which this institution stands."7

In the footnotes of the four volumes of Thornwell's Collected
Writings there are references to over 300 different books of a
strictly theological nature. His library in this field must have been
unusually extensive. One hundred and twenty-five of the titles
cited may be considered of minor importance. A survey of the
remaining titles is rather revealing in disclosing the sources of
Thornwell's theology.

There are six titles in Biblical literature, Jahn, Delitzsch and

7George A. Blackburn, ed., The Life Work of John L. Girardeau (Co-
lumbia, S. C: The State Co. 1916), p. 139.

[ 15 ]

Leusden on the criticism of Old Testament language and literature,
a Greek lexicon, Suicerus, and two New Testament commentaries,
one in English by Lightfoot, the other in German by Eichhorn.

Thornwell's collection of writings of the Early Church fathers
was extensive. The more familiar names are represented. There
are also works by the lesser known figures such as Dionysius,
Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Rufinus and the
Jewish scholar, Maimonides (from whom Thornwell derived his
"contingency" argument for the existence of God) . Of the medieval
and modern Roman Catholic theologians, Thornwell had Thomas
Aquinas' Summa Theologica, eight works by Bellarmine (1542-
1621), and Pascal's Provincial Letters. Concerning the Reforma-
tion and its theology, Thornwell had access to D'Aubigne's and
Wallington's histories, Melanchthon's Opera Omnia, as well as
to Calvin's Institutes (his text-book in teaching systematic the-
ology), Commentaries and Tracts.

It is significant that Thornwell made reference to a large number
of writings by both English and Dutch Puritan thinkers : Stephen
Charnock, Chillingworth, Cocceius, whose work in part led to the
popularity of the Federal Calvinistic theology, De Moor, Richard
Hooker, John Howe, Knapp (a Kantian Calvinist), John Owen,
the most rigid of all Puritan thinkers, Franciscus Turretin (In-
stitutio Theologian Elcnctica>, a Calvinistic work used as a text at
Princeton Seminary into the 20th century), and Van Mastricht.

Thornwell's collection of theological works by Englishmen who
were his contemporaries was likewise large. These included six
sets of Bampton Lectures. Henry L. Mansel's Limits of Religious
Thought, on which Thornwell drew for a part of his epistemology,
was among them. Aside from these, there were writings by Becker-
stetch, Bishop Bull, Thomas Chalmers, Principal William Cun-
ningham, South, R. C. Trench, Warburton, and Wardlaw.

The works which Thornwell employed in reference to the Eng-
lish Puritan movement consisted mainly of four volumes by John
Milton. Thornwell prized Paradise Lost, from which he memo-
rized long passages which he frequently used in the pulpit.

Apart from Kant's philosophical works, Thornwell seemed to
have possessed nothing in the original from the German theologians

[ 16 ]

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7

of the/ early 19th century. He mentioned several of them, such
as Schleiermacher and Strauss. He had the works of the more
evangelical German writers* Nitzsch and Max Muller. Develop-
ment of the Tubingen school of theology had not yet delivered its
full impact on American thought. Certain implications which
this school was to follow out later, Thornwell anticipated. Col-
lecting these implications of Hegelian and Kantian philosophies
under the term rationalism, Thornwell fought it desperately. He
considered it the most dangerous single form of infidelity.

In his writings Thornwell ignored American theological thought
almost entirely. Apart from William Ellery Channing's Works,
he seemed to have known nothing directly of New England liberal
religious thought. He mentioned only four American thinkers
aside from Channing. One of these was R. J. Breckinridge, his
personal friend. Another was Charles Hodge, who openly debated
, with Thornwell at several General Assemblies from 1844 to 1861.
A third was Jonathan Edwards. The fourth was Samuel J. Baird,
Q whose The First Adam and the Second the New School considered
x. hopelessly conservative. Thornwell viewed it as permeated with
J ^*^ a dangerous type of error. During the early part of his life Thorn-
well read closely the religious journals published by Breckinridge.
Later he followed Hodge's Princeton Review. Apart from these,
however, although he was an editor of a religious quarterly, Thorn-
well seems to have ignored the extensive religious periodical litera-
ture published in the North during his lifetime.

An interesting part of his theological library was a set of nine
catechisms, confessions of faith and reports of Church Councils,
Catholic and Protestant, ancient, medieval and modern. In dis-
cussing the history of theological thought or that of church polity,
he was accustomed to refer to them.

What has been stated concerning the adequacy of Thornwell's

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.

aptitude and equipment as a philosophical thinker may be applied
with equal appropriateness to his ability as a theologian. Some-
thing of the extent of his available source materials has been noted.
The indication is that he drew heavily upon Anglican and Scottish
Calvinism as well as upon Calvin's own works as sources for his
theology.

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By the time he had entered into his active ministry Thornwell
had adopted the Old School position in theology. He later referred
to the action of General Assembly in 1837 as God delivering the
Church from a long, dark and mournful bondage to Pelagian prin-
ciples. A paper which he wrote for the Synod of South Carolina
? and Georgia in 1838 was adopted by that body as its confessed

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6

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theological standard. Throughout the eighteen years of Thorn-
well's chaplaincy and professorship at South Carolina College his
thinking was primarily theological in character. In 1856, in his
inaugural address as Professor of Systematic Theology at Columbia
■Seminary, he referred to Calvinism as his heritage from a noble
mother. He also spoke of his entrance into the teaching of theology
as that event toward which Providence had guided him from his
earliest religious life, through his fondness for philosophy, his
college teaching and his ministerial career.

An historian of the Presbyterian Churches in America has
ranked Thornwell as the third most influential systematic theo-
logian in 19th century Presbyterianism. After Thornwell's death,
one of his students wrote that he held no theological views which
were not the common possessions of the Old School Church.
Thornwell's theology is clearly not distinctive in its doctrines. The
presentation of its contents, however, as another has written, is
Thornwell's unique contribution to theology. By making the doc-
trine of justification central, he fused into a unity dogma and duty,
theology and Christian ethics.8

Because of its tendency to speak in pious terms while under-
mining the foundations of Christianity, ThomWelFviewed the type
of theology presented bv Schleiermacher pXhe new infidelity.
"Rationalism," he prophesied, would become particularly dangerous
in America. Its peculiar form of viciousness w"as a rejection of
an objective revelation ~of^ God in Scriptures and ,an acceptance in
its pWp~"nf-7fi| rrjari-mndp pantheistic philosophy. The issue be-
tween the rationalists and Christians, he perceived, hinged on the
question of thje inspiration of the Scriptures apd the authority of
the Bible. /

8R. E. Thompson, History of the Presbyterian Churches (New York:
Scribner's, 1907), p. 145. Thornton Whaling in the Centennial Addresses,
p. 25.

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\ktrj^^J^A^4^

In 1850 Thornwell wrote a friend that this issue would prove
the ground of some desperate battles. By 1853 he was writing
that there should be a thoroughgoing exposure of transcendental
philosophy and that he was becoming chary of all opinions which
conflict with the individuality of God. This constitutes a basis for
the claim that Thornwell's Discourses on Truth, 1855, was in-
tended by its author to be a refutation of rationalism. Sir Wil-
liam Hamilton, in a note acknowledging the gift of a copy of this
work, commended it for its philosophical acuteness. It is more
likely, however, that Thornwell had in mind the series of articles
he wrote in The Southern Presbyterian Reviezv from 1849 to 1856.
The articles seem to form a review of J. D. Morell's The
Philosophy of Religion. But, as they stand in the third volume
of Thornwell's Collected Writings, they constitute an indictment
of theological rationalism. The arguments employed are, in gen-
eral, of the sort that later Calvinism has felt must be used against
Ritschlianism. The acuteness of Thornwell's logic as applied to
theological subjects is apparent no more clearly in any of his writ-
ings than in these pages.

Protestant thinkers in 19th century America, like Thornwell,
were unable to view without a strong emotional reaction the rapid
growth of the Roman Catholic Church. The 1840's found the
validity of the Roman Church a heatedly debated question in the
Presbyterian Church. Anti-Catholicism became a national political
issue when it was written into the platform of the American party.
The group had some power in the 1850's, when it was popularly
known as the "Know-Nothing" party.

Apart from certain restricted areas, the Catholic Church was
never large in the Old South. Yet from 1839 to the Civil War
the prophetic zeal for righteousness which, in the North, was ex-
pended upon American slavery received expression in the South
by repeated and vitriolic attacks upon Catholicism. The bitterness
of spirit is reflected in a letter dated January 15. 1853, written by
A. T. McGill to his wife from Columbia Seminary where he had
just gone as professor : "The attempt to fire the Seminary edifice,
about which I wrote, was made by Roman Catholics. It is said by
some, that their exasperation was excited by my arrival and con-

[ 19 ]

nection — it having been well known throughout the U. S. that T
4 lectured against them at Pittsburgh in attacking O'Conner; . . .
X Others, with more correctness, say, that it was owing to the conduct
of some students of the Seminary, on Christmas — who repeatedly
laughed during their service; and behaved with so much impro-
priety, that the Priest publicly rebuked them."9

Apart from the general spirit in the section in which he lived,
there are three considerations which may have contributed to
Thornwell's opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. Politically
he was inclined to view with no little favor the general attitudes
of the "Know-Nothing" party. His close friendship with R. J.
Breckinridge brought him into intimate contact with one of this
- country's more virile opponents of Catholicism. In 1841, at
Breckinridge's invitation, Thornwell wrote an article for publica-
tion attacking the validity of the Apocrypha. This led to a long
series of bitterly worded open letters between Thornwell and Dr.
A. P. Lynch of Charleston. Thornwell put his articles into book
form in 1844. It was by this work that he first received national
recognition as a writer. In 1845 the question of the validity of
Catholic baptism was raised before the General Assembly. In the
debate which ensued Thornwell had a prominent part. The As-
V^ sembly's decision to deny the validity of such baptism brought
forth a protest from Hodge's Princeton Reviezv. The articles
> which were exchanged between Thornwell and Hodge during the
following years have been included in the fonner's Collected Writ-
ings. Through these various polemical activities, Thornwell was
. led into original research of the source materials. This study con-
vinced him, on theological and socio-political grounds, that "Roman-
ism," as he called it, in all its aspects, represented the perfect
archetype of the Anti-Christ.

V. Thornwell the Social Thinker

The developments in social life in his time could not but have

vhad their effect upon Thornwell. The period was marked by

sharply contrasting political views both in this country and in

8Mss. Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society Library, Philadelphia,
Pa. Italics in the original.

[ 20 ]

Europe. France lost its republican form of government under
Napoleon's sway. Italy became unified and released from the
Pope's temporal control. Prussia bristled with militarism and
was engaged in certain social experiments which were viewed with
alarm in this country. Austria was in the process of modernization.
Spain, having exiled her monarch, was forced to decide between
a republic and a constitutional monarchy. In Asia, the doors of
both China and Japan were opened for intercourse with the
Western world powers. In India and elsewhere, Great Britain
had begun to assume "the white man's burden." The era of im-
perialism had come of age.

Marked differences of opinion were also noted in the social
thought of the United States during the period of 1830-1862. The
differences concerning secession and slavery were the most ap-
parent. But there were others. Legal prohibition of the liquor
trade was one of the issues. This movement was begun as early
as 1817. In 1846 the Maine legislature enacted the first statewide
prohibition law. The question of universal suffrage, bi-sexual as
well as bi-racial, was another popular topic of earnest discussion.
Socialism as a system was prominently advocated by men like
Horace Greeley. The New England transcendentalists pursued
their "Brook Farm" experiment in social organization.

Meanwhile a great wall of public opinion was being erected
between the North and the South. The South had its unique
Negro problem. This involved a labor system which barred from
the Southern states those new immigrants who were entering the
North in great numbers throughout the 19th century. The North's
reception of the immigrants had two effects. In the North it gave
rise to dreams of an exploitive industrialism. The Southern
counterpart was an ideal of Greek democracy. As the South
watched these increases in Northern population, Southerners
became ever more conscious of themselves as a numerical minority
within the nation.

?

\// This consciousness impelled two great movements of political

and social thought within the section. The first was the insistence
upon the doctrine of states' rights. This development began in
South Carolina in the late 1820's. It became a part of secession

)

theory both in the 1850's and again in the 1860's. The second
was the rejection of Jeffersonian equalitarianism. This was ap-
parent by 1823, when the Reverend Richard Furman of South
Carolina wrote that the Bible's Golden Rule implied a social strati-
fication and was applicable only within the same social class. The
same views were voiced in the 1850's by Dr. W. A. Smith of
Hampden-Sidney College in Virginia. . Elaborate social theories
confidently stating that an aristocracy was the only society in which
stability could be procured appeared in print as early as 1854.10

These differences in political and social theories made for strong
sectional loyalties both in the South and in the North. Each sec-
tion lived more and more to itself. The mutual intercourse in
culture and thought which might have paralleled the advantage of
economic trade was made impossible.

Thornwell made more of an effort to understand and appreciate
the North than did other Southerners of his time. Nevertheless
he confessed a great love for the South. His loyalty to South
Carolina was almost a passion with him. This is reflected in much
of his social thought.

He viewed with interest and with no little concern the conflicts
in social theory both here and abroad. The issue as he conceived
it centered in the question of the relation of man to society, of
states to the individual and of the individual to the states. He was
interested in the conflict, for out of it he thought the truth would
emerge. He was concerned with it, for he felt the contestants
could be grouped under two classes, Christians and Atheists. The
progress of humanity was at stake. Yet he prophesied that the
principles underlying Southern slavery would be vindicated. Des-
potism of masses, as he called communism, socialism and equali-
tarian democracy alike, would be defeated. The supremacy of a
single will, as under a monarch or a dictatorship, would also be
defeated. Representative republican government he thought, must
be victorious.

During the period of 1830-1860 the most acute thinkers in the
South were actively defending slavery as a system. Thornwell

10Geo. Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, 1854.
Treatise of Sociology, 1S54,

-' JZ£± i "" w

was one of these. His contemporaries spoke of his thought as
representative. They indicated their evaluation of his influence
by his popular title of "the Calhoun of the Church."11 It has been
speculated that had he employed his influence against slavery, the
Civil War might have been averted. Thornwell's social and politi-
cal thought has a noteworthy historical significance and a continu-
ing influence. Dr. L. C. LaMotte, in Colored Light, 1937, wrote
that the Church today is facing much the same sort of social ques-
tions it did during Thornwell's day and that the principles stated
by him should indicate the Church's present aim and plan of action.

On one occasion Thornwell seems to have impressed Calhoun
with his learning in social and political matters. Thornwell's
extant writings do not make it easy to establish the scope or nature
of his studies along these lines. He referred to works in political
philosophy by Brougham and by William Paley. His own social
thought reflects something of the emphases set forth by Adam
Smith and Adam Ferguson. At one point in his writings, how-
ever, Thornwell expressed open contempt for some of these
thinkers' lesser works. The one source-book in social and politi-
cal theory which he heartily recommended was Francis Lieber's
Political Ethics.

Like others of his strenuous times, Thornwell was not as
scholarly in his social thinking as he was in other lines. Never-
theless he obviously attempted to make his social and political
thought strictly consistent with his ethical and religious theories.
It is this fact which makes the inclusion of this aspect of his think-
ing pertinent to any consideration of his religious thought.

VI. Thornwell the Presbyterian Defender

Controversy was one of the characteristics of 19th century
American religious thought. It was a time of sharp conflicts be-
tween Protestants and Catholics and between the various Pro-
testant denominations. Bitter contentions were prominent features
in the crude revival meetings. In a more refined way controversy
was a dominant element in the religious journalism of the day.

1XL. G. Vander Velde, The Presbvterian Church and the Federal Union,
1860-1869 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1932), p. 30.

/vo^> s^ta^c w*^c

There is no one aspect of Thornwell's religious thought more
characteristic of him than a fondness for debate. Early in his
ministry he enunciated the principle that a part of the Christian's
duty was to resist with firmness every effort to corrupt the purity
of the Church in doctrine and in discipline. In one of his last
writings he affirmed that the genius of Presbyterianism was that
it allowed for the discovery of truth by discussion without placing
moral opprobrium upon persons who sincerely differ in their opin-
ions. Throughout his life he proclaimed and practised the belief
that discussion was God's appointed means for discovering error
and removing it and for discovering truth and establishing it. Evi-
dence alone, he insisted, should be the measure of assent.

Apart from his lectures in theology, most of Thornwell's writ-
ings are controversial. In no department of his thinking did he
claim to be comprehensive. He stated as his aim in philosophy
to say what is not rather than what is truth. The same may be
said for much of his thought in other directions also. In philosophy
he attacked the "rationalists" and the utilitarians. In theology he
sought to counteract the theological implications of German ideal-
ism, Roman Catholicism, Pelagianism, Arminianism and Socinian-
ism. In church polity he attempted to defend the two-kingdom
theory of Church and State of the 16th century Puritans. In
social philosophy he attacked the social contract theory of Hobbes,
the racial pluralism of certain Southern social thinkers and the
abolitionism of the North.

To state with some of Thornwell's warmest admirers that his
religious thought has dominated the attitudes of Southern Presby-
terians for the past hundred years may be too facile a generaliza-
tion. Nevertheless to all who care to examine the records it will
be clear that to him as to no other single thinker many Presby-
terians of the South have gone back to get their philosophical,
theological, social and political moorings. In that sense, there-
fore, it can be said that the religious thought of James Henley
Thornwell has been normative during the past century for the
theological and social development of a significant branch of Ameri-
can Presbyterianism.

/

Reprinted from

Union Seminary Review

Richmond, Virginia

February, 1943