Look at
Andover Seminary to-day. The Andover Creed was arranged for the express
purpose of keeping fixed and unchangeable the belief of the Church..
Its founders declared that to be their purpose. They were going to
establish the statement of belief, so that it should not be open to
this modern criticism, which had resulted in the birth of Unitarianism
in New England; and, in order to make perfectly certain of it, they
said that the professors who came there to teach the creed must not
only be sound when they were settled, but they must be re-examined
every five years. This was to prevent their changing their minds during
the five years and remaining on there, teaching some false doctrine
while the overseers and managers were not aware of it. So every five
years the professors and teachers of Andover have to reaffirm solemnly
their belief in the old creed.
It is not for me to make charges against them; but it is for me to make
the statement that so suspicious have the overseers and managers come
to be of some of the professors in the seminary that they have been
tried more than once for heresy; and everybody knows that the leading
professors there to-day do not believe the creed in the sense in which
it was framed.
And, to illustrate how this is looked upon by some of the students, let
me tell you this. My brother was a graduate of Andover; and not long
ago he said to me that when the time came around for the professors to
reaffirm their allegiance to the creed, one of the other students came
into his room one day, and said, "Savage, let's go up and see the
professors perjure themselves.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77