Vanguard Presbytery as a denomination is decidedly and unashamedly New Side and Old School in our views. Every officer in Vanguard Presbytery is required to affirm their agreement with the New Side Presbyterians of the 18thcentury and and Old School Presbyterians of the 19th century. denomination. The Old School—New School division of the 19th century and is not the focus of this article. Our focus is on the Old Side—New Side division of the 18th century which primarily centered on the support for or opposition to the Great Awakening. The opponents of the Great awakening were called Old Side ministers. The supporters of the Great Awakening were called New Side ministers. Those distinguishing terms were not restricted to Presbyterians, but encompassed Anglicans like George Whitefield; Congregationalists like Jonathan Edwards; and, Presbyterians like Gilbert Tennent, Samuel Davies, Samuel Blair and many others. Vanguard Presbytery was started to be a self-consciously New Side Presbyterian denomination. The times have certainly changed since the 18th century, but the issues are still relevant. There is always a sense in which the historic issues that were behind the earlier controversies never really go away and that is certainly true with respect to the Old Side-New Side division of our spiritual forefathers.
One of the mistakes that people can make with respect to the New Side position, though, is limiting it to just the issue of support or opposition to the revival known as the Great Awakening. There were other differences that are just as important for us today. I suppose that there remains a great deal of misunderstanding about the Old Side—New Side division among conservative Presbyterians today. For instance, I know of ministers in various Presbyterian and/or Reformed denominations who claim to be Old Side—Old School. I know of conservative Presbyterian seminaries that would take the same position. They think that the Old Side—Old School positions are both in support of the doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith. With all due respect to those ministers, elders, and seminaries who believe such, they could not be more wrong. Their error is that they have made a judgment based on a superficial understanding of the Adopting Act of 1729 which was proposed by John Thompson, an Old Side minister. Their assumption, then, is that it was the Old Side ministers who were staunch supporters of the orthodox theology of the Westminster Standards. Au contraire. In addition to the differences over the Great Awakening, there were four other great differences between the Old Side Presbyterians and the New Side Presbyterians.
First of all, the Old Side and New Side Presbyterians differed on the matter of subscription to the Westminster Standards. Now the Adopting Act of 1729 required “agreement in and approbation of” of the Westminster Standards “in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine.” If a minister had scruples about any particular article, he needed to submit the matter to his presbytery which would then decide if his scruples involved “essential and necessary articles of faith.” In actuality, the Adopting Act of 1729 was a compromise article. The Scotch-Irish ministers in the Presbyterian Church wanted the denomination to adopt full subscription as the requirement for all officers. The New England ministers, most of whom were English by background, were against the denomination requiring any subscription at all. The reality is that the New Side ministers were in favor of full subscription and that is why they—and not the Old Side ministers—were the ones who wrote pamphlets and preached sermons on the great doctrines of salvation. Beginning in 1724, New Castle Presbytery had required all her ministerial candidates to affirm the following statement: “I do own the Westminster Confession of Faith as the Confession of my faith.” That was a statement without exceptions. That was the position of the New Side ministers. The Adopting Act of 1729 watered that requirement down to allowing “scruples” that would then be judged by each presbytery to either be within or outside the “essential and necessary articles of faith.” Perhaps, some modern Presbyterians have become confused on this matter because of Gilbert Tennent’s objections to the Adopting Act. A more modern example might help to explain Tennent’s objections and the objections of others. In 2002, the PCA General Assembly adopted “good faith subscription.” Who were the staunch supporters of Reformed orthodoxy and the Westminster Standards in the PCA? Was it those who voted in favor of “good faith subscription” or those who voted against it? It is now clear that the upholders of the Westminster Standards were those who voted against “good faith subscription.” Well, the New Side ministers faced the same kind of issue in their day and, thus, they opposed the Adopting Act of 1729 because they wanted a full subscription without compromise. The Adopting Act of 1729 opened the door for exceptions with no common definition of what constituted the “essentials of the faith.” It was the New Side Presbyterians—not the Old Side Presbyterians—who upheld full subscription and were the spiritual forebears of the Old School theology of the 1800’s.
Second of all, the Old Side ministers believed Presbyterian church government was hierarchical in nature. An infallible Pope was replaced by supposedly infallible church courts in the Presbyterian system of government. There was a controversy that arose over ministerial education when graduates from William Tennent, Sr.’s Log College began to be ordained by New Brunswick Presbytery. The Synod of Philadelphia took the position that Yale, Harvard, or one of the institutions of Great Britain were the only colleges where ministers could be trained and then be received into the ministry by any presbytery without approval from the Synod. By the Act of the examination of Candidates, the Synod took away the power of the presbytery and gave the higher court the power to rule over the lower court. The Log College graduates were New Side Presbyterians. The promoters of the Act of the Examination of Candidates were Old Side Presbyterians. The position of the Old Side Presbyterians was that church courts have the power to do anything that is not specifically forbidden by the Scripture. The New Side Presbyterians took the position that the power of church courts was limited to those powers expressly commanded by the Scriptures. The Old Side position promoted hierarchy. The New Side position opposed hierarchy.
Third of all, the Old Side Presbyterians held to the commonly proclaimed view that “a converted minister is best, but an unconverted minister can still do a lot of good.” The New Side Presbyterians all agreed with Gilbert Tennent’s well-known Nottingham sermon, “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry.” Tennent’s words were strong, but certainly no stronger than the scathing condemnation of the Pharisees and scribes by the meek and mild Jesus of Nazareth. What Jesus said, was also said by Moses; by the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah; by the Apostle Paul; by Peter, Jude, and John; by Jesus, once again, in the Sermon on the Mount; and, by the great ministers of the Christian church such as John Calvin, Martin Luther, the Puritans, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and countless others. Tennent’s basic view of the dangers of an unconverted ministry are a major sub-theme of the Scripture. Before Tennent can be criticized for what he preached, the great body of evangelical ministers and Apostles, and even Jesus Himself must be criticized also. The New Side Presbyterians believed in the importance of converted ministers and vital religion among the clergy. Once again, Vanguard Presbytery believes that the New Side Presbyterian position is the right one.
Fourth of all, the Old Side Presbyterians spoke against the experiential religion promoted by the New Side Presbyterians. As I have reviewed the numerous criticisms of the converts of the Great Awakening by the Old Side ministers, there is a striking similarity to the criticisms of the Reformers and their converts by the Roman Catholic Church. The Old Side ministers complained that the converts of the Great Awakening were from the immoral and lower classes of society. That was also a complaint the Pharisees made against Jesus’ ministry. The Old Side ministers also criticized the New Side ministers as being poorly trained at the Log College. That was another common criticism of the Catholics against the Protestant ministers. Read, for instance, Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto’s letter to Geneva during the period Calvin was exiled from that city and then read some of the pamphlets written by the Old Side ministers against the New Side ministers. Sadoleto wrote that Calvin and Farel were “crafty men, enemies of Christian unity and peace” and had “filled all places with strife and sedition.” That sounds like the things that the Pharisees said about Jesus. Next, the Old Side ministers condemned the converts of the Great Awakening because of their great assurance of salvation. Likewise, Cardinal Bellarmine wrote that the greatest of the Protestant heresies was the assurance of salvation. Some of the Old Light ministers even accused the New Side ministers of being antinomian because they were preaching justification by faith alone—and not the works salvation that was too common among the Old Side ministers. Once again, that was the very same complaint that the Catholic Church, especially in the Council of Trent, brought against the Reformers.
I have written the following words before, but the fact is that I have never met any person who could point to a single sermon, pamphlet, or book written by any of the Old Side ministers as being the model for what Reformed orthodoxy should be. In fact, I do not know anyone who can refer to any Old Side minister as a champion of the faith. The Old Side ministers are assumed to have been the guardians of reformed orthodoxy simply because John Thompson put forth the Adopting Act of 1729. Yet, as I have shown above the Adopting Act was no more a guardian of orthodoxy than is the “good faith subscription” of the Presbyterian Church in America.
When Vanguard claims to hold to New Side Presbyterianism, we mean that we believe in non-hierarchical Presbyterianism that requires full-subscription to the Westminster Standards, promotes a converted ministry, upholds experiential religion, and supports the work of God-sent revival with our fervent prayers. To us, that is the only kind of Presbyterianism worthy of our support.
NOTE: Vanguard Presbytery was pleased to receive TE William Hill and the congregation he serves, Providence Presbyterian Church in Evansville, Indiana, into our denomination on July 11, 2024. Both Pastor Hill and the congregation came from the PCA.
Dewey Roberts, Pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, FL
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