ABSTRACT
The institution then known as Manchester New College was the inheritor of a tradition reaching back to 1670. In that year, to meet the persecution of the Act of Uniformity and the subsequent Conventicle and Five-Mile Acts, an “Academy” was opened at Rathmell in Yorkshire by Richard Frankland, one of the ejected clergy, for the provision of university learning outside the pale of the established system. The two bodies of non-conformist opinion, known respectively as Presbyterian and Independent or Congregationalist, were no longer distinguished by any special type of organization but only by the greater freedom of the former in the matter of doctrinal uniformity. Frankland's Academy belonged to the freer type. Its spirit was expressed in the words of the motto adopted and placed over the entrance by its descendant Manchester College at its dedication in Oxford in 1893: “To Truth, to Liberty, to Religion.” The College itself dates from 1786, when it was known as the Manchester Academy, subsequently changed to Manchester New College. But Truth is a wanderer and it was not until after several removals that it settled down in London, in 1853, still under that name. By that time University Hall in Gordon Square had been opened, partly as a residence for students attending University College, and partly to provide “instruction in theology, mental and moral philosophy and other branches of knowledge, not at all or not fully taught at University College.” 1 By the transference of the Manchester College to this home it was hoped to carry out the second of these objects, while the intercourse of the two bodies of students might exercise a broadening influence on both. There had been a drift of theological opinion in the churches representing English Presbyterianism towards Arianism and Unitarianism from the first, and by this time most of the Trustees of the College were of the latter persuasion. But the leading teachers in it always protested against any such limitation. So early as 1809 one'of them had roundly declared, “I do not and I will not teach Unitarianism nor anyism but Christianism, I will endeavour to show the students how to study the Scriptures, and if they find Unitarianism there, well; if Arianism, well; if Trinitarianism, well; only let them find something for themselves; let it not be found for them by their tutor.” 1 This freedom it was sought to express in the declaration that the College “be open to young men of every religious denomination from whom no test, or confession of faith will be required.” In his speech at the Centenary of the College in Manchester in 1886 Martineau, as President of the Trustees, took occasion to justify what he called “our free.principle” as the only one that left room for change and progress in theological thought.” “To suppose that our will can arrest the law of change which is inherent in the growth of the human mind is presumption; to wish that it could do so is infidelity. Life itself is movement, its highest form is the stir of thought: and the longing for stationary thought is a prayer for death.” 2
