WARE, HENRY
(1 April 1764, Sherborn, MA-12 July 1845, Cambridge, MA). Education: A.B., Harvard College, 1785. Career: Teacher, Cambridge, MA, 1785-87; minister, First Parish, Hingham, MA, 1787-1805; Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard College, 1805-40.
Henry Ware was raised on a farm near Sherborn, Massachusetts. His father died when he was young, leaving little money. But Ware's brothers were so impressed with his intelligence that they sacrificed to pay his way through Harvard, where he graduated valedictorian in 1785. For a century and a half Harvard had produced Congregational ministers, and within two years of graduation Henry Ware entered the ministry, settling in Hingham, Massachusetts, in a pulpit formerly occupied by Ebenezer Gay*, one of the more liberal clergymen" of his day . Ware followed his predecessor in adopting liberal views: religion was rational, God respected man's moral efforts, men were not innately depraved.
For several decades such ideas had been favored by many Congregationalists. They had provoked Jonathan Edwards* to reassert the fundamental tenets of Calvinism in "modem" terms, and his followers to preach the New Divinity. But Congregationalism was not simply the New Divinity; the denomination included men and women with many different beliefs. Henry Ware might have lived out his life in Hingham as a liberal Congregationalist, but his intellect won the attention of the Harvard overseers, and they appointed him Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805. The position was attractive for many reasons, including the fact that to support himself and a family that grew to include nineteen children, Ware had had to prepare students for college and take in boarders while he ministered in Hingham.
So Henry Ware accepted the invitation and went to Harvard. His appointment. however, provoked a cry of outrage from conservative Calvinists, led by Jedidiah Morse*, who noted that twenty-three of the fifty-six Harvard Overseers who voted on the appointment had opposed Ware. Morse claimed that the appointment of a notorious Arminian to the Hollis chair was an insult to the orthodoxy of the donor and Harvard. The formation of a separate Unitarian denomination lay twenty years in the future, but the furor over the Ware appointment is often regarded as the opening skirmish of a war that would result in the Unitarian schism. Conservatives including Jedidiah Morse*, Moses Stuart*, and Leonard Woods* created Andover Seminary as a refuge for the orthodox.
In 1816 the Harvard Divinity School was formed as a distinct entity, with Ware serving as professor of systematic theology and evidences of Christianity.
In the war of words that blazed among the liberals and conservatives following the "loss" of Harvard, the most famous was the "Wood n' Ware" exchange of five tracts in the early 1820s. Leonard Woods* of Andover and Henry Ware* engaged in a spirited debate on the relative merits of Calvinism and what would come to be known as Unitarianism. A central point in the exchange was the "moral argument." the Arminian claim that the Calvinist doctrine of innate depravity gave degenerate persons "a complete and satisfactory excuse" for every crime. The argument had been hurled at Calvinists by Catholics almost three centuries before, but age and the movement of history towards greater confidence in human ability strengthened rather than weakened the argument When Ware argued that "even in the worst men good feelings and principles are predominant." he was expressing not only a theological premise, but also the optimistic outlook of the new nation.
Out of the careers of men like Henry Ware, and debates such as the Wood n' Ware dispute, grew two denominations where there had been one. Today it is difficult-but useful-to recall that men like Henry Ware began life as Congregationalists. It is also interesting to reflect that in the somewhat different atmosphere of the 1750s, Ware might have been a Charles Chauncy* or in the 1850s, a Horace Bushnell*, both of whom were allowed, albeit somewhat grudgingly, to be Congregationalists as well as liberals.
Bibliography
A: Letters Addressed to Trinitarians and Calvinists, Occasioned by Dr. Wood's Letters to Unitarians (Cambridge, 1820); Answer to Dr. Woods' Reply, in a Second Series of Letters Addressed to Trinitarians and Calvinists (Cambridge, 1822); A Postscript to the Second Series of Letters (Cambridge, 1823); An Inquiry into the Foundations, Evidences, and Truths of Religion (Cambridge, 1842).
B: AAP 8, 199-203; DAB 19, 447-48; UU, 331-32; J. G. Palfrey, A Discourse on the Life and Character of the Reverend Henry Ware (Boston, 1846); Conrad Wright, ''The Election of Henry Ware: Two Contemporary Accounts Edited with Commentary," Harvard Library Bulletin, 17 (July 1969),245-78.
Henry Ware was raised on a farm near Sherborn, Massachusetts. His father died when he was young, leaving little money. But Ware's brothers were so impressed with his intelligence that they sacrificed to pay his way through Harvard, where he graduated valedictorian in 1785. For a century and a half Harvard had produced Congregational ministers, and within two years of graduation Henry Ware entered the ministry, settling in Hingham, Massachusetts, in a pulpit formerly occupied by Ebenezer Gay*, one of the more liberal clergymen" of his day . Ware followed his predecessor in adopting liberal views: religion was rational, God respected man's moral efforts, men were not innately depraved.
For several decades such ideas had been favored by many Congregationalists. They had provoked Jonathan Edwards* to reassert the fundamental tenets of Calvinism in "modem" terms, and his followers to preach the New Divinity. But Congregationalism was not simply the New Divinity; the denomination included men and women with many different beliefs. Henry Ware might have lived out his life in Hingham as a liberal Congregationalist, but his intellect won the attention of the Harvard overseers, and they appointed him Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805. The position was attractive for many reasons, including the fact that to support himself and a family that grew to include nineteen children, Ware had had to prepare students for college and take in boarders while he ministered in Hingham.
So Henry Ware accepted the invitation and went to Harvard. His appointment. however, provoked a cry of outrage from conservative Calvinists, led by Jedidiah Morse*, who noted that twenty-three of the fifty-six Harvard Overseers who voted on the appointment had opposed Ware. Morse claimed that the appointment of a notorious Arminian to the Hollis chair was an insult to the orthodoxy of the donor and Harvard. The formation of a separate Unitarian denomination lay twenty years in the future, but the furor over the Ware appointment is often regarded as the opening skirmish of a war that would result in the Unitarian schism. Conservatives including Jedidiah Morse*, Moses Stuart*, and Leonard Woods* created Andover Seminary as a refuge for the orthodox.
In 1816 the Harvard Divinity School was formed as a distinct entity, with Ware serving as professor of systematic theology and evidences of Christianity.
In the war of words that blazed among the liberals and conservatives following the "loss" of Harvard, the most famous was the "Wood n' Ware" exchange of five tracts in the early 1820s. Leonard Woods* of Andover and Henry Ware* engaged in a spirited debate on the relative merits of Calvinism and what would come to be known as Unitarianism. A central point in the exchange was the "moral argument." the Arminian claim that the Calvinist doctrine of innate depravity gave degenerate persons "a complete and satisfactory excuse" for every crime. The argument had been hurled at Calvinists by Catholics almost three centuries before, but age and the movement of history towards greater confidence in human ability strengthened rather than weakened the argument When Ware argued that "even in the worst men good feelings and principles are predominant." he was expressing not only a theological premise, but also the optimistic outlook of the new nation.
Out of the careers of men like Henry Ware, and debates such as the Wood n' Ware dispute, grew two denominations where there had been one. Today it is difficult-but useful-to recall that men like Henry Ware began life as Congregationalists. It is also interesting to reflect that in the somewhat different atmosphere of the 1750s, Ware might have been a Charles Chauncy* or in the 1850s, a Horace Bushnell*, both of whom were allowed, albeit somewhat grudgingly, to be Congregationalists as well as liberals.
Bibliography
A: Letters Addressed to Trinitarians and Calvinists, Occasioned by Dr. Wood's Letters to Unitarians (Cambridge, 1820); Answer to Dr. Woods' Reply, in a Second Series of Letters Addressed to Trinitarians and Calvinists (Cambridge, 1822); A Postscript to the Second Series of Letters (Cambridge, 1823); An Inquiry into the Foundations, Evidences, and Truths of Religion (Cambridge, 1842).
B: AAP 8, 199-203; DAB 19, 447-48; UU, 331-32; J. G. Palfrey, A Discourse on the Life and Character of the Reverend Henry Ware (Boston, 1846); Conrad Wright, ''The Election of Henry Ware: Two Contemporary Accounts Edited with Commentary," Harvard Library Bulletin, 17 (July 1969),245-78.