The university and the divinity college were incorporated as the same institution in 1887, a result of a merger between two Baptist institutions, the Canadian Literary Institute in Woodstock, Ontario, and Toronto Baptist College. McMaster University continued to operate as a Baptist-run institution until 1957, when provincial legislation allowed for the governance of the university to pass from the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, to a privately chartered, publicly funded arrangement. McMaster's Faculty of Theology was spun-off into McMaster Divinity College, a separately-chartered affiliated college of the university.