the deists to priestcraft. Toleration, therefore, in Tindal's mouth, meant simply that priests should not be allowed to burn heretics, because priests were impostors. It is needless to add that priests did not love Tindal. This book and the 'Independent Whig' (1720, &c), a series of essays in the 'Spectator' shape, devoted to the abuse of the clergy, are the best illustration of that antipathy to sacerdotalism, generated during the struggles of the seventeenth century, which survived into the eighteenth, and is not yet upon its deathbed. Toleration, however, softened its bitterness considerably after the early years of the Hanoverian dynasty. The best illustration of the prevailing theories is that Bangorian controversy which was once celebrated, if only as an instance of confusion worse confounded.

III. THE BANGORIAN CONTROVERSY.

27. Benjamin Hoadly was probably the best hated clergyman of the century amongst his own order. His titles to the antipathy of his brethren were many and indisputable. A clergyman who opposes sacerdotal privileges is naturally the object of a sentiment such as would be provoked by a tradesunionist who should defend the masters, or a country squire who should protect poachers. In Hoadly's day the feeling was specially intense. Dissenters had extorted toleration without obtaining equality, and the old persecuting sentiment survived, though compelled to satisfy itself by comparatively impotent legislation or by exhibitions of social insolence. The advocates of the Church still brooded over the memories of the Great Rebellion, and grudged the claims of the sects which had once trampled them under foot. Hoadly again not only supported the political pretensions of the dissenters, but occupied a very questionable theological position. To attack the exclusive privileges of the Church was, of course, to attack the divine law; but Hoadly was also suspected, and with good apparent reason, of extreme laxity in his theology. The intimate friend and admirer of Clarke, he was probably further from orthodoxy than the great latitudinarian leader. Add to this that Hoadly was not merely a traitor, but a successful traitor; that Convocation, for attempting to silence

him, was itself doomed to silence; and that, according to the system of the day, he rose by several minor preferments to the great bishopric of Winchester. There he remained for more than a quarter of a century, till the controversies of his early life had become a dim tradition with the existing generation, and died in his eighty-fifth year, in 1761. Hoadly, hated for all these reasons, had not the manner to conciliate antagonists. His style is the style of a bore; he is slovenly, awkward, intensely pertinacious, often indistinct, and, apparently at least, evasive; and occasionally (I am thinking especially of his arguments with his old enemy Atterbury) not free from a tinge of personal rancour. He preached his first lectureship down to 30%. a year, as he candidly reports, and then thought it time to resign. A perusal of his writings renders the statement easily credible. The three huge folios which contain his ponderous wranglings are a dreary wilderness of now profitless discussion. We owe, however, a vast debt of gratitude to the bores who have defended good causes, and in his pachydermatous fashion Hoadly did some service, by helping to trample down certain relics of the old spirit of bigotry.

28. Before the controversy to which his fame is chiefly due Hoadly had written some political treatises. The most elaborate are the 'Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate,' and 'The Original and Institution of Civil Government discussed.' In them he once more slays the slain. Following in the steps of Locke, to whom, however, he makes but a grudging reference,' he argues that Adam's paternal authority over Cain had not been transferred to the King of England, and would not entitle him, if it had been transferred, to burn Protestants in Smithfield. He attacks the Anglican doctrine of non-resistance, which had become obsolete when Anglicans found resistance convenient. He opposes to the patriarchal theory the alternative and equally flimsy theory of a social compact, and labours hard to show that the historical reality of such a compact, though not necessary to the validity of his theory, may be reconciled with the narrow chronological limits of the Book of Genesis. The details of such a discussion may well be swept to the dustheaps. The general tendency needs

1 Hoadly, Works, ii. 190.

alone to be indicated. Hoadly seems to labour under a singular difficulty in this as in the Bangorian controversy. He is too much agreed with his antagonist. All but a few irreconcilables admitted after the revolution of 1688 that resistance was in some cases allowable. Everybody again admitted that resistance was only allowable in very serious cases. The true question was therefore one of degree. What intensity of evil would justify resistance? Such a question is obviously not to be answered by laying down absolute rules. The problem by its very nature belongs to the sphere of expediency, not of abstract truth. And yet absolute rules were very convenient as taunts to an adversary. Thus Hoadly seems alternately to relax and tighten the bonds of obedience. At one moment he says that the people are to judge for themselves only when they are 'on the brink of destruction;' they are only to defend themselves against certain ruin ;' and not in that case to upset all rule, but to put themselves under a better government for the future. Nobody who admitted of resistance at all could draw the line nearer to unconditional obedience. Elsewhere, Hoadly uses language which seems to imply that the subject ought to resist all laws which in his opinion are wrong. To escape from this consecration of anarchy, he introduces qualifications which neutralise his theory. Like most writers of his class, he can only abolish a pope or a tyrant by making every man his own pope or tyrant. He cannot conceive of an authority resting upon reason, or of a power which may enforce its command, and yet rest its titles to command upon reasonable enquiry; and this difficulty, which still besets many minds, greatly perplexes some of the later Bangorian arguments. Meanwhile, Hoadly alternates between assertions which nobody would deny and assertions which nobody would seriously maintain. Each side found its account in this style of reasoning. Everybody must always obey, cried the Tory; but, he added in a whisper, cases may occur which necessitate resistance. Every man, proclaimed the Whig, should resist all actions injurious to the public good; but, then, he admitted, it must be remembered that in almost every case resistance causes more injury than the evils which it professes to cure. Such arguments, in fact,

'Original Institutions,' &c., ii. 184.

were well suited to a state of things in which Whig and Tory had an instinctive dislike to each other's principles, but had struck out a very fair compromise in all matters of immediate practical interest.

29. In truth, the instinct was not altogether at fault. Hoadly's dislike to the Tory doctrine rested ultimately on a logical basis which he himself probably did not clearly understand. His whole political and ecclesiastical theories may be summed up in a single formula. He denies the divine right theory, whether of priests or kings, in the only sense in which it can have any application to a specific political problem. This denial (as I have remarked) is the logical consequence of the deist theory. When God becomes nature, or is so nearly identified with nature that all supernatural interference is incredible, the basis of a divine right of any particular family, caste, or constitution, is destroyed. The divine favour can be no more monopolised by a single form of government than by a single sect or organisation. No man or set of men has received any special commission from the Almighty. That religion is best which is most reasonable, and that system of government which is most useful. Hoadly, in accordance with this view, aims at eradicating all claims to authority which rest upon a basis different from that of utility. There can be no supernatural virtue in kings or priests communicating an indefeasible and paramount claim to authority. Hoadly, indeed, could hardly strike at the root of the theory, whilst asserting that God had taken a direct part in the government of the Jews and the foundation of the Church. His doctrine involves the fundamental inconsistency of all the contemporary rationalisers who admitted previous supernatural interventions, whilst denying their actual occurrence in modern times. But in his clumsy and illogical way Hoadly was attacking a theory, then dying, though not yet dead, which endeavoured to provide certain claims to priestly and royal authority with supernatural sanctions, and therefore to base them on the rock of absolute right, whilst the rest of the fabric was founded only on the shifting sands of expediency. Wherever such a claim to supernatural authority is made or implied, Hoadly sees the evil thing; and the most spirited fragment which he ever wrote is an attack upon Protestants

for virtually making claims inconsistent with their repudiation of supernatural authority.

30. The tract is called a 'Dedication to Pope Clement XI.' and was prefixed anonymously to Steele's 'Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion throughout the World.' It is written in the ironical style so popular in the days of Swift, Arbuthnot, and De Foe, and claims a close resemblance between Papists and Protestants. All the Protestant sects admit their fallibility, and differ in their conclusions, yet all are ready, within their own limits, to enforce their own opinions by prison or the gallows. The difference is, he says, that 'you cannot err in anything you determine, and we never do; that is, in other words, that you are infallible, and we always in the right.' And, finally, after summing up various proofs of a persecuting spirit, and of the approximation of the English clergy to Roman superstitions, he concludes the only difference to be that 'ours is Protestant popery, and yours is Popish popery.'2 Protestantism, with him, means the unrestricted right of private judgment, and that right excludes all claims to priestly authority; but the true bearing of his arguments comes out more clearly in the Bangorian controversy.

31. This controversy, which raged furiously during 1717–8, is one of the most intricate tangles of fruitless logomachy in the language. In the bibliography given in Hoadly's works, there is a list of more than fifty divines who joined in the fray. In the course of July 1717 there appeared seventyfour pamphlets. At one crisis, when the controversy took a personal turn, we are assured that, for a day or two, the common business of the city was at a stand; that little was done on the Exchange, and even that many shops were shut. The struggle became more and more perplexed, till the precise issue disappeared in a hubbub of confused assertions, contradictions, qualifications, personal imputations, and retorts which soon ceased to be courteous. There is a bewildering variety of theological, ecclesiastical, political, historical, exegetical, and purely personal discussions. The combatants are so

Hoadly's Works, i. 535.

2 Ib. i. 544.

Ib. ii. p. 398. A continuation of the list is given at the end of vol. i. • Ib. ii. 385. 5 Ib. ii. 429.