Note 353 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

These qualities are so apparent, that after turning over some forty or fifty tracts, and consuming a good many hours on the Bangorian controversy, I should find some difficulty in stating with precision the propositions in dispute. It is, however, evident that a dislike, not perhaps exactly to the house of Brunswick, but to the tenor of George I.'s administration, and to Hoadley himself as an eminent advocate for it, who had been rewarded accordingly, was at the bottom a leading motive with most of the church party; some of whom, such as Hare, though originally of a whig connection, might have had disappointments to exasperate them.

There was nothing whatever in Hoadley's sermon injurious to the established endowments and privileges, nor to the discipline and government, of the English church, even in theory. If this had been the case, he might be reproached with some inconsistency in becoming so large a partaker of her honours and emoluments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures for open immoralities, though denying all church authority to oblige any one to external communion, or to pass any sentence which should determine the condition of men with respect to the favour or displeasure of God. Hoadley's Works, ii. 465, 493. Another great question in this controversy was that of religious liberty, as a civil right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And another related to the much debated exercise of private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated. Some other disputes arose in the course of the combat, particularly the delicate problem of the value of sincerity as a plea for material errors.