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‘Christ’s kingdom not of this world:’ the case of Benjamin Hoadly versus William Law reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Henry D. Rack
Henry D. Rack*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

The traditional reputations of Hoadly and Law could hardly be more sharply contrasted. Hoadly’s latitudinarianism, his promotion on the bench for political reasons, his neglect of diocesan duties have long made him a favourite example for castigating the hanoverian episcopate. Law has been much more fortunate. Almost universally cited as a happy exception to the lax theology of his age; credited with a religious appeal to men of all parties; and praised for his literary style and powers of argument, Law has enjoyed a generally uncritical press, despite the difficulties of reconciling the early, orthodox controversial and devotional writings with his later and mystical works. Of the confrontation between Hoadly and Law over the Bangorian sermon, the prevailing opinion has been that of dean Hook: ‘Law’s “Letters” have never been answered, – may indeed be regarded as unanswerable’. Some, indeed, have suggested that Hoadly failed to reply directly to Law either through fear or inability to do so. Overton, however, with his customary fairness, allowed that Hoadly ‘was a very able controversialist and not afraid of any antagonist’. Hoadly claimed that others had replied to Law (who had not attempted to answer them), and that all of Law’s most important points had been answered in Hoadly’s Answer to the Representation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 12: Church Society and Politics , 1975 , pp. 275 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975

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References

1 The view taken of him, however, has always been strongly conditioned by political and ecclesiastical bias, and I hope to show elsewhere that it has not been uniformly unfavourable.

2 A. K. Walker’s recent William Law: his Life and Work (London 1973)Google Scholar is more critical of Law.

3 Hook, W. F., ‘The Bangorian Controversy’ in The Church Dictionary (London 1842)Google Scholar quoted by Overton, [J. H.], [The Life and Opinions of William Law] (London 1881) p 20 Google Scholar.

4 Sherlock, Thomas, The Condition and Example of our Saviour Vindicated (London 1718) p 62 Google Scholar thought Law ‘a writer so considerable that I know but ONE good reason why his Lordship DOES NOT answer him’.

5 Overton, p 19 n.

6 An Answer to a late Book written by the Rev Dr Sherlock (London 1718) in Hoadly, [B.], [Works], ed Hoadly, J., 3 vols (London 1773) 2, pp 694-5Google Scholar. See also his An Answer to the Rev Dr Snape’s Letter (London 1717). For Law’s ironical comment see his [Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor, 1717-19 in [Works] ed Moreton, G., 9 vols (Setley 1892) 1, pp 88-9Google Scholar.

7 [E.] Calamy, [An Historical Account of My Own Life] ed J. T. Rutt, 2 vols (London 1829-30) 2, pp 371-9.

8 See the admirable account by Leslie Stephen, ‘William Law’ in Hours in a Library (London 1876) second series, pp 129-32 (omitted in 1892 ed).

9 The best account is by Hessert, P. B., ‘The Bangorian Controversy’ (Edinburgh PhD thesis 1951)Google Scholar. As Hessert’s sympathetic account of Hoadly at important points resembles my own, I should make it clear that the argument of this paper was worked out before I saw his work.

10 Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ed Creed, J. M. and Smith, J. S. Boys (Cambridge 1934) p xxxviii Google Scholar.

11 So Hoadly’s editor in Hoadly, 1 p xx note N.

12 Hickes, G., The Constitution of the Catholick Church (London 1716) pp 64 Google Scholar, 69, 89-93. But he allowed that the clergy could not infringe a king’s rights or depose him. For a hostile description of highflying claims see Tindal, [M.], [The] Rights [of the Christian Church Asserted] (4 ed London 1709) pp 32-3Google Scholar.

13 Locke, [John], [Epistola de Tolerantia. A Letter on Toleration,] ed Kubansky, R. and tr Gough, J. W. (Oxford 1968) p 71 Google Scholar.

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15 Tindal, Rights, pp 23-4, lxxxvii.

16 A. A. Sykes, sermon preached in December 1716, published in 1717, quoted in Disney, [J.], [Memoires of the Life and Writings of Arthur Ashley Sykes] (London 1785) pp 43-5Google Scholar.

17 Sermon, [A] [on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ] (London 1717) in Hoadly, 2 p 406 Google Scholar.

18 [An] Answer to the Representation [drawn up by the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation] (London 1717) in Hoadly, 2 p 485. Even in his strong defence of episcopacy against Calamy in 1703-5, Hoadly did not see it as essential to make a church or to convey salvation: Hoadly, 2 pp 477, 479.

19 Sermon, in Hoadly, 2 p 408 (my italics).

20 He opposed the use of the sacrament as a test for political office and was willing to extend civil as well as religious rights to dissenters in writings of 1718 and 1736: Hoadly, 2 pp 697, 971.

21 Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, ed Nichols, J., 9 vols (London 1812-16) 9, p 85 Google Scholar; compare Calamy, 2 p 371.

22 Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford 1962)Google Scholar.

23 Even Norman Sykes as an apologist for latitudinarianism balked at Hoadly’s theory of the church in several of his writings, for example in Church and State [in England in the Eighteenth Century] (Cambridge 1934) pp 293-4.

24 For Hoadly’s version see Hoadly, 2 pp 429-47. Bennett, G. V., White Kamett (London 1957) pp 139-45Google Scholar makes a tangled tale as clear as the material allows.

25 Law, 1 pp 5-7.

26 Ibid p 50. Compare Hare, [F.], [Church Authority Vindicated] (London 1719) p 26 Google Scholar.

27 Law, 1 pp 16-17, compare p 115 where Law sees Hoadly’s doctrine as equally destructive of all social relationships.

28 Law, 1 p 16; and for his interpretation of ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, pp 106-13.

29 Answer to the Representation in Hoadly, 2 pp 452, 477, 478, 481.

30 Law, 1 pp 103, 106, 90.

31 Hare, p 32. The last point is similar to Law’s admission and was taken up by Hoadly in An Answer to the Rev Dr Hare’s Sermon (London 1720) in Hoadly, 2 pp 856-7.

32 Rogers, John, A Discourse of the Visible and Invisible Church (4 ed London 1720) preface and p 1 Google Scholar; A Review of a Discourse of the Visible and Invisible Church (2 ed London 1722) pp 335, 425. The appeal to pragmatic rather than scriptural and traditional arguments is noteworthy.

33 Locke pp 99-100.

34 A Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors (London 1716) in Hoadly, 1 pp 592-3Google Scholar; Answer to the Representation in Hoadly, 2 pp 508-9.

35 So did Sykes, A. A. in Some Remarks on Mr Marshall’s Defence (London 1717), quoted in Disney, pp 52-5Google Scholar.

36 Hoadly, 2 pp 420-7, 465, 472-7, 485, 463. Compare Tindal, Rights, pp 23-4; and Locke, pp 73, 77, who saw the ‘arms’ of the church as ‘exhortation, admonition and advice’.

37 Stephen, L., History of English Tlwught in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols (New York 1962) 2 pp 139 Google Scholar, 145.

38 Answer to the Representation, in Hoadly, 2 p 562.

39 Law, 1 p 9.

39a Ibid p 7.

40 Locke pp 85-7; Tindal, Rights, pp lxxxv, 16-17; A. A. Sykes quoted by Disney, p 45; compare Toland, J., Nazarenus (London 1718) letter 2, p 34 Google Scholar. See discussion in Cragg, [G. R.], [Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century] (Cambridge 1964) cap 7 Google Scholar.

40a Straka, G., ‘The Final Phase of Divine Right Theory in England, 1688-1702’, EHR, 77 (1962) pp 638-58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Hoadly, 2 pp 990, 508-9; compare 775-80.

42 Locke pp 131-5.

43 Tindal, Rights, pp v, lxxxv, 11-12, 16-17; Of the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind (London 1697), reprinted in Four Discourses (London 1709) pp 132-3; Rights, p 25.

44 Vereker, C. H., Eighteenth Century Optimism (Liverpool 1967) pp 18–22 Google Scholar, 91-6.

45 For what follows it will be obvious that I am indebted to Britain after the Glorious Revolution [1680-1714], ed Holmes, G. (London 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and to his [The Trial of] Doctor SachevereU (London 1973) cap 1.

46 G. Holmes in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, p 26.

47 G. Holmes, Doctor Sacheverell, p 32.

48 G. V. Bennett in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, p 165.

49 Bahlman, D. W. R., The Moral Revolution of 1688 (Yale 1957)Google Scholar. Although he sees the societies as filling a gap left by church and state (p 107) it is significant that on their failure the lay magistrates took over prosecutions.

50 N. Sykes, Church and State, p 294. He thought Hoadly’s doctrine of the church a ‘veritable kingdom of fairies’, presumably echoing Thomas Hobbes.

51 Warburton, W., The Alliance between Church and State (London 1736)Google Scholar. See Greaves, R. W., ‘The Working of the Alliance’ in Essays in Modem English Church History ed Bennett, G. V. and Walsh, J. D. (London 1966) pp 163-80Google Scholar for an admirable analysis of how imperfectly Warburton’s theory fitted the actual working of the church.

52 Thomas Chubb the deist on the church in Miscellaneous Tracts (London 1730) pp 185, 201 practically quotes Hoadly. Similar language about the ‘Kingdom of Christ’ is frequently found (examples in Cragg, pp 194, 210-12). Lord Carteret shocked lord Egmont by saying that parliament ‘might as well appoint priests to the office of bishop’: Egmont Diary, HMC, 3 vols (London 1920-3) 1, pp 106-7Google Scholar. Henry Venn the evangelical severely criticised contemporary ‘sincerity’ ideas in relation to salvation: The Complete Duty of Man (new ed London no date) p xxix (preface written in 1763).