Benjamin Hoadly, Samuel Clarke, and the Ethics of the Bangorian Controversy: Church, State, and the Moral Law

The Bangorian controversy has been described as ‘the most bitter ideological conflict of the [eighteenth] century’ (J.C.D. Clark). However, while its impact is widely recognised, there are few studies dedicated to the controversy itself. Moreover, the figure at the centre of it all—Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor—has not always been taken seriously. Such scholars as Norman Sykes, G.R. Cragg, and B.W. Young have dismissed Hoadly as an opportunistic ‘political bishop’, rather than an adept theological thinker. By contrast, this article demonstrates that Hoadly’s Bangorian writings were embedded within the ethical rationalist moral theology of Isaac Newton’s friend, and defender against Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Clarke. As a follower of Clarke, Hoadly objected to the doctrine of apostolic succession, and to the existence of religious conformity laws in Church and state, because they prevented Christianity from being what he thought it ought to be: a religion of conscience.