alone to be indicated. Hoadly seems to labour under a singular difficulty in this as in the Bangorian controversy. He is too much in agreement 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 when resistance conduces 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, 1 '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 opinion 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.5 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 1 Hoadly's Works, i. 535. 2 Ib. i. 544. 3 Ib. ii. p. 398. A continuation of the list is given at the end of vol. i. fierce, that blows, which need have caused little irritation, produce angry sores. Besides the more serious disputes, we are invited to consider whether Hoadly was justified in keeping a converted Jesuit in his family, and what was the Jesuit's character; whether he had or had not taken the advice of a friend to insert certain phrases in his sermon before it was printed or before it was published; whether Sherlock had said something to much the same purpose as Hoadly in a previous sermon; whether it is proper to describe prayer as 'a calm and undisturbed' address to God; whether we may say that Christ's example is more peculiarly fit for slaves than for subjects, and if so, in what sense, and whether Hoadly spoke in that sense; what is the proper interpretation of various phrases in the New Testament; what was the precise history of the Corporation and Test Acts; and what is the right answer to various questions connected only in the most accidental and indirect fashion with any reasonable topic of dispute. Throughout this troublesome wrangling, we have the annoying circumstance that nobody admits himself to be fairly represented, and that the charge which each man brings with the greatest bitterness against his adversary is that of entire agreement with himself. To follow out the minute reticulations of this tangled skein of argument would be waste of time. The disputants themselves must have regarded it, one fancies, in later years, as a lamentable waste of good human passion. The anger has long been cold, and the spoilt paper returned to its primitive elements. Three writers were more conspicuous than the rest, and it will be enough to notice their main positions. Hoadly had the ill-luck to encounter two of the ablest—probably, if Bentley be excepted, the two ablest controversial writers of the time. Sherlock and Law attacked different parts of his argument with singular vigour; and in their writings and Hoadly's we may find whatever deserves to survive the general wreck. 32. Hoadly's theory was first stated in the 'Preservative against the Principles and Practice of Nonjurors' (1716)—a book provoked by the publication of certain posthumous papers of Hickes, the nonjuror. His sermon, preached on March 31st, 1717, which was the immediate cause of the explosion, states it more concisely and distinctly. His various answers to Snape, Sherlock, and the Committee of Convocation, explain his view of certain obvious objections. Hoadly simply applies to ecclesiastical questions the principle already explained in a political connection. He is lowering the priesthood, as he had formerly lowered the monarchy, to the ordinary level of humanity. He is striking at the heart of sacerdotalism. A priest is one who claims divine authority for his words, whose privileges are secured by a divine grant, and who can wield certain powers in virtue of his sacred character. Hoadly substantially denies the validity of these claims. Though forced to admit that Christ and the Apostles enjoyed supernatural powers and privileges, he denies, like the other rationalists of the time, that those powers had been transmitted to their successors. The expression of the doctrine, as it shaped itself in Hoadly's mind, must be given in his own words. 'As the Church of Christ is the kingdom of Christ, he himself is king; and in this it is implied that he is himself the sole lawgiver to his subjects, and himself the sole judge of their behaviour, in the affairs of conscience and eternal salvation. And in this sense, therefore, his kingdom is not of this world; that he hath in those points left behind him no visible human authority, no vicegerents who can be said properly to supply his place; no interpreters upon whom his subjects are absolutely to depend; no judges over the conscience or religion of his people. For if this were so, that any such absolute vicegerent authority, either for the making of new laws, or interpreting old ones, or judging his subjects, in religious matters, were lodged in any men upon earth, the consequence would be that what still retains the name of the Church of Christ would not be the kingdom of Christ, but the kingdom of those men vested with such authority. For, whoever hath such an authority of making laws is so far a king, and whoever can add new laws to those of Christ, equally obligatory, is as truly a king as Christ himself is. Nay, whosoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken laws, it is he who is truly the lawgiver to all intents and purposes, and not the person who first wrote and spoke them.'1. The viceroy of an absolute monarch is 1 Hoadly, ii. 404. |