Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society - Huntington University

BOOK REVIEWS 115
William Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly, 1676-1761.
Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2004. Pp. 384. $95.35.
Reviewed by Yudha Thianto, Trinity Christian College
Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, is mostly
remembered for his role in the Bangorian Controversy. While it is true that Hoadly was
the central figure in the controversy, there was more to him than just the sermon that
triggered it. William Gibson’s most recent book sheds new light on this controversial
eighteenth century figure.
Gibson does not intend this book to be a biography of Hoadly. Neither does he
develop an elaborate analysis of Hoadly’s theological thought. What he offers is a new
look and a fresh appreciation of Hoadly’s life and work in the context of eighteenth
century Anglicanism. Throughout the book Gibson maintains two central themes. First,
he shows that Hoadly was an Anglican reformer who tried to recast the Church of
England so that it would be willing to include all Protestants. Second, he maintains that
Hoadly was an Enlightenment clergyman who promoted equality among all people and
emphasized each person’s right to judge the Scripture. Gibson argues that one should
look at Hoadly through the central objective of the majority of his writings, namely his
effort to reunite Protestantism in England.
The Enlightenment Prelate opens with a closer look at Hoadly from the point of
view of both his supporters and opponents. As a Whig Latitudinarian, Hoadly sought to
reunite the Dissenters and the Anglicans. The Tory High Churchmen looked at him
curiously, even to the point of calling him heterodox, a Deist, and even an Arian. As a
progenitor of the English Enlightenment, Hoadly brought Newtonian empiricism into the
Church of England, rejected Roman Catholic “superstition” and Calvinist notions of
predestination, and favored rational Protestantism and Arminianism.
As early as his appointment at St. Peter-le-Poer, London Hoadly already
demonstrated Lockean influence in his approach to theological and ecclesiastical look at
Christianity. The publication of his book, The Reasonableness of Conformity to the
Church of England Represented to the Dissenting Ministers (1703), was a clear
acknowledgment of Locke’s ideas in the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). In his
defense of the Revolution of 1689 Hoadly took issue against Henry Sacheverell, who
attacked the accession of William III into the British throne. Sacheverell charged
Churchmen like Hoadly for putting people’s rights above the sovereign. Gibson believes
that in his debates with opponents such as Sacheverell, Fleetwood, and Atterbury, the
Latitudinarian Hoadly “defended legitimacy of resistance to authority, the validity of the
ejection of Non-jurors, the acceptability of occasional conformity and the importance of
conscience and individual judgment in matters of faith and doctrine” (129).
The Bangorian Controversy takes center stage in this book. The controversy was
triggered by Hoadly’s sermon, entitled “The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ”
that he preached on 31 March 1717. Prior to the controversy, George Hickes published
The Constitution of the Catholick Church and the Nature and Consequences of Schism