Three letters to the bishop of Bangor

When Dr. Snape Dr. Andrew Snape, a primary opponent of Bishop Hoadly in the Bangorian Controversy depicts your Lordship as no friend to the proper order and necessary institutions of the Church, you complain about the deceitful tactics of an opponent who misrepresents you and twists your words simply to inflate his own imaginary victories.

But, my Lord, in this regard, Dr. Snape is only thinking the same thing as those who would be considered your best friends—people who would stop being your friends if they did not believe you had declared yourself against the authority of the Church. Does your Lordship imagine that the Tolands, the [Hickeses], the [Burnets] Refers to John Toland, George Hickes, and likely Gilbert Burnet or Thomas Bennett—figures associated with radical or controversial religious views of the era would spend so much time and effort to justify, praise, and expand upon your Lordship’s ideas if they did not think you were committed to their cause?

There is not a single libertine or free-thinker original: "Loose-Thinker" in England who does not imagine that you intend to dismantle the Church as a formal society; they are ready to offer you high praise original: "offer Incense" for such a supposedly worthy goal. It is not my intention to criticize your Lordship for their high opinion of you, or to implicate you in the guilt of their plans. Rather, I want to show that an opponent does not need any malice to believe you are no friend to the structure of the Church as a formal society, since your own greatest admirers publish this very conclusion to the world in print every day.

After a few words regarding a passage in your Lordship’s book, The Preservative Full title: "A Preservative Against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors," published by Hoadly in 1716, I will proceed to examine your Answer to Dr. Snape. On page 98, you write:

"But when you are certain of your integrity before God—this will lead you (as it should lead all of us) not to be afraid of the ter—"