Three letters to the bishop of Bangor

It may be due to our own conduct—some irregularities or the abuse of our mental faculties—that we perceive things as we do and are fixed in certain tenets. Can we really believe that so much value is owed to a sincerity of opinion when that sincerity was formed through bad habits and guilty behavior? There are several faulty ways people can cloud and bias their own understanding, throwing themselves into a very strange way of thinking; for some reason or another, God may send them a strong delusion so that they believe a lie. original: "God may send them a strong Delusion that they should believe a Lie"; a reference to 2 Thessalonians 2:11

And will your Lordship Referring to Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor really say that those who have fallen into such errors—perhaps through their own poor conduct or as a judgment of God upon them—are as much in His favor as those who love and stick to the truth? This, my Lord, is a shocking opinion. It has caused great offense to many Christians because it contradicts common sense and plain Scripture by putting all religions on the same level regarding the favor of God.

The next thing we should not be concerned about, according to your Lordship, is the "vain words" of regular and uninterrupted successions, which you dismiss as "niceties, trifles, and dreams." This refers to Apostolic Succession: the doctrine that church authority is passed down in an unbroken chain from the original Apostles to modern bishops. Surely, this much is implied in these words: that no kind of ordination or mission of the clergy Mission: The formal authority or "sending out" of a minister by the church to preach and administer the sacraments is of any consequence or importance to us. For if ordination does not need to be regular—meaning derived from those who received authority from Christ to ordain others—then it is clear that no specific type of ordination can be more valuable than any other. After all, no ordination could have a worse defect than being irregular and not derived through a succession from Christ. Therefore, if these circumstances are to be viewed as trifles and dreams, then any difference that can be imagined between any ordina-