How Heterodox was Benjamin Hoadly?

Historians praise Benjamin Hoadly as a political controversialist, but, at the same time, they castigate him as a scandalous cleric. This hardly sur-prises. Since his own day, the great defender of the Revolution settlement was vociferously blamed as a pluralist, nepotist and absentee.Indeed Hoadly’s preferment from Bangor to Hereford, Salisbury, and finally to Winchester, seemed to most of his contemporaries a reward for his support for the Hanoverians, rather than for promoting the interest of the Church. Additionally, Hoadly had a reputation for heresy. Many of his brethren would condemn him as an impostor, a fifth–columnist of Dissent with theological opinions dangerously close to those of the Arians, Socinians, even of Deists. This essay suggests that Hoadly’s involvement in Arianism, Socinianism or Deism is more passively maintained than unquestionably proved.