the dealing out of forgiveness
for men's sins, the determination of true doctrine, insofar as the
Church claims these powers, it is usurping an authority that is not its
own. The relation of man to God is his private affair, and God will ask
from him sincerity and honesty, rather than judge him for his
possession of some special set of dogmas. Clearly, therefore, if the
Church is no more than this, it has no supernatural pretensions to
oppose to the human claims of the State. And since the State must have
within itself all the means of sufficient life, it has the right to
resist the ecclesiastical onslaught as based upon the usurpation of
power assumed without right. And in later treatises Hoadly did for
ceremonial exactly what he had done for church government. The eucharist
became a piece of symbolism and excommunication nothing more than an
announcement--"a mere external thing"--that the rules of the fellowship
have been broken. It at no point is related to the sinner's opportunity
of salvation.

In such an aspect, it would clearly follow that the Church has no
monopoly of truth. It can, indeed, judge its own beliefs; but reason
alone can demonstrate the inadequacy of other attitudes. Nor does its
judgment preclude the individual duty to examine into the truth of
things. The real root of faith is not the possession of an infallible
dogma, but the arriving honestly at the dogma in which you happen to
believe. For the magistrate, he urges, what is important is not the
table of your springs of action, but the conduct itself which is based
upon that table; from which it follows that things like the Test and
Corporation Acts have no real political validity. They have been imposed
upon the State by the narrow interpretations of an usurping power; and
the Nonconformist claim to citizenship would thus seem as valid as that
of a member of the Church of England.

All this sounds sensible enough; though it is curious doctrine in the
mouth of a bishop of that church. And this, in fact, is the
starting-point of Law's analysis of Hoadly. No one who reads the
unsparing vigor of his criticism can doubt that Law must have been
thoroughly happy in the composition of his defence; and, indeed, his is
the only contribution to the debate which may claim a permanent place in
political literature. In one sense, indeed, the whole of Law's answer is
an _ignoratio elenchi_, for he assumes the truth of that which Hoadly
sets out to examine, w