BANGORIAN CONTIIOVERSY. 
5G3 
The number of nuns is fixed at sixty in each monastery, and that 
of friars to thirteen, answerable to the number of apostles, of whom 
St. Paul made the thirteenth; besides which there are four dOacons, to 
represent the four doctors of the church, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, 
St. Gregory and St. Jerome ; and eight lay brothers, making, toge- 
ther with the nuns, the number of seventy-two disciples. 
The order being instituted in honour of the Virgin, the direction is 
committed to an abbess, who is superior both of the nuns and of the 
friars. Each house consists of two convents or monasteries, sepa- 
rately enclosed, but having one church in common; the huns being 
placed above, and the friars on the ground. The Bridgetins profess 
great mortification, poverty, and self-denial, as well as devotion, and 
they are not to possess any thing they can call their own, not so much 
as a halfpenny, nor even to touch money on any account. 
This order spread much through Sweden, Germany, the Nether- 
lands, &c. In England w'e read of but one monastery of Bridgetins, 
built by Henry V. in 1415, opposite to Richmond, now called Sion- 
house ; the ancient inhabitants of which, after the dissolution, settled 
at Lisbon. The revenues were reckoned at 1495/. per annum. 
Bangorian Controversy. 
This celebrated controversy arose from a sermon preached before 
king George I. of England, by Dr. Hoadley, bishop of Bangor, on 
March 31, I'*!?. Mr. William Belsham, in his Memoirs, vol. i, p. 174, 
gives the following account of this controversy. “ As the foundation 
of this famous discourse, the bishop chose the declaration of Christ 
to Pilate, “ My kingdom is not of this world and the direct and 
undisguised object of it was to prove that the kingdom of Christ, and 
the sanctions by which it is supported, were of a nature wholly intel- 
lectual and spiritual ; that the church, taking the term in its most 
unlimited signification, did not, and could not, possess the slightest 
degree of authority under any commission, or pretended commission, 
derived from man ; that the church of England, and all other national 
churches, were merely civil or human institutions, established for the 
purpose of diffusing and perpetuating the knowledge and belief of 
Christianity, which contained a system of truths, not in their nature 
differing from other truths, except by their superior weight and im- 
portance, and which were to be inculcated in a manner analogous to 
other truths; demanding only, from their more interesting import, 
proportionally higher degrees of care, attention, and assiduity, in the 
promulgation of them. 
It is scarcely to be imagined, in these times, with what a degree of 
false and malignant rancour these plain, simple, and rational princi- 
ples were attacked by the zealots and champions of the church. On 
the meeting of the convocation, a committee was appointed to examine 
this famous publication, and a representation was quickly drawn up, 
in which a most heavy charge was passed upon it, as tending to 
subvert all government and discipline in the church of Christ, to 
reduce his kingdom to a state of anarchy and confusion, to irajougn 
and impeach the royal supremacy in matters ecclesia,stical, and the 
