A Third Letter to Dr Sherlock

Complete copy of the book A Third Letter to the Reverend Dr. Sherlock, being an answer to his Considerations offered to the Bishop of Bangor. With an Appendix, in Vindication of a Passage in the Former Letter against Dr. Snape.

pp.1-112.

Bound in brown paper.

Written by Arthur Ashley Sykes.

Published in early November 1717.

Two prior letters had already been written by Sykes- the first of them was published at he beginning of June of the same year.

Upon its publication, the first letter set off a debate within the pamphlet press.

Sykes published all three letters in the context of the 'Bangorian Controversy'. A theological controversy within the Church of England that ended up escalating into a major ecclesiastical and political crisis of the early 18th century. 

The controversy originated in the 1716 publication of The Constitution of the Catholick Church by Bishop George Hicks. Hicks argued in the Constitution that the State had not possessed the spiritual authority to deprive the original non-juring Bishops following the revolution of 1688-89, and that those who had replaced them in their sees were therefore usurpers and guilty of schism. The significance of Hicks claims came from his assertion that all those under communion of the 'usurping' Bishops were also guilty, and must therefore be considered to be outside of the Christian Church.

The controversy took its names from the Bishop of Bangor, Benjamin Hoadley. He delivered a sermon in March of 1717 (as well as a series of earlier pamphlets) that argued there was no biblical justification for any Church government. 

Sykes letters conversely defended the deprivation of Bishops by the ci