The bishop of Bangor's scheme

A central problem of interpretation in church-state relations during the eighteenth century is the legacy of Locke. Lockean theories of toleration tend to be taken as anticipations of the liberal separation between church and state. Trenchard and Gordon stand at the centre of this problem because they are seen as key transmitters of the ‘commonwealth’ political theory that connected the ‘British revolutions’ of 1649, 1688, and 1776 through their two series of weekly essays, The Independent Whig (1720–1) and Cato's Letters (1720–3). The Independent Whig appeared in America as early as 1724 and was printed as late as 1816. It featured in the Enlightenment in France by the militant hand of Baron d’Holbach in 1767. Americanists, in particular, have categorised Trenchard and Gordon rather nebulously as ‘libertarians’ by their amalgamation of ‘Lockeanism’ with ‘radical’ Whiggery. This categorisation takes Trenchard and Gordon's opposition to Tory political thought and high-church ecclesiology to imply a total distrust for all clergymen.

While the separationist reading of Locke, by its prolepsis, risks neglecting his relationships with Restoration and Revolution ecclesiology, Trenchard and Gordon show the difficulties in appreciating how an Erastian defence of the royal supremacy over the church proceeded with toleration. Andrew Thompson has suggested that it is ‘unclear what Trenchard and Gordon's views on the relationship between church and state were’ because they seemed ‘equivocal as to whether the best form of church-state relations was that of an Erastian supremacy of the state over the church or a Lockean division’. By understanding Trenchard and Gordon's ecclesiastical writings on their own terms and not in exclusive relation to Locke, it will become clear that their position was the former. As Whigs and low churchmen feared that the Revolution settlement of 1689 was at risk from priestly aspirations toward asserting the independence of the Church of England from the crown-in-parliament, Trenchard and Gordon launched their defence of civil religion. They argued that the clergymen of the Church were public officeholders of the civil state responsible for preaching the reformed religion according to its articles of faith in order to contribute to the peace of English society.