Perhaps the most striking feature of the Bangorian controversy, given the moderate reputation of the eighteenth-century Church of England, is the absence of the middle ground. The rhetorical appeal to the via media was not, of course, absent – it was, in fact, ubiquitous – but in reality Hoadly's sermon acted as a catalyst to polarize opinion within the Church of England. Even Roland Stromberg, eulogizing in the 1950s upon the religious ‘liberals’ of the eighteenth century, conceded that the middle ground had disappeared from the Church of England during the Bangorian controversy, and that, in his words, one was faced with ‘a most unpleasant choice between treasonable fanaticism and semi-deistic Erastianism’.

The Bangorian controversy was neither an aberration, nor an outbreak of collective madness, but rather it was an unveiling of an underlying theological fissure that had always divided the post-Restoration church. Several figures of note within the Church of England had for some time been avoiding Stromberg's ‘unpleasant choice’ and those who became known as the latitudinarian party had expended much care and energy to effect a happy marriage of scepticism and faith. They had been persuaded of the compelling nature of Hobbes's premises concerning Christian doctrine and the authority of the church, but were reticent of adopting his conclusions. They were trying to hold both ‘treasonable fanaticism’ (i.e. orthodox Christianity) and ‘semi-deistic Erastianism’ (i.e. Hobbesian scepticism) simultaneously. The most subtle of these thinkers was John Locke.