An examination of the literature of the Bangorian controversy reveals that one of the main issues dividing the controversialists was their understanding of the history of the church, and especially their understanding of the English Reformation. Hoadleian low churchmen understood the English Reformation to have been carried on by parliament and the crown, to have restored the rights of the laity against the clergy, to have been driven by a liberty of private judgment against enforced dogma, to have been carried on in stages for reasons of political pragmatism, and to be incomplete. High churchmen in contrast held to a Reformation which was effected by the bishops and Convocation, which restored the rights of the bishops and Convocation against the papacy, which was driven by a concern for doctrinal purity, and which was a reform of abuses, in order to conform the church to the purity of its primitive pattern, not a comprehensive restructuring of the church.

As the understandings of what constituted the Reformation offered by Hoadleians and their high church opponents differed from each other, so did their definitions of popery. The characteristics of popery according to the Hoadleians are a familiar mantra which is repeated throughout the literature of the Bangorian controversy: clerical power (epitomized by Convocation and jure divino bishops), church authority which is independent of the state, doctrinal uniformity which overrides the claims of individual conscience, and the support of arbitrary, absolutist governments which will enforce all these.