Arthur Ashley Sykes

[6] The sermon of Hoadly that set off the Bangorian Controversy had been anticipated by Sykes preaching in January 1717, on the same text with essentially the same theme.

[8] In 1718 he wrote to defend Richard Bentley in the St James's Post, who had been deprived of his degrees by Thomas Gooch acting as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

He also restricted the scope of the miraculous, for example rejecting the reports associated to the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard, and the tomb of the Jansenist supporter François de Pâris.

[11] In 1737 Sykes published An enquiry into the meaning of demoniacks in the New Testament, rejecting any belief in the existence of demons and regarding those possessed as simply suffering from mental illness.

[12] Sykes also rejected the devil as a supernatural evil being, anticipating the allegory argument of John Epps.

[15] These works were part of a larger debate on demonology and possession, with Sykes siding with the sceptics Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Woolston, against Zachary Pearce and Richard Smalbroke.