LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP.
(1) CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON'S THEOLOGY.
'Latitudinarian' is not so neutral a term as could be desired. It
conveys an implication of reproach and suspicion, by no means ungrounded
in some instances, but very inappropriate when used of men who must
count among the most distinguished ornaments of the English Church. But
no better title suggests itself. The eminent prelates who were raised to
the bench in King William III.'s time can no longer, without ambiguity,
be called 'Low Churchmen,' because the Evangelicals who succeeded to
the name belong to a wholly different school of thought from the Low
Churchmen of an earlier age; nor 'Whigs,' because that sobriquet has
long been confined to politics; nor 'Broad Churchmen,' because the term
would be apt to convey a set of ideas belonging to the nineteenth more
than to the eighteenth century. It only remains to divest the word as
far as possible of its polemical associations, and to use it as denoting
what some would call breadth, others Latitudinarianism of religious and
ecclesiastical opinion.
There were many faulty elements in the Latitudinarianism of the
eighteenth century. Those who dreaded and lamented its advances found it
no difficult task to show that sometimes it was connected with Deistical
or with Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm,
sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They could
point also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mere
irreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of a
liberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement of
hostility or alarm, seemed to lose all power of ordinary discrimination.
Much in the same way as every 'freethinker' was set down as a libertine
or an atheist, so also many men of undoubted piety and earnestness who
had done distinguished services in the Christian cause, and who had
greatly contributed to raise the repute of the English Church, were
constantly ranked as Latitudinarians in one promiscuous class with men
to whose principles they were utterly opposed. But, after making all
allowance for the unfortunate confusion thus attached to the term, the
fact remains that the alarm was not unfounded. Undoubtedly a lower form
of Latitudinarianism gained ground, very deficient in some important
respects. Just in the same way as, before the middle of the century, a
sort of spiritual inertness had enfeebled the vigour of High Churchmen
on the one hand and of Nonconformists on the other, so also it was with
the Latitude men. After the first ten or fifteen years of the century
the Broad Church party in the Church of England was in no very
satisfactory state. It had lost not only in spirit and energy, but also
in earnestness and piety. Hoadly, Herring, Watson, Blackburne, all
showed the characteristic defect of their age--a want of spiritual depth
and fervour. They needed a higher elevation of motive and of purpose to
be such leaders as could be desired of what was in reality a great
religious movement.
For, whatever may have been its deficiencies, there was no religious
movement of such lasting importance as that which from the latter part
of the seventeenth until near the end of the eighteenth century was
being carried on under the opprobrium of Latitudinarianism. The
Methodist and Evangelical revival had, doubtless, greater visible and
immediate consequences. Much in the same way, some of the widespread
monastic revivals of the Middle Ages were more visible witnesses to the
power of religion, and more immediately conducive to its interests, than
the silent current of theological thought which was gradually preparing
the way for the Reformation. But it was these latter influences which,
in the end, have taken the larger place in the general history of
Christianity. The Latitudinarianism which had already set in before the
Revolution of 1688, unsatisfactory as it was in many respects, probably
did more than any other agency in directing and gradually developing the
general course of religious thought. Its importance may be intimated in
this, that of all the questions in which it was chiefly interested there
is scarcely one which has not started into fresh life in our own days,
and which is not likely to gain increasing significance as time
advances. Church history in the seventeenth century had been most nearly
connected with that of the preceding age; it was still directly occupied
with the struggles and contentions which had been aroused by the
Reformation. That of the eighteenth century is more nearly related to
the period which succeeded it. In the sluggish calm that followed the
abatement of old controversies men's minds reverted anew to the wide
general principles on which the Reformation had been based, and, with
the loss of power which attends uncertainty, were making tentative
efforts to improve and strengthen the superstructure. 'Intensity,' as
has been remarked, 'had for a time done its work, and was now giving
place to breadth; when breadth should be natural, intensity might come
again.'[195] The Latitude men of the last age can only be fairly judged
in the light of this. Their immediate plans ended for the most part in
disappointing failure. It was perhaps well that they did, as some indeed
of the most active promoters of them were fain to acknowledge. Their
proposed measures of comprehension, of revision, of reform, were often
defective in principle, and in some respects as one-sided as the evils
they were intended to cure. But if their ideas were not properly
matured, or if the time was not properly matured for them, they at all
events contained the germs of much which may be realised in the future.
Meanwhile the comprehensive spirit which is absolutely essential in a
national Church was kept alive. The Church of England would have fallen,
or would have deserved to fall, if a narrow exclusiveness had gained
ground in it without check or protest.
It is proposed to invite, in this chapter, a more particular attention
to the writings of Archbishop Tillotson. He lived and died in the
seventeenth century, but is an essential part of the Church history of
the eighteenth. The most general sketch of its characteristics would be
imperfect without some reference to the influence which his life and
teaching exercised upon it. Hallam contrasts the great popularity of his
sermons for half a century with the utter neglect into which they have
now fallen, as a remarkable instance of the fickleness of religious
taste.[196] Something must certainly be attributed to change of taste.
If Tillotson were thoroughly in accord with our own age in thought and
feeling, the mere difference of his style from that which pleases the
modern ear would prevent his having many readers. He is reckoned diffuse
and languid, greatly deficient in vigour and vivacity. How different was
the tone of criticism in the last age! Dryden considered that he was
indebted for his good style to the study of Tillotson's sermons.[197]
Robert Nelson spoke of them as the best standard of the English
language.[198] Addison expressed the same opinion, and thought his
writing would form a proper groundwork for the dictionary which he once
thought of compiling.[199]
But it was not the beauty and eloquence of language with which Tillotson
was at one time credited that gave him the immense repute with which his
name was surrounded; neither is it a mere change of literary taste that
makes a modern reader disinclined to admire, or even fairly to
appreciate, his sermons. He struck the key-note which in his own day,
and for two generations or more afterwards, governed the predominant
tone of religious reasoning and sentiment. In the substance no less than
in the form of his writings men found exactly what suited them--their
own thoughts raised to a somewhat higher level, and expressed just in
the manner which they would most aspire to imitate. His sermons, when
delivered, had been exceedingly popular. We are told of the crowds of
auditors and the fixed attention with which they listened, also of the
number of clergymen who frequented his St. Laurence lectures, not only
for the pleasure of hearing, but to form their minds and improve their
style. He was, in fact, the great preacher of his time. Horace Walpole,
writing in 1742, compared the throngs who flocked to hear Whitefield to
the concourse which used to gather when Tillotson preached.[200] The
literature of the eighteenth century abounds in expressions of respect
for his character and admiration of his sermons. Samuel Wesley said that
he had brought the art of preaching 'near perfection, had there been as
much of life as there is of politeness and generally of cool, clear,
close reasoning and convincing arguments.'[201] Even John Wesley puts
him in the very foremost rank of great preachers.[202] Robert Nelson
specially recommended his sermons to his nephew 'for true notions of
religion.[203] 'I like,' remarked Sir Robert Howard, 'such sermons as
Dr. Tillotson's, where all are taught a plain and certain way of
salvation, and with all the charms of a calm and blessed temper and of
pure reason are excited to the uncontroverted, indubitable duties of
religion; where all are plainly shown that the means to obtain the
eternal place of happy rest are those, and no other, which also give
peace in the present life; and where everyone is encouraged and exhorted
to learn, but withal to use his own care and reason in working out his
own salvation.'[204] Bishop Fleetwood exclaims of him that 'his name
will live for ever, increasing in honour with all good and wise
men.'[205] Locke called him 'that ornament of our Church, that every way
eminent prelate.' In the 'Spectator' his sermons are among Sir Roger de
Coverley's favourites.[206] In the 'Guardian'[207] Addison tells how
'the excellent lady, the Lady Lizard, in the space of one summer
furnished a gallery with chairs and couches of her own and her
daughter's working, and at the same time heard Dr. Tillotson's sermons
twice over.' In the 'Tatler' he is spoken of as 'the most eminent and
useful author of his age.'[208] His sermons were translated into Dutch,
twice into French, and many of them into German. Even in the last few
years of the eighteenth century we find references to his 'splendid
talents.'[209]
But, as a rule, the writers of the eighteenth century seem unable to
form anything like a calm estimate of the eminent bishop. Many were
lavish in their encomiums; a minority were extravagant in censures and
expressions of dislike. His gentle and temperate disposition had not
saved him from bitter invectives in his lifetime, which did not cease
after his death. He was set down by his opponents as 'a freethinker.' In
the violent polemics of Queen Anne's reign this was a charge very easily
incurred, and, once incurred, carried with it very grave implications.
By what was apt to seem a very natural sequence Dean Hickes called the
good primate in downright terms an atheist.[210] Charles Leslie speaks
of him as 'that unhappy man,'[211] and said he was 'owned by the
atheistical wits of all England as their primate and apostle.'[212] Of
course opinions thus promulgated by the leaders of a party descended
with still further distortion to more ignorant partisans. Tom Tempest in
the 'Idler' believes that King William burned Whitehall that he might
steal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist.[213] John
Wesley, as has been already observed, held the Archbishop in much
respect. He was too well read a man to listen to misrepresentations on
such a matter, too broad and liberal in his views to be scared at the
name of Latitudinarian, too deeply impressed with the supreme importance
of Christian morality to judge anyone harshly for preaching 'virtue' to
excess. But Whitefield and Seward were surpassed by none in the
unsparing nature of their attack on Tillotson, 'that traitor who sold
his Lord.'[214] It is fair to add that later in life Whitefield
regretted the use of such terms, and owned that 'his treatment of him
had been far too severe.'[215] With many of the Evangelicals Tillotson
was in great disfavour. It is not a little remarkable that a divine who
had been constantly extolled as a very pattern of Christian piety and
Christian wisdom should by them be systematically decried as little
better than a heathen moralist.
The foregoing instances may serve to illustrate the important place
which Tillotson held in the religious history of the eighteenth century.
They may suffice to show that while there was an extraordinary diversity
of opinion as to the character of the influence he had exercised--while
some loved and admired him and others could scarcely tolerate the
mention of him--all agreed that his life and writings had been a very
important element in directing the religious thought of his own and the
succeeding age. His opponents were very willing to acknowledge that he
was greatly respected by Nonconformists. Why not? said they, when he and
his party are half Presbyterians, and would 'bring the Church into the
Conventicle or the Conventicle into the Church.'[216] They allowed
still more readily that he was constantly praised by Rationalists and
Deists. Collins put a formidable weapon into their hands when he called
Tillotson 'the head of all freethinkers.'[217] But they also had to own
that in authority as well as in station he had been eminently a leader
in the English Church. A majority of the bishops, and many of the most
distinguished among them, had followed his lead. The great bulk of the
laity had honoured him in his lifetime, and continued to revere his
memory. Men like Locke, and Somers, and Addison were loud in his praise.
Even those who were accustomed to regard the Low Churchmen of their age
as 'amphibious trimmers' or 'Latitudinarian traditors' were by no means
unanimous in dispraise of Tillotson. Dodwell had spoken of him with
esteem; and Robert Nelson, who was keenly alive to 'the infection of
Latitudinarian teaching,' not only maintained a lifelong friendship with
him, and watched by him at his death, but also, as was before mentioned,
referred to his sermons for sound notions of religion.
A study of Tillotson's writings ought to throw light upon the general
tendency of religious thought which prevailed in England during the
half-century or more through which their popularity lasted; for there
can be no doubt that his influence was not of a kind which depends on
great personal qualities. He was a man who well deserved to be highly
esteemed by all with whom he came in contact. But in his gentle and
moderate disposition there was none of the force and fire which compels
thought into new channels, and sways the minds of men even, against
their will. With sound practical sense, with pure, unaffected piety, and
in unadorned but persuasive language, he simply gave utterance to
religious ideas in a form which to a wide extent satisfied the reason
and came home to the conscience of his age. Those, on the other hand,
who most distrusted the direction which such ideas were taking, held in
proportionate aversion the primate who had been so eminent a
representative of them.
Tillotson was universally regarded both by friends and foes as 'a
Latitude man.' His writings, therefore, may well serve to exemplify the
moderate Latitudinarianism of a thoughtful and religious English
Churchman at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Perhaps the first thing that will strike a reader of his works is the
constant appeal on all matters of religion to reason. That Christianity
is 'the best and the holiest, the wisest and the most reasonable
religion in the world;'[218] that 'all the precepts of it are
reasonable and wise, requiring such duties of us as are suitable to the
light of nature, and do approve themselves to the best reason of
mankind'[219]--such is the general purport of the arguments by which he
most trusts to persuade the heart and the understanding. And how, on the
other hand, could he better meet the infidelity of the age than by
setting himself 'to show the unreasonableness of atheism and of scoffing
at religion?' If the appeal to reason will not persuade, what will?
The primary and sovereign place assigned to reason in Tillotson's
conception of man as a being able to know and serve God involved some
consequences which must be mentioned separately, though they are closely
connected with one another.
It led him, if not to reject, at all events to regard with profound
distrust all assumptions of any gift of spiritual discernment
distinguishable from ordinary powers of understanding. Tillotson's view
was that the Spirit of God enlightens the human mind only through the
reason, so that the faith of Abraham, for example, 'was the result of
the wisest reasoning.'[220] He allows that the spiritual presence may
act upon the reason by raising and strengthening the faculty, by making
clear the object of inquiry, by suggesting arguments, by holding minds
intent upon the evidence, by removing the impediments which hinder
assent, and especially by making the persuasion of a truth effectual on
the life.[221] This, however, is the very utmost that Tillotson could
concede to those who dwell upon the presence within the soul of an
inward spiritual light.
Tillotson gave great offence to some of his contemporaries by some
expressions he has used in relation to the degree of assurance which is
possible to man in regard of religious truths. He based all assent upon
rational evidence. But he unhesitatingly admitted that mathematics only
admit of clear demonstration; in other matters proof consists in the
best arguments that the quality and nature of the thing will bear. We
may be well content, he said, with a well-grounded confidence on matters
of religious truth corresponding to that which is abundantly sufficient
for our purposes in the conduct of our most important worldly interests.
A charge was thereupon brought against him of authorising doubt and
opening a door to the most radical disbelief. The attack scarcely
deserved Tillotson's somewhat lengthy defence. He had but re-stated what
many before him had observed as to the exceptional character of
demonstrative evidence, and the folly of expecting it where it is
plainly inapplicable. A religious mind, itself thoroughly convinced,
may chafe against possibility of doubt, but may as well complain against
the conditions of human nature. Yet the controversy on this point
between Tillotson and his opponents is instructive in forming a judgment
upon the general character of religious thought in that age. Tillotson
appears, on the one hand, to have been somewhat over-cautious in
disclaiming the alleged consequences of his denial of absolute religious
certainty. He allows the theoretical possibility of doubt, but speaks as
if it were essentially unreasonable. He shows no sign of recognising the
sincere faith that often underlies it; that prayerful doubt may be in
itself a kind of prayer; that its possibility is involved in all
inquiry; that there is such a thing as an irreligious stifling of doubt,
resulting in a spiritual and moral degradation; that doubt may sometimes
be the clear work of the Spirit of God to break down pride and
self-sufficiency, to force us to realise what we believe, to quicken our
sense of truth, and to bid us chiefly rest our faith on personal and
spiritual grounds which no doubts can touch. In this Tillotson shared in
what must be considered a grave error of his age. Few things so
encouraged the growth of Deism and unbelief as the stiff refusal on the
part of the defenders of Christianity to admit of a frequently religious
element in doubt. There was a general disposition, in which even such
men as Bishop Berkeley shared, to relegate all doubters to the class of
Deists and 'Atheists.' Tillotson strove practically against this fatal
tendency, but his reasonings on the subject were confused. He earned,
more perhaps than any other divine of his age, the love and confidence
of many who were perplexed with religious questionings; but his
arguments had not the weight which they would have gained if he had
acknowledged more ungrudgingly that doubt must not always be regarded as
either a folly or a sin.
Tillotson had learnt much from the Puritan and Calvinistic teaching
which, instilled into him throughout his earlier years, had laid deep
the foundations of the serious and fervent vein of piety conspicuous in
all his life and writings. He had learnt much from the sublime Christian
philosophy of his eminent instructors at Cambridge, Cudworth and Henry
More, John Smith and Whichcote, under whom his heart and intellect had
attained a far wider reach than they could ever have gained in the
school of Calvin. But his influence in the eighteenth century would have
been more entirely beneficial, if he had treasured up from his Puritan
remembrances clearer perceptions of the searching power of divine grace;
or if he had not only learnt from the Platonists to extol 'that special
prerogative of Christianity that it dares appeal to reason,'[222] and
to be imbued with a sense of the divine immutability of moral
principles, but had also retained their convictions of unity with the
Divine nature, implied alike in that eternity of morality and in that
supremacy of the rational faculties,--together with a corresponding
belief that there may be intimate communion between the spirit of man
and his Maker, and that 'they who make reason the light of heaven and
the very oracle of God, must consider that the oracle of God is not to
be heard but in His holy temple,' that is to say, in the heart of a good
man purged by that indwelling Spirit.[223] Considering the immense
influence which Tillotson's Cambridge teachers had upon the development
of his mind, it is curious how widely he differs from them in inward
tone. It is quite impossible to conceive of their dwelling, as he and
his followers did, upon the pre-eminent importance of the external
evidences.
Tillotson could not adopt as unreservedly as he did his pervading tenet
of the reasonableness of Christianity without yielding to reason all the
rights due to an unquestioned leader. Like Henry More, he would have
wished to take for a motto 'that generous resolution of Marcus
Cicero,--rationem, quo ea me cunque ducet, sequar.'[224] 'Doctrines,' he
said, 'are vehemently to be suspected which decline trial. To deny
liberty of inquiry and judgment in matters of religion, is the greatest
injury and disparagement to truth that can be, and a tacit
acknowledgment that she lies under some disadvantage, and that there is
less to be said for her than for error.'[225] 'Tis only things false and
adulterate which shun the light and fear the touchstone.' He has left a
beautiful prayer which his editor believed he was in the habit of using
before he composed a sermon. In it he asks to be made impartial in his
inquiry after truth, ready always to receive it in love, to practise it
in his life, and to continue steadfast in it to the end. He adds, 'I
perfectly resign myself, O Lord, to Thy counsel and direction, in
confidence that Thy goodness is such, that Thou wilt not suffer those
who sincerely desire to know the truth and rely upon Thy guidance,
finally to miscarry.'[226]
These last words are a key to Tillotson's opinion upon a question about
which, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, there was much
animated controversy--in what light sincere error should be regarded. If
free inquiry on religious subjects is allowable and right, is a man to
be held blameless if he arrives at false conclusions in respect of the
fundamental articles of faith? That the answer to be given might involve
grave issues continually appeared in discussion alike with Roman
Catholics and with Deists. The former had no stronger argument against
liberty of private judgment than to ask how those who freely granted it
could pass any moral censure upon the heresies which might constantly
result from it. The latter insisted that, whether they were right or
wrong, no Protestant had any title to hold them in the slightest degree
blameable before God or man for any opinions which were the result of
conscientious research. Much was written on the subject by theologians
of the generation which succeeded next after Tillotson, as for instance
by Hoadly, Sykes, Whitby, Law, Hare, and Balguy. But in truth, if the
premisses be granted--if free inquiry is allowable and the inquiry be
conducted with all honesty of heart and mind--no candid person, whatever
be his opinions, can give other than one answer. Kettlewell, High
Churchman and Nonjuror, readily acknowledged that 'where our ignorance
of any of Christ's laws is joined with an honest heart, and remains
after our sincere industry to know the truth, we may take comfort to
ourselves that it is involuntary and innocent.'[227] In this he agreed
with his Low Church contemporary, Chillingworth, who said that 'To ask
pardon of simple and involuntary errors is tacitly to imply that God is
angry with us for them, and that were to impute to Him this strange
tyranny of requiring brick where He gives no straw; of expecting to
gather where He strewed not; of being offended with us for not doing
what He knows we cannot do.'[228] Tillotson always speaks guardedly on
the subject. He was keenly alive to the evil practical consequences
which may result from intellectual error,--very confident that in all
important particulars orthodox doctrine was the true and safe path, very
anxious therefore not to say anything which might weaken the sense of
responsibility in those who deviated from it. But he never attempted to
evade the logical conclusion which follows from an acknowledged right of
private judgment. In his practice as well as in his theory, he wholly
admitted the blamelessness of error where there was ardent sincerity of
purpose. He wrote several times against the Unitarians, but gladly
allowed that many of them were thoroughly good men, honest and candid in
argument,[229] nor did he even scruple to admit to a cordial friendship
one of their most distinguished leaders, Thomas Firmin, a man of great
beneficence and philanthropy.
There was no reservation in Tillotson's mind as to the general right of
private judgment. 'Any man that hath the spirit of a man must abhor to
submit to this slavery not to be allowed to examine his religion, and to
inquire freely into the grounds and reasons of it; and would break with
any Church in the world upon this single point; and would tell them
plainly, "If your religion be too good to be examined, I doubt it is too
bad to be believed."'[230] He grounded the right on three
principles.[231] The first was, that essentials are so plain that every
man of ordinary capacities, after receiving competent instruction, is
able to judge of them. This, he added, was no new doctrine of the
Reformation, but had been expressly owned by such ancient fathers as St.
Chrysostom and St. Augustine. The second was, that it was a Scriptural
injunction. St. Luke, in the Acts, St. Paul and St. John in their
Epistles, had specially commended search, examination, inquiry, proof.
The third was, that even those who most disputed the right were forced
nevertheless to grant it in effect. Whenever they make a proselyte they
argue with him, they appeal to his reason, they bid him to use his
judgment. If it were urged that it could not be accordant to the Divine
purpose to give full scope to a liberty which distracted unity and gave
rise to so much controversy and confusion,--we must judge, he replied,
by what is, not by what we fancy ought to be. We could be relieved from
the responsibilities of judging for ourselves only by the existence of
an infallible authority to which we could appeal. This is not granted
either in temporal or in spiritual matters. Nor is it needed. A degree
of certainty sufficient for all our needs is attainable without it. Even
in Apostolic times, when it might be said to have existed, error and
schism were not thereby prevented. 'With charity and mutual forbearance,
the Church may be peaceful and happy without absolute unity of
opinion.'[232] Let it be enough that we have guides to instruct us in
what is plain, and to guide us in more doubtful matters. After all,
'there is as much to secure men from mistakes in matters of belief, as
God hath afforded to keep men from sin in matters of practice. He hath
made no effectual and infallible provision that men shall not sin; and
yet it would puzzle any man to give a good reason why God should take
more care to secure men against errors in belief than against sin and
wickedness in their lives.'[233]
Tillotson, however, did not omit to add four cautions as to the proper
limits within which the right of private judgment should be exercised.
(1) A private person must only judge for himself, not impose his
judgment on others. His only claim to that liberty is that it belongs to
all. (2) The liberty thus possessed does not dispense with the necessity
of guides and teachers in religion; nor (3) with due submission to
authority. 'What by public consent and authority is determined and
established ought not to be gainsaid by private persons but upon very
clear evidence of the falsehood or unlawfulness of it; nor is the peace
and unity of the Church to be violated upon every scruple and frivolous
pretence.' (4) There are a great many who, from ignorance or
insufficient capacity, are incompetent to judge of any controverted
question. 'Such persons ought not to engage in disputes of religion; but
to beg God's direction and to rely upon their teachers; and above all to
live up to the plain dictates of natural light, and the clear commands
of God's word, and this will be their best security.'[234]
There has probably been no period in which liberty of thought on
religious subjects has been debated in this country so anxiously, so
vehemently, so generally, as in the earlier part of the eighteenth
century. The Reformation had hinged upon it; but general principles were
then greatly obscured in the excitement of change, and amid the
multiplicity of secondary questions of more immediate practical
interest. For a hundred and fifty years after the first breach with
Rome, it may be said that private judgment was most frequently
considered in connection with a power of option between different Church
communions. A man had to choose whether he would adhere to the old, or
adopt the new form of faith--whether he would remain staunch to the
reformed Anglican Church, or cast in his lot with the Puritans, or with
one or other of the rising sects,--whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism
most conformed to his ideas of Church government. When at last these
controversies had abated, the full importance of the principles involved
in this new liberty of thought began to be fully felt. Their real scope
and nature, apart from any transient applications, engaged great
attention, first among the studious and thoughtful, among philosophers
and theologians, but before long throughout the country generally. Locke
among philosophers, Tillotson and Chillingworth among divines, addressed
their reasonings not to the few, but to the many. Their arguments
however would not have been so widely and actively discussed, had it not
been for the Deists. Free-thought in reference to certain ecclesiastical
topics had been for several generations familiar to every Englishman;
but just at a time when reflecting persons of every class were beginning
to inquire what was implied in this liberty of thought and choice, the
term was unhappily appropriated by the opponents of revelation, and, as
if by common consent, conceded to them. Notwithstanding all that could
be urged by a number of eminent and influential preachers and writers,
freethinking became a term everywhere associated with Deism and
disbelief. It was a suicidal error, which rapidly gained ground, and
lingers still. The Deists gained great advantage from it. They started
as it were with an unchallenged verbal assumption that the most
fundamental principle of correct reasoning was on their side. All
inquiries as to truth, all sound research, all great reforms, demand
free thought; and they were the acknowledged Freethinkers. A name could
not have been chosen more admirably adapted to create, especially in
young and candid minds, a prejudice in their favour. For the same
reason, all who asserted the duty of fearless investigation in the
interests of Christianity could only do so under penalty of incurring
from many quarters loudly expressed suspicions of being Deists in
disguise. Tillotson was by strong conviction an advocate of freethought.
'He is a Freethinker,' said all who were afraid of liberty. 'Therefore
no doubt he is undermining Revelation, he is fighting the battle of the
Deists.' 'Yes,' echoed the Deists, glad to persuade themselves that they
had the sanction of his authority. 'He is a Freethinker; if not one of
us, at all events he is closely allied with us.' Yet, on the whole, his
fame and influence probably gained by it. Many who were inclined to
Deistical opinions were induced to read Tillotson, and to feel the force
of his arguments, who would never have opened a page of such a writer as
Leslie. Many, again, who dreaded the Deists, but were disturbed by their
arguments, were wisely anxious to see what was advanced against them by
the distinguished prelate who had been said to agree with them in some
of their leading principles. Meanwhile liberty of thought, independently
of 'Freethinking,' in the obnoxious sense of the word, attracted a
growing amount of attention. The wide interest felt in the ponderous
Bangorian controversy, as it dragged on its tedious course, is in itself
ample evidence of the desire to see some satisfactory adjustment of the
respective bounds of authority and reason. No doubt Tillotson did more
than any one else, Locke only excepted, to create this interest. It was
an immense contribution to the general progress of intelligent thought
on religious subjects, to do as much as was effected by these two
writers in removing abstract ideas from the domain of theological and
philosophical speculation, and transferring them, not perhaps without
some loss of preciseness and definition, to the popular language of
ordinary life. The eighteenth century erred much in trusting too
implicitly to the powers of 'common sense.' Yet this direct appeal to
the average understanding was in many ways productive of benefit. It
induced people to realise to themselves, more than they had done, what
it was they believed, and to form intelligible conceptions of
theological tenets, instead of vaguely accepting upon trust what they
had learnt from their religious teachers. Even while it depressed for
the time the ideal of spiritual attainment, the defect was temporary,
but the work real. 'By clearing away,' says Dorner, 'much dead matter,
it prepared the way for a reconstruction of theology from the very
depths of the heart's belief.'[235]
In calling upon all men to test their faith by their reason, Tillotson
had to explain the relations of human reason to those articles of belief
which lie beyond its grasp. There was the more reason to do this,
because of the difficulties which were felt, and the disputes which had
arisen about 'mysteries' in religion. Undoubtedly it is a word very
capable of misuse. 'Times,' says the author last quoted, 'unfruitful in
theological knowledge are ever wont to fall back upon mystery and upon
the much abused demand of "taking the reason prisoner to the obedience
of faith."' With some, religion has thus been made barren and
ineffectual by being regarded as a thing to be passively accepted
without being understood. Among others, it has been degraded into
superstition by the same cause. When an appetite for the mysterious has
been cherished, it becomes easy to attribute spiritual results to
material causes, to the confusion of the first principles alike of
morality and of knowledge. Some, through an ambition of understanding
the unintelligible, have wasted their energies in a labyrinth of
scholastic subtleties; others have surrendered themselves to a vague
unpractical mysticism.
But, whatever may have been the errors common in other ages, it was
certainly no characteristic of the eighteenth century to linger
unhealthily upon the contemplation of mysteries. The predominant fault
was one of a directly opposite nature. There was apt to be an impatience
of all mystery, a contemptuous neglect of all that was not self-evident
or easy to understand. 'The Gospel,' it was said, 'professes plainness
and uses no hard words.'[236] Whatever was obscure was only the
imperfection of the old dispensation, or the corruption of the new, and
might be excluded from the consideration of rational beings. Even in the
natural world there was most mystery in the things which least concern
us; Divine providence had ordered that what was most necessary should
be least obscure. Much too was added about the priestcraft and
superstition which had commonly attended the inculcation of mysterious
doctrines. In all such arguments there was a considerable admixture of
truth. But in its general effect it tended greatly to depress the tone
of theological thought, to take away from it sublimity and depth, and to
degrade religion into a thing of earth.[237] Even where it did not
controvert any of the special doctrines of revealed religion, it
inclined men to pass lightly over them, or at all events to regard them
only in their directly practical aspects, and so to withdraw from the
soul, as if they were but idle speculations, some of the most elevating
subjects of contemplation which the Christian faith affords. Such
reasoners were strangely blind to the thought that few could be so
inertly commonplace in mind and feeling, as to rest satisfied with being
fired to virtuous deeds by the purely practical side of transcendental
truths, without delighting in further reflection on the very nature of
those mysteries themselves. Nor did they at all realise, that
independently of any direct results in morality and well-being, it is no
small gain to a man to be led by the thought of Divine mysteries to feel
that he stands on the verge of a higher world, a higher nature, of which
he may have scarcely a dim perception, but to which creatures lower than
himself in the scale of being are wholly insensible. There was little
feeling that truths which baffle reason may be, and must be,
nevertheless accordant with true reason. It was left to William Law, a
writer who stood much apart from the general spirit of his age, to
remark: 'This is the true ground and nature of the mysteries of
Christian redemption. They are, in themselves, nothing else but what the
nature of things requires them to be ... but they are mysteries to man,
because brought into the scheme of redemption by the interposition of
God to work in a manner above and superior to all that is seen and done
in the things of this world.'[238]
Nothing very instructive or suggestive must be looked for from Tillotson
on the subject of Divine mysteries. He was too much of an
eighteenth-century man, if it may be so expressed, to be able to give
much appreciative thought to anything that lay beyond the direct
province of reason. Yet, on the other hand, he was too deeply religious,
and too watchful an observer, not to perceive that the unspiritual and
sceptical tendencies of his age were fostered by the disparagement of
all suprasensual ideas. The consequence is, that he deals with the
subject without ease, and with the air of an apologist. This remark
does not so much relate to the miracles. Upon them he constantly insists
as a very material part of distinctly rational evidence. But mysteries,
apart from any evidential character which they may possess, he clearly
regards almost entirely in the sense of difficulties, necessary to be
believed, but mere impediments to faith rather than any assistance to
it. 'Great reverence,' he says, 'is due to them where they are certain
and necessary in the nature and reason of the thing, but they are not
easily to be admitted without necessity and very good evidence.'[239] He
is not sure whether much that seems mysterious may not be in some degree
explained as compliances, for the sake of our edification, with human
modes of thought.[240] On the whole, he is inclined to reduce within as
narrow a compass as possible the number of tenets which transcend our
faculties of reason, to receive them, when acknowledged, with
reverential submission, but to pass quickly from them, as matters in
which we have little concern, and which do not greatly affect the
practical conduct of life. His extreme distaste for anything that
appeared to him like idle speculation or unprofitable controversy, often
blinded him in a very remarkable degree to the evident fact, that the
very same mysterious truths which have given occasion to many futile
speculations, many profitless disputes, are also, in every Christian
communion, rich in their supply of Christian motives and practical
bearings upon conduct.
Tillotson's opinions on points of doctrine were sometimes attacked with
a bitterness of rancour only to be equalled by the degree of
misrepresentation upon which the charges were founded. Leslie concludes
his indictment against him and Burnet by saying that 'though the sword
of justice be (at present) otherwise employed than to animadvert upon
these blasphemers, and though the chief and father of them all is
advanced to the throne of Canterbury, and thence infuses his deadly
poison through the nation,' yet at least all 'ought to separate from the
Church communion of these heretical bishops.'[241] Yet, if we examine
the arguments upon which this invective is supported, and compare with
their context the detached sentences which his hot-blooded antagonist
adduces, we shall find that Tillotson maintained no opinion which would
not be considered in a modern English Churchman to be at all events
perfectly legitimate. Had his opponents been content to point out
serious deficiencies in the general tendency of his teaching, they would
have held a thoroughly tenable position. When they attempted to attach
to his name the stigma of specific heresies, they failed. He thought
for himself, and sometimes very differently from them, but never
wandered far from the paths of orthodoxy. Accusations of Socinianism
were freely circulated both against him and Burnet, on grounds which
chiefly serve to show within what narrow grooves religious thought would
have been confined by the objectors. Burnet, whose theological
discourses received Tillotson's hearty commendation, has fully stated
what appears to have been the less clearly conceived opinion of the
archbishop. There was no tincture of Arianism in it; he showed on the
contrary, with much power, the utter untenability of that hypothesis.
The worship of Christ, he said, is so plainly set forth in the New
Testament, that not even the opposers of His divinity deny it; yet
nothing is so much condemned in Scripture as worshipping a
creature.[242] 'We may well and safely determine that Christ was truly
both God and Man.'[243] But he held that this true Divinity of Christ
consisted in 'the indwelling of the Eternal Word in Christ,' which
'became united to His human nature, as our souls dwell in our bodies and
are united to them.'[244] As Leslie said, he did in effect explain the
doctrine of the Trinity as three manifestations of the Divine nature.
'By the first, God may be supposed to have made and to govern all
things; by the second, to have been most perfectly united to the
humanity of Christ; and by the third, to have inspired the penmen of the
Scriptures and the workers of miracles, and still to renew and fortify
all good minds. But though we cannot explain how they are Three and have
a true diversity from one another, so that they are not barely different
names and modes; yet we firmly believe that there is but one God.'[245]
A jealous and disputatious orthodoxy might be correct in affirming that
this exposition of the Trinity was a form of Sabellianism, and one which
might perhaps be accepted by some of the Unitarians. It is stated here
rather to show on what scanty grounds the opponents of the
'Latitudinarian bishops' founded one of their chief accusations of
Socinian heresy.
But this was only part of the general charge. It was also said that
Tillotson was a 'rank Socinian' in regard of his views upon the doctrine
of the satisfaction made by Christ for the sins of men. The ground of
offence lay in his great dislike for anything which seemed to savour
less of Scripture than of scholastic refinements in theology. He thought
it great rashness to prescribe limits, as it were, to infinite wisdom,
and to affirm that man's salvation could not possibly have been wrought
in any other way than by the incarnation and satisfaction of the Son of
God.[246] A Christian reasoner may well concede that he can form no
conjecture in what variety of modes redeeming love might have been
manifested. He has no need to build theories upon what alone is
possible, when the far nobler argument is set before him, to trace the
wisdom and the fitness of the mode which God's providence actually has
chosen. Tillotson raised no question whatever as to the manner in which
redemption was effected, but stated it in exactly such terms as might
have been used by any preacher of the day. For example: 'From these and
many other texts it seems to be very plain and evident, that Christ died
for our sins, and suffered in our stead, and by the sacrifice of Himself
hath made an atonement for us and reconciled us to God, and hath paid a
price and ransom for us, and by the merits of his death hath purchased
for us forgiveness of sins.'[247]
Nevertheless the charge was brought against him, as it was in a less
degree against Burnet and other Low Churchmen of this time, of
'disputing openly against the satisfaction of Christ.' This deserves
some explanation. For though in the mere personal question there can be
little historical interest, it is instructive, as illustrating an
important phase of religious thought. The charge rested on three or four
different grounds. There was the broad general objection, as it seemed
to some, that Tillotson was always searching out ways of bringing reason
to bear even on Divine mysteries, where they held its application to be
impertinent and almost sacrilegious. His refusal, already mentioned, to
allow that the sacrifice of Christ's death was the only conceivable way
in which, consistently with the Divine attributes, sin could be
forgiven, was a further cause for displeasure. It did not at all fall in
with a habit which, both in pulpit and in argumentative divinity, had
become far too customary, of speaking of the Atonement with a kind of
legal, or even mathematical exactness, as of a debt which nothing but
full payment can cancel, or of a problem in proportion which admits only
of one solution. Then, although Tillotson defended the propriety of the
term 'satisfaction,' he had observed that the word was nowhere found in
Scripture, and would apparently have not regretted its disuse. It was a
graver proof of doctrinal laxity, if not of heresy, in the estimation of
many, that although for his own part he always spoke of Christ suffering
'in our stead,' he had thought it perfectly immaterial whether it were
expressed thus or 'for our benefit.' It was all 'a perverse contention
which signified just nothing.... For he that dies with an intention to
do that benefit to another as to save him from death, doth certainly, to
all intents and purposes, die in his place and stead.'[248] Certainly,
in these words Tillotson singularly underrated a very important
difference. Our whole conception of the meaning of Redemption, that most
fundamental doctrine of all Christian theology, is modified by an
acceptance of the one rather than of the other expression. In our own
days one interpretation is considered as legitimate in the English
Church as the other. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a
cramped and mistaken orthodoxy, which did much harm, was apt to
represent the translation 'for our sakes' as connected exclusively with
Deistical or Unitarian opinions. From that point of view, we can
understand how Leslie declared with bitterness, that although the
Archbishop wrote against the Socinians, 'it was really to do them
service, and reconcile men more to their principles by lessening the
differences which are conceived betwixt them and us.'[249]
Another cause which stirred great animosity against Tillotson as a
theological writer consisted in his partial acceptance of that principle
of 'accommodation' which was afterwards made so much use of by Semler
and many other German writers. Thus, the natural love of mystery which,
in man's unenlightened state, had been fruitful in fantastical and
unworthy superstitions, was gently guided to the contemplation of a
mystery of godliness--God manifested in the flesh--so great, so
wonderful, so infinite in mercy, as to 'obscure and swallow up all other
mysteries.'[250] The inclination of mankind to the worship of a visible
and sensible Deity was diverted into its true channel by the revelation
of one to whom, as the 'brightness of His Father's glory, and the
express image of His person,' divine worship might be paid 'without
danger of idolatry, and without injury to the divine nature.'[251] The
apotheosis of heroes, the tendency to raise to semi-divine honours great
benefactors of the race, was sublimely superseded[252] by the exaltation
to the right hand of the Majesty on high of one who is not half but
wholly infinite, and yet true man and the truest benefactor of our race;
One that 'was dead and is alive again, and lives for evermore.' The
religious instinct which craved for mediation and intercession was
gratified, and the worship of saints made for the future inexcusable, by
the gift of one Mediator between God and men, a perpetual advocate and
intercessor.[253] It was the same, Tillotson added, with sacrifice. On
this point he dilated more at length. The sacrificial character, he
said, of the atonement was not to be explained in any one manner. To
open a way of forgiveness which would at the same time inspire a deep
feeling of the guilt and consequences of sin, and create a horror of it,
which would kindle fervent love to the Saviour, and pity for all in
misery as He had pity on us; these are some of the effects which the
sacrifice of Christ is adapted to fulfil, and there may be other divine
counsels hidden in it of which we know little or nothing. But he thought
that further explanation might be found in a tender condescension to
certain religious ideas which almost everywhere prevailed among mankind.
Unreasonable as it was to suppose that the blood of slain animals could
take away sin, sacrifice had always been resorted to. Perhaps it implied
a confession of belief that sin cannot be pardoned without suffering.
Whatever the ground and foundation may have been, at all events, both
among Jews and heathens, it was an established principle that 'without
shedding of blood there is no remission.' God's providence may be deemed
to have adapted itself to this general apprehension, not in order to
countenance these practices, but for the future to abolish them,
deepening at the same time and spiritualising the meaning involved in
them. 'Very probably in compliance with this apprehension of mankind,
and in condescension to it, as well as for other weighty reasons best
known to the divine wisdom, God was pleased to find out such a sacrifice
as should really and effectually procure for them that great blessing of
the forgiveness of sins which they had so long hoped for from the
multitude of their own sacrifices.'[254]
It is curious to see in what sort of light these not very formidable
speculations were construed by some of Tillotson's contemporaries. 'He
makes,' says Leslie, 'the foundation of the Christian religion to be
some foolish and wicked fancies, which got into people's heads, he knows
not and says no matter how; and instead of reforming them, and
commanding us to renounce and abhor them, which one would have expected,
and which Christ did to all other wickedness, the doctor's scheme is,
that God, in compliance with them, and to indulge men in these same wild
and wicked fancies, did send Christ, took His life, and instituted the
whole economy of the Christian religion.'[255] The construction put upon
the Archbishop's words is curious but deplorable. It is not merely that
it exemplifies, though not in nearly so great a degree as other passages
which might be quoted, the polemical virulence which was then
exceedingly common, and which warped the reasoning powers of such men of
talent and repute as Leslie. The encouragement which attacks made in
this spirit gave to the Deism and infidelity against which they were
directed, was a far more permanent evil. Much may be conceded to the
alarm not unnaturally felt at a time when independent thought was
beginning to busy itself in the investigation of doctrines which had
been generally exempt from it, and when all kinds of new difficulties
were being started on all sides. But the many who felt difficulties, and
honestly sought to find a solution of them, were constantly driven into
open hostility by the unconciliatory treatment they met with. Their most
moderate departures from the strictest path of presumed orthodox
exposition were clamorously resented; their interpretations of Christian
doctrine, however religiously conceived, and however worthy of being at
least fairly weighed, were placed summarily under a ban; and those
Church dignitaries in whom they recognised some sort of sympathy were
branded as 'Sons of Belial.' There can be no doubt that at the end of
the seventeenth, and in the earlier part of the eighteenth centuries,
many men, who under kindlier conditions would have been earnest and
active Churchmen, were unconsciously forced, by the intolerance which
surrounded them, into the ranks of the Deists or the Unitarians.
In the general charge preferred against Tillotson of dangerous and
heretical opinion there was yet another item which attracted far more
general attention than the rest. 'This new doctrine,' says Leslie, 'of
making hell precarious doth totally overthrow the doctrine of the
satisfaction of Christ.'[256] Of this particular inference, which would
legitimately follow only upon a very restricted view of the meaning of
atonement, there is no need of speaking. But the opinion itself, as
stated in Tillotson's sermon on what was often described as 'the
dispensing power,' is so important that any estimate of his influence
upon religious thought would be very imperfect without some mention of
it. There are many theological questions of great religious consequence
which are discussed nevertheless only in limited circles, and are
familiar to others chiefly in their practical applications. The future
state is a subject in which everyone has such immediate personal
concern, that arguments which seem likely to throw fresh light upon it,
especially if put forward by an eminent and popular divine, are certain
to obtain very wide and general attention. Tillotson's sermon not only
gave rise to much warm controversy among learned writers, but was
eagerly debated in almost all classes of English society.
Perhaps there has never been a period in Christian history when the
prospects of the bulk of mankind in the world beyond the grave have been
enwrapped in such unmitigated gloom in popular religious conception, as
throughout the Protestant countries of Europe during a considerable part
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is no place to compare
Scripture texts, or to show in what various senses the words of Christ
and His Apostles have been interpreted. It may be enough to remark in
passing that perhaps no Christian writer of any note has ever doubted
the severe reality of retribution on unrepented sin. Without further
reference then to the Apostolic age, it is certain that among the early
fathers of the Church there was much difference of opinion as to the
nature, degree, and duration of future punishment. Hermas, in one of
those allegories which for three centuries enjoyed an immense
popularity, imagined an infinite variety of degrees of retribution.[257]
Irenæus and Justin Martyr, in closely corresponding words, speak of its
period of duration as simply dependent upon the will of God.[258] The
Christian Sibylline books cherished hopes in the influence of
intercession. Ambrose and Lactantius,[259] Jerome,[260] and in a far
more notable degree, Clement of Alexandria[261] and Origen write of
corrective fires of discipline in the next world, if not in this, to
purify all souls, unless there are any which, being altogether bad, sink
wholly in the mighty waters.[262] 'Augustine's writings show how widely
those questions were discussed. He rejects the Origenian doctrine, but
does not consider it heretical.... None of the first four general
councils laid down any doctrine whatever concerning the everlasting
misery of the wicked. Yet the question had been most vehemently
disputed.'[263] Throughout the Middle Ages, religious terrorism in its
barest and most material form was an universal, and sometimes no doubt a
very efficient instrument of moral control; but small consideration is
needed to perceive how these fears must have been at once tempered and
partly neutralised by the belief in purgatory--tempered by the hope that
pains preceding judgment might take the place of ultimate penalties, and
almost neutralised by the superstitious idea that such purgatorial
sufferings might be lightened and shortened by extraneous human agencies
independent of the purification and renewal of the sinful soul.
Throughout the earlier period of the Reformation, and especially in
England, the protest of Protestantism was mainly against specific abuses
in the Church, and against the Papal supremacy. Two or three generations
had to pass away before habits of thought engrained for ages in the
popular mind were gradually effaced. In spite of the rapid growth of
Puritanism, and of the strong hold gained by an extreme form of
Calvinism on some of the leading Churchmen of Queen Elizabeth's time,
the faith of the mass of the people was still a combination, in varied
proportions, of the old and the new. The public mind had utterly
revolted against the system of indulgences; but it would be very rash to
assume that men's ideas of the eternal state were not largely and widely
modified by an undefined tradition of purifying fires. Although this may
not have been the case with the clergy and others who were familiar with
controversy, there was certainly among them also a strong disinclination
to pronounce any decided or dogmatical opinion about that unknown
future. This is traceable in the various writings elicited by the
omission of the latter part of the third article in the Revision under
Archbishop Parker; and is more palpably evident in the entire excision
of the forty-second article, which for ten years had committed the
Church of England to an express opinion as to the irreparable state of
the condemned. But long before the seventeenth century had closed,
orthodox opinion seems to have set almost entirely in the direction of
the sternest and most hopeless interpretation possible. Bishop Rust of
Dromore, who died in 1670, ardently embraced Origen's view.[264] So also
did Sir Henry Vane, the eminent Parliamentary leader, who was beheaded
for high treason in 1662.[265] A few Nonconformist congregations adopted
similar opinions. The Cambridge Platonists--insisting prominently, as
most writers of a mystical turn have done, upon that belief in the
universal fatherhood of God, which had infused a gentler tone, scarcely
compatible with much that he wrote, even into Luther's spirit--inclined
to a milder theology. Henry More ventured to hope that 'the benign
principle will get the upper hand at last, and Hades, as Plutarch says,
[Greek: apoleipesthai], be left in the lurch.'[266] But these were
exceptions. For the most part, among religious writers of every school
of thought there was perfect acquiescence in a doctrine of intolerable
never-ending torments, and no attempt whatever to find some mode of
explanation by which to escape from the horrors of the conception.
Pearson and Bull, Lake and Kettlewell, Bentley, Fleetwood,
Worthington,[267] Sherlock, Steele and Addison, Bunyan and
Doddridge--theologians and scholars, Broad Churchmen and Nonjurors,
preachers and essayists, Churchmen and Nonconformists--expressed
themselves far more unreservedly than is at all usual in our age, even
among those who, in theory, interpret Scripture in the same sense. The
hideous imagery depicted by the graphic pencil of Orcagna on the walls
of the Campo Santo was reproduced no less vividly in the prose works of
Bunyan, and with equal vigour, if not with equal force of imagination,
by almost all who sought to kindle by impassioned pulpit appeals the
conscience of their hearers. Young's poem of 'The Last Day,' in which
panegyrics of Queen Anne are strangely blended with a powerful and
awe-inspiring picture of the most extreme and hopeless misery, was
highly approved, we are told, not only by general readers but by the
Tory Ministry and their friends.[268] No doubt the practical and
regulative faith which exercised a real influence upon life was of quite
a different nature. A tenet which cannot be in the slightest degree
realised, except perhaps in special moments of excitement or depression,
is rendered almost neutral and inefficacious by the conscience refusing
to dwell upon it. Belief in certain retribution compatible with human
ideas of justice and goodness cannot fail in practical force. A doctrine
which does not comply with this condition, if not questioned, is simply
evaded. 'And dost thou not,' cried Adams, 'believe what thou hearest in
Church?' 'Most part of it, Master,' returned the host. 'And dost not
thou then tremble at the thought of eternal punishment?' 'As for that,
Master,' said he, 'I never once thought about it; but what signifies
talking about matters so far off?'[269] But if by the majority the
doctrine in point was practically shelved, it was everywhere passively
accepted as the only orthodox faith, and all who ventured to question
it were at once set down as far advanced in ways of Deism or worse.
Nothing can be more confirmatory of what has been said than the writings
of Tillotson himself. His much-famed sermon 'On the Eternity of Hell
Torments' was preached in 1690 before Queen Mary, a circumstance which
gave occasion to some of the bitterest of his ecclesiastical and
political opponents to pretend that it was meant to assuage the horrors
of remorse felt by the Queen for having unnaturally deserted her
father.[270] His departure, however, from what was considered the
orthodox belief was cautious in the extreme. He acknowledged indeed that
the words translated by eternal and 'everlasting' do not always, in
Scripture language, mean unending. But on this he laid no stress. He did
not doubt, he said, that this at all events was their meaning wherever
they occurred in the passages in question. He mentioned, only to set
aside the objection raised by Locke and others, that death could not
mean eternal life in misery.[271] He thought the solemn assertion
applied typically to the Israelites, and confirmed (to show its
immutability) by an oath that they should not 'enter into his rest,'
entirely precluded Origen's idea of a final restitution.[272] He even
supposed, although somewhat dubiously, that 'whenever we break the laws
of God we fall into his hands and lie at his mercy, and he may, without
injustice, inflict what punishment on us he pleases,'[273] and that in
any case obstinately impenitent sinners must expect his threatenings to
be fully executed upon them. But in this lay the turning-point of his
argument. 'After all, he that threatens hath still the power of
execution in his hand. For there is this remarkable difference between
promises and threatenings--that he who promiseth passeth over a right to
another, and thereby stands obliged to him in justice and faithfulness
to make good his promise; and if he do not, the party to whom the
promise is made is not only disappointed, but injuriously dealt withal;
but in threatenings it is quite otherwise. He that threatens keeps the
right of punishing in his own hands, and is not obliged to execute what
he hath threatened any further than the reasons and ends of government
do require.'[274] Thus Nineveh was absolutely threatened; 'but God
understood his own right, and did what he pleased, notwithstanding the
threatening he had denounced.' Such was Tillotson's theory of the
'dispensing power,' an argument in great measure adopted from the
distinguished Arminian leader, Episcopius,[275] and which was
maintained by Burnet, and vigorously defended by Le Clerc.[276] It was
not, however, at all a satisfactory position to hold. Intellectually and
spiritually, its level is a low one; and even those who have thought
little upon the subject will feel, for the most part, as by a kind of
instinct, that this at all events is not the true explanation, though it
may contain some germs of truth. To do reasonable justice to it, we must
take into account the conflicting considerations by which Tillotson's
mind was swayed. No one could appeal more confidently and fervently than
he does to the perfect goodness of God, a goodness which wholly
satisfies the human reason, and supplies inexhaustible motives for love
and worship. We can reverence, he said, nothing but true goodness. A God
wanting in it would be only 'an omnipotent evil, an irresistible
mischief.'[277]
But side by side with this principal current of thought was another.
Dismayed at the profligacy and carelessness he saw everywhere around
him, he was evidently convinced that not fear only, but some
overwhelming terror was absolutely necessary for even the tolerable
restraint of human sin and passion. 'Whosoever,' he said, 'considers how
ineffectual the threatening even of eternal torments is to the greatest
part of sinners, will soon be satisfied that a less penalty than that of
eternal sufferings would to the far greater part of mankind have been in
all probability of little or no force.'
The result, therefore, of this twofold train of thought was this--that
when Tillotson had once disburdened himself of a conviction which must
have been wholly essential to his religious belief, and upon which he
could not have held silence without a degrading feeling of insincerity,
he then felt at liberty to suppress all further mention of it, and to
lay before his hearers, without any qualification, in the usual language
of his time, that tremendous alternative which he believed God himself
had thought it necessary to proclaim. Probably Tillotson's own mind was
a good deal divided on the subject between two opinions. In many
respects his mind showed a very remarkable combination of old and new
ideas, and perceptibly fluctuated between a timid adherence to tradition
and a sympathy with other notions which had become unhappily and
needlessly mixed up with imputations of Deism. In any case, what he has
said upon this most important subject is a singular and exaggerated
illustration of that prudential teaching which was a marked feature both
in Tillotson's theology and in the prevailing religious thought of his
age.
In spite of what Tillotson might perhaps have wished, the suggestions
hazarded in his thirty-fifth sermon made an infinitely greater
impression than the unqualified warnings contained in the hundreds which
he preached at other times. It seems to have had a great circulation,
and probably many and mixed results. So far as it encouraged that
abominable system, which was already falling like a blight upon
religious faith, of living according to motives of expedience and the
wiser chance, its effects must have been utterly bad. It may also have
exercised an unsettling influence upon some minds. Although Tillotson
was probably entirely mistaken in the conviction, by no means peculiar
to him, that the idea of endless punishment adds any great, or even any
appreciable, force to the thought of divine retribution awaiting
unrepented sin, yet there would be much cause for alarm if (as might
well be the case) the ignorant or misinformed leaped to the conclusion
that the Archbishop had maintained that future, as distinguished from
endless punishments, were doubtful. We are told that 'when this sermon
of hell was first published, it was handed about among the great
debauchees and small atheistical wits more than any new play that ever
came out. He was not a man of fashion who wanted one of them in his
pocket, or could draw it out at the coffee-house.'[278] In certain
drawing-rooms, too, where prudery was not the fault, there were many
fashionable ladies who would pass from the scandal and gossip of the day
to applaud Tillotson's sermon in a sense which would have made him
shudder.[279] Nothing follows from this, unless it be assumed that the
profligates and worldlings of the period would have spent a single hour,
not to say a life, differently, had he never preached the sermon which
they discredited with their praise. It is possible, however, that
through misapprehension, or through the disturbing effects upon some
minds, quite apart from rational grounds, of any seeming innovation upon
accustomed teaching, there may have been here and there real ground for
the alarm which some very good people felt at these views having been
broached. It must be acknowledged that Tillotson's theory of a
dispensing power is not only unsatisfactory on other grounds, but
possesses a dangerous quality of expansibility. However much he himself
might protest against such a view, there was no particular reason why
the easy and careless should not urge that God might perchance dispense
with all future punishment of sin, and not only with its threatened
endlessness.
Tillotson's theological faults were of a negative, far rather than of a
positive character. The constant charges of heresy which were brought
against him were ungrounded, and often serve to call attention to
passages where he has shown himself specially anxious to meet Deistical
objections. But there were deficiencies and omissions in his teaching
which might very properly be regarded with distrust and alarm. In the
generality of his sermons he dwells very insufficiently upon distinctive
Christian doctrine. His early parishioners of Keddington, in
Suffolk,[280] were more alive to this serious fault than the vast London
congregations before whom he afterwards preached. He has himself, in one
of his later sermons, alluded to the objection. 'I foresee,' he
observed, 'what will be said, because I have heard it so often said in
the like case, that there is not one word of Jesus Christ in all this.
No more is there in the text, and yet I hope that Jesus Christ is truly
preached, whenever His will, and the laws, and the duties enjoined by
the Christian religion are inculcated upon us.'[281] Tillotson never
adequately realised that the noblest treatise on Christian ethics will
be found wanting in the spiritual force possessed by sermons far
inferior to it in thought and eloquence, in which faith in the Saviour
and love of Him are directly appealed to for motives to all virtuous
effort. This very grave deficiency in the preaching of Tillotson and
others of his type was in great measure the effect of reaction. Brought
up in the midst of Calvinistic and Puritan associations, he had gained
abundant experience of the great evil arising from mistaken ideas on
free grace and justification by faith only. He had seen doctrines
'greedily entertained to the vast prejudice of Christianity, as if in
this new covenant of the Gospel, God took all upon Himself and required
nothing, or as good as nothing, of us; that it would be a disparagement
to the freedom of God's grace to think that He expects anything from us;
that the Gospel is all promises, and our part is only to believe and
embrace them, that is, to believe confidently that God will perform them
if we can but think so;'[282] 'that, in fact, religion [as he elsewhere
puts it] consists only in believing what Christ hath done for us, and
relying confidently upon it.'[283] He knew well--his father had been a
bright example of it--that such doctrines are constantly found in close
union with great integrity and holiness of life. But he knew also the
deplorable effects which have often attended even an apparent
dissociation of faith and morality; he had seen, and still saw, how deep
and permanent, both by its inherent evil and by the recoil that follows,
is the wound inflicted upon true religion by overstrained professions,
unreal phraseology, and the form without the substance of godliness. He
saw clearly, what many have failed to see, that righteousness is the
principal end of all religion; that faith, that revelation, that all
spiritual aids, that the incarnation of the Son of God and the
redemption He has brought, have no other purpose or meaning than to
raise men from sin and from a lower nature, to build them up in
goodness, and to renew them in the image of God. He unswervingly
maintained that immorality is the worst infidelity,[284] as being not
only inconsistent with real faith, but the contradiction of that highest
end which faith has in view. Tillotson was a true preacher of
righteousness. The fault of his preaching was that by too exclusive a
regard to the object of all religion, he dwelt insufficiently on the way
by which it is accomplished. If some had almost forgotten the end in
thinking of the means, he was apt to overlook the means in thinking of
the end. His eyes were so steadfastly fixed on the surpassing beauty of
Christian morality, that it might often seem as if he thought the very
contemplation of so much excellence were a sufficient incentive to it.
His constantly implied argument is, that if men, gifted with common
reason, can be persuaded to think what goodness is, its blessedness
alike in this world and the next, and on the other hand the present and
future consequences of sin, surely reason itself will teach them to be
wise. He is never the mere moralist. His Christian faith is ever present
to his mind, raising and purifying his standard of what is good, and
placing in an infinitely clearer light than could otherwise be possible
the sanctions of a life to come. Nor does he speak with an uncertain
tone when he touches on any of its most distinctive doctrines. Never
either in word or thought does he consciously disparage or undervalue
them. Notwithstanding all that Leslie and others could urge against him,
he was a sincere, and, in all essential points, an orthodox believer in
the tenets of revealed religion. But he dwelt upon them insufficiently.
He regarded them too much as mysteries of faith, established on good
evidence, to be firmly held and reverently honoured; above all, not to
be lightly argued about in tones of controversy. He never fully realised
what a treasury they supply of motives to Christian conduct, and of
material for sublime and ennobling thought; above all, that religion
never has a missionary and converting power when they are not
prominently brought forward.
Throughout the eighteenth century the prudential considerations against
which Shaftesbury and a few others protested weighed like an incubus
both upon religion and on morals. 'Oh Happiness! our being's end and
aim,'[285] was the seldom failing refrain, echoed in sermons and essays,
in theological treatises and ethical studies. And though the idea of
happiness varies in endless degrees from the highest to the meanest, yet
even the highest conception of it cannot be substituted for that of
goodness without great detriment to the religion or philosophy which has
thus unduly exalted it. When Tillotson, or Berkeley,[286] or Bishop
Butler, or William Law, as well as Chubb[287] and Tindal,[288] spoke of
happiness as the highest end, they meant something very different from
'the sleek and sordid epicurism, in which religion and a good conscience
have their place among the means by which life is to be made more
comfortable.'[289] William Law's definition of happiness as 'the
satisfaction of all means, capacities, and necessities, the order and
harmony of his being; in other words, the right state of a man,'[290]
has not much in common with the motives of expedience urged by Bentham
and Paley, utilitarian systems, truly spoken of as 'of the earth,
earthy.'[291] But, in any case, even the highest conception of the
expedient rests on a lower plane of principle than the humblest
aspiration after the right. The expedient and the right are not
opposites; they are different in kind.[292] They may be, and ought to
be, blended as springs of action. No scheme of morals, and no practical
divinity can be wholly satisfactory in which virtue and holiness are not
equally mated with prudence and heavenly wisdom, each serving but not
subservient to the other. 'Art thou,' says Coleridge, 'under the tyranny
of sin--a slave to vicious habits, at enmity with God, and a skulking
fugitive from thine own conscience? Oh, how idle the dispute whether the
listening to the dictates of prudence from prudential and
self-interested motives be virtue or merit, when the not listening is
guilt, misery, madness, and despair.'[293] The self-love which Butler
has analysed with so masterly a hand is wholly compatible with the pure
love of goodness. Plato did not think it needful to deny the claims of
utilitarianism, however much he gave the precedence to the ideal
principle.[294]
But when the idea of goodness is subordinated to the pursuit of
happiness, the evil effects are soon manifest. It is not merely that
'Epicureanism popularised inevitably turns to vice.'[295] Whenever in
any form self-interest usurps that first place which the Gospel assigns
to 'the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,' the calculating element
draws action down to its own lower level. 'If you mean,' says Romola,
'to act nobly and seek the best things God has put within reach of men,
you must learn to fix your mind on that end and not on what will happen
to you because of it.'[296] It has been observed, too, with a truth none
the less striking for being almost a commonplace, that there is
something very self-destructive in the quest for happiness.[297]
Happiness and true pleasure ultimately reward the right, but if they are
made the chief object, they lose in quality and elude the grasp. 'So far
as you try to be good, in order to be personally happy, you miss
happiness--a great and beautiful law of our being.'[298]
Utilitarianism or eudæmonism has no sort of intrinsic connection with a
latitudinarian theology, especially when the word 'latitudinarian' is
used, as in this chapter, in a general and inoffensive sense. In this
century, and to some extent in the last, many of its warmest opponents
have been Broad Churchmen. But prudential religion, throughout the
period which set in with the Revolution of 1688, is closely associated
with the name of Tillotson. It is certainly very prominent in his
writings. His keen perception of the exceeding beauty of goodness might
have been supposed sufficient to guard him from dwelling too much upon
inferior motives. Tillotson, however, was very susceptible to the
predominant influences of his time. If he was a leader of thought, he
was also much led by the thought of others. There were three or four
considerations which had great weight with him, as they had with almost
every other theologian and moralist of his own and the following age.
One, which has been already sufficiently discussed, was that feeling of
the need of proving the reasonableness of every argument, which was the
first result of the wider field, the increased leisure, the greater
freedom of which the reasoning powers had become conscious. It is
evident that no system of morality and practical religion gives so much
scope to the exercise of this faculty as that which pre-eminently
insists upon the prudence of right action and upon the wisdom of
believing. Then again, the profligate habits and general laxity which
undoubtedly prevailed to a more than ordinary extent among all classes
of society, seem to have created even among reformers of the highest
order a sort of dismayed feeling, that it was useless to set up too high
a law, and that self-interest and fear were the two main arguments which
could be plied with the best hopes of success. Thirdly, a very mistaken
notion appears to have grown up that infidelity and 'free-thinking'
might be checked by prudent reflections on the safeness of orthodoxy and
the dangers of unbelief. Thought is not deterred by arguments of
safety;[299] and a sceptic is likely to push on into pronounced
disbelief, if he commonly hears religion recommended as a matter of
policy.
In all these respects Tillotson did but take the line which was
characteristic of his age--of the age, that is, which was beginning, not
of that which was passing away. Something, too, must be attributed to
personal temperament. He carried into the province of religion that same
benign but dispassionate calmness of feeling, that subdued sobriety of
judgment, wanting in impulse and in warmth, which, in public and in
private life, made him more respected as an opponent than beloved as a
friend. To weigh evidence, to balance probabilities, and to act with
tranquil confidence in what reason judged to be the wiser course, seemed
to him as natural and fit in spiritual as in temporal matters. This was
all sound in its degree, but there was a deficiency in it, and in the
general mode of religious thought represented by it, which cannot fail
to be strongly felt. There is something very chilling in such an appeal
as the following: 'Secondly, it is infinitely most prudent. In matters
of great concernment a prudent man will incline to the safest side of
the question. We have considered which side of these questions is most
reasonable: let us now think which is safest. For it is certainly most
prudent to incline to the safest side of the question. Supposing the
reasons for and against the principles of religion were equal, yet the
danger and hazard is so unequal, as would sway a prudent man to the
affirmative.'[300] It must not be inferred that nobler and more generous
reasonings in relation to life and goodness do not continually occur.
But the passage given illustrates a form of argument which is far too
common, both in Tillotson's writings and throughout the graver
literature of the eighteenth century. Without doubt it did much harm. So
long as moralists dwelt so fondly upon self-interest and expedience,
and divines descanted upon, the advantages of the safe side; so long as
the ideal of goodness was half supplanted by that of happiness; so long
as sin was contemplated mainly in its results of punishment, and
redemption was regarded rather as deliverance from the penalties of sin
than from the sin itself, Christianity and Christian ethics were
inevitably degraded.
Many of the subjects touched upon in this chapter have little or no
connection with Latitudinarianism, so far as it is synonymous with what
are now more commonly called Broad Church principles. But in the
eighteenth century 'reasonableness' in religious matters, although a
characteristic watchword of the period in general, was especially the
favourite term, the most congenial topic, upon which Latitudinarian
Churchmen loved to dwell. The consistency of the Christian faith with
man's best reason was indeed a great theme, well worthy to engage the
thoughts of the most talented and pious men of the age. And no doubt
Tillotson and many of his contemporaries and successors amply earned the
gratitude, not only of the English Church, but of all Christian people
in England. Their good service in the controversy with Deism was the
first and direct, but still a temporary result of their labours. They
did more than this. They broadened and deepened the foundations of the
English Church and of English Christianity not only for their own day,
but for all future time. They laboured not ineffectually in securing to
reason that established position without which no religious system can
maintain a lasting hold upon the intellect as well as upon the heart. On
the other hand, their deficiencies were great, and appear the greater,
because they were faults not so much of the person as of the age, and
were displayed therefore in a wide field, and often in an exaggerated
form. They loved reason not too well, but too exclusively; they
acknowledged its limits, but did not sufficiently insist upon them. They
accepted the Christian faith without hesitation or reserve; they
believed its doctrines, they reverenced its mysteries, fully convinced
that its truth, if not capable of demonstration, is firmly founded upon
evidence with which every unprejudiced inquirer has ample reason to be
satisfied. But where reason could not boldly tread, they were content to
believe and to be silent. Hence, as they put very little trust in
religious feelings, and utterly disbelieved in any power of spiritual
discernment higher than, or different from reason, the greater part of
their religious teaching was practically confined to those parts of the
Christian creed which are palpable to every understanding. In their wish
to avoid unprofitable disputations, they dwelt but cursorily upon
debated subjects of the last importance; and in their dread of a
correct theology doing duty for a correct life, they were apt grievously
to underestimate the influences of theology upon life. Their moral
teaching was deeply religious, pervaded by a sense of the overruling
Providence of a God infinite in love and holiness, and was enforced
perseveringly and with great earnestness by motives derived from the
rewards and punishments of a future state. If a reader of Tillotson
feels a sense of wonder that the writings of so good a man--of such deep
and unaffected piety, so sympathetic and kindly, so thoroughly
Christian-hearted--should yet be benumbed by the presence of a cold
prudential morality which might seem incompatible with the
self-forgetful impulses of warm religious feeling, he may see, in what
he wonders at, the ill effects of a faith too jealously debarred by
reason from contemplations in which the human mind quickly finds out its
limits. When religion, in fear lest it should become unpractical,
relaxes its hold upon what may properly be called the mysteries of
faith, it not only loses in elevation and grandeur, but it defeats the
very end it aimed at. It takes a lower ethical tone, and loses in moral
power. To form even what may be in some respects an erroneous conception
of an imperfectly comprehended doctrine, and so to make it bear upon the
life, is far better than timidly, for fear of difficulties or error, to
lay the thought of it aside, and so leave it altogether unfruitful.
Tillotson and many of his successors in the last century had a great
tendency to do this, and no excellences of personal character could
redeem the injurious influence it had upon their writings. His services
in the cause of religious truth were very great: they would have been
far greater, and his influence a far more unmixed good, if as a
representative leader of religious thought, he had been more superior to
what was to be its most characteristic defect.
The Latitudinarian section of the Church of England won its chief fame,
during the years that immediately followed the Revolution of 1688, by
its activity in behalf of ecclesiastical comprehension and religious
liberty. These exertions, so far as they extend to the history of the
eighteenth century, and were continued through that period, will be
considered in the following chapter.
C.J.A.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 195: H.S. Skeats, _History of the Free Churches_, 315.]
[Footnote 196: H. Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, iv, 177.]
[Footnote 197: _Life of Tillotson_, T. Birch, ccxxxv.]
[Footnote 198: Letter to G. Hanger, in Nichols' _Lit. An._, iv. 215.]
[Footnote 199: Birch, ccxxxv.]
[Footnote 200: _Letters_, ed. Berry, ii. 181.]
[Footnote 201: Birch, cccxxxviii.]
[Footnote 202: J. Wesley, _Works_, x. 299.]
[Footnote 203: Nichols, iv. 215.]
[Footnote 204: Sir R. Howard, _History of Religion_, 1694, preface.]
[Footnote 205: Fleetwood's _Works_, 516.]
[Footnote 206: No. 106.]
[Footnote 207: No. 155.]
[Footnote 208: No. 101. In the _Whig Examiner_ (No. 2) it is observed,
as an instance of the singular variety of tastes, that 'Bunyan and
Quarles have passed through several editions, and please as many readers
as Dryden and Tillotson.']
[Footnote 209: _Reflections on the Clergy_, &c., 1798, iv.; J.
Napleton's _Advice to a Student_. 1795, 26.]
[Footnote 210: Swift's _Works_, viii. 190.]
[Footnote 211: C. Leslie's _Works_, ii. 543.]
[Footnote 212: Id. ii. 596.]
[Footnote 213: No. 10.]
[Footnote 214: Lavington's _Enthusiasm of Meth. and Pap._, &c., 11, and
Polwhele's Introduction to id. ccxxxii.]
[Footnote 215: _Qu. Rev._, 31, 121.]
[Footnote 216: Sacheverell, Nov. 5, Sermon 'On False Brethren.']
[Footnote 217: Birch, ccxxxiii.]
[Footnote 218: Serm. v., _Works_, i. 465.]
[Footnote 219: Id. i. 448.]
[Footnote 220: S. lvi., _Works_, iv. 35.]
[Footnote 221: S. ccxxii., _Works_, ix. 219.]
[Footnote 222: H. More, Gen. Pref. § 3.]
[Footnote 223: Id. § 6.]
[Footnote 224: Id. § 3.]
[Footnote 225: S. xx., _Works_, ii. 277.]
[Footnote 226: _Works_, x. 199.]
[Footnote 227: Qu. in J. Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, iii.
45.]
[Footnote 228: Id.]
[Footnote 229: S. xliv., _Works_, iii. 310.]
[Footnote 230: S. lviii., _Works_, v. 84.]
[Footnote 231: S. xxi., _Works_, ii. 207.]
[Footnote 232: Id. 273.]
[Footnote 233: Id. 277.]
[Footnote 234: S. xxi., _Works_, ii. 265-7.]
[Footnote 235: J.A. Dorner, _History of Protestant Theology_, ii. 77.]
[Footnote 236: Sir R. Howard's _History of Religion_, 1694.]
[Footnote 237: Cf. M. Pattison in _Essays and Reviews_, 293-4.]
[Footnote 238: W. Law, 'Spirit of Love,' _Works_, viii. 141.]
[Footnote 239: S. xlvi., _Works_, iii. 359.]
[Footnote 240: Id.]
[Footnote 241: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 669.]
[Footnote 242: Burnet's _Four Discourses_, 122.]
[Footnote 243: Id. 127.]
[Footnote 244: Id.]
[Footnote 245: Id. 134.]
[Footnote 246: S. xlvi., _Works_, iii. 359, and 383, 389.]
[Footnote 247: S. ccxxvii., _Works_, ix. 337.]
[Footnote 248: S. xlvii., _Works_, iii. 403.]
[Footnote 249: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 281.]
[Footnote 250: S. xlvi., _Works_, iii. 362.]
[Footnote 251: Id. 363.]
[Footnote 252: Id. 364.]
[Footnote 253: S. xlvi., _Works_ iii. 365]
[Footnote 254: S. xlvii. _Works_, iii. 398.]
[Footnote 255: Leslie, ii. 562.]
[Footnote 256: Leslie, ii. 596.]
[Footnote 257: Quotations from the _Shepherd_ of Hermas, in a review of
vol. i. of the _Ante-Nicene Library_ in the _Spectator_, July 27, 1867,
p. 836.]
[Footnote 258: Just. Mart. _Dial. cum Tryph._ i. b. i. § v. 20 (ed. W.
Trollope, 1846); also Iren. _Hær._ ii. 34, 3, quoted in note to above.]
[Footnote 259: _Sibyll._ ver. 331. _De Psalm._ 36, v. 15; _Serm._ xx. §
12; Lactant. _Div. Inst._ vii. 21, all quoted in H.B. Wilson's speech,
1863, 102-10.]
[Footnote 260: Jerome, _Com. in Is._ tom. 3, ed. Ben. 514, quoted by Le
Clerc, _Bib. Choisie_, vii. 326.]
[Footnote 261: Clem. Alex. _Strom._ vii. § 6, p. 851, quoted in Blunt,
J.J., _Early Fathers_, p. 80.]
[Footnote 262: Origen, _Hom._ 6, in _Ex. N._ 4, quoted by Wilson, and
_De Princip._ iii. c. v-vi. quoted by Blunt, _Early Fathers_, 99, and Le
Clerc, _Bibliothèque Choisie_, vii. 327.]
[Footnote 263: Wilson, 119 and 99.]
[Footnote 264: J.T. Rutt, note to Calamy's _Own Life_, i. 140.]
[Footnote 265: Biog. D., _Vane_.]
[Footnote 266: H. More, _Works_, ed. 1712. _On the Immortality of the
Soul_, b. iv. ch. xix. § 9.]
[Footnote 267: Worthington's unhesitating acceptance of the tenet in
question (_Essay on Man's Redemption_, 1748, 308) is particularly
noticeable, because he was an ardent believer in the gradual restoration
of mankind in general to a state of perfection.]
[Footnote 268: _Life of Young_. Anderson's _British Poets_, x. 10.]
[Footnote 269: Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_, b. ii. ch. 3.]
[Footnote 270: Birch, T., _Life of Tillotson_, cliv.]
[Footnote 271: Locke, J., _Reasonableness of Christianity_, Preface.]
[Footnote 272: S. xxxv., _Works_, iii. 85.]
[Footnote 273: Id. 84.]
[Footnote 274: Id. and i. 511; S. cxl.]
[Footnote 275: Birch, clvi.]
[Footnote 276: _Bibliothèque Choisie_, tom. vii. art. 7.]
[Footnote 277: S. ccxii., _Works_, ix. 84.]
[Footnote 278: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 596-7.]
[Footnote 279: Young's _Poems_, Sat. vi.]
[Footnote 280: They complained that Jesus Christ had not been preached
among them since Mr. Tillotson had been settled in the parish.--(Birch,
xviii.) This was in 1663. The contrast between Tillotson's style and
that of the Commonwealth preachers would in any case have been very
marked, the more so as Puritanism gained a strong footing in the eastern
counties.]
[Footnote 281: S. xlii., _Works_, iii. 275.]
[Footnote 282: S. vii., _Works_, i. 495.]
[Footnote 283: S. xxxiv., _Works_, iii. 65.]
[Footnote 284: S. vii., _Works_, i. 499.]
[Footnote 285: Pope's _Essay on Man_, Ep. 4.]
[Footnote 286: In _Guardian_, No. 55.]
[Footnote 287: 'Ground, &c., of Morality,' Chubb's _Works_, iii. 6.]
[Footnote 288: Dorner, iii. 81.]
[Footnote 289: M. Pattison in _Essays and Reviews_, 275.]
[Footnote 290: Quoted in F.D. Maurice's Preface to _Law's Answer to
Mandeville_, lxx.]
[Footnote 291: Channing and Aikin's _Correspondence_, 46.]
[Footnote 292: Mackintosh's _Progress of Ethical Philosophy_, sect. i.]
[Footnote 293: S.T. Coleridge, _Aids to Reflection_, i. 37.]
[Footnote 294: Mackay, R.W., Introduction to _The Sophists_, 36.]
[Footnote 295: _Ecce Homo_, 114.]
[Footnote 296: G. Eliot, _Romola_, near the end.]
[Footnote 297: _Ecce Homo_, 115; cf. Coleridge, _The Friend_ Ess. xvi.
i. 162.]
[Footnote 298: F.W. Robertson, _Life and Letters_, i. 352.]
[Footnote 299: Cf. F.D. Maurice's Introduction to _Law on Mandeville_,
xxiii.]
[Footnote 300: S. ccxxiii., _Works_, ix. 275.]
* * * * *