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,