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