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