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