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.