be
believed, but mere impediments to faith rather than any assistance to
it. 'Great reverence,' he says, 'is due to them where they are certain
and necessary in the nature and reason of the thing, but they are not
easily to be admitted without necessity and very good evidence.'[239] He
is not sure whether much that seems mysterious may not be in some degree
explained as compliances, for the sake of our edification, with human
modes of thought.[240] On the whole, he is inclined to reduce within as
narrow a compass as possible the number of tenets which transcend our
faculties of reason, to receive them, when acknowledged, with
reverential submission, but to pass quickly from them, as matters in
which we have little concern, and which do not greatly affect the
practical conduct of life. His extreme distaste for anything that
appeared to him like idle speculation or unprofitable controversy, often
blinded him in a very remarkable degree to the evident fact, that the
very same mysterious truths which have given occasion to many futile
speculations, many profitless disputes, are also, in every Christian
communion, rich in their supply of Christian motives and practical
bearings upon conduct.

Tillotson's opinions on points of doctrine were sometimes attacked with
a bitterness of rancour only to be equalled by the degree of
misrepresentation upon which the charges were founded. Leslie concludes
his indictment against him and Burnet by saying that 'though the sword
of justice be (at present) otherwise employed than to animadvert upon
these blasphemers, and though the chief and father of them all is
advanced to the throne of Canterbury, and thence infuses his deadly
poison through the nation,' yet at least all 'ought to separate from the
Church communion of these heretical bishops.'[241] Yet, if we examine
the arguments upon which this invective is supported, and compare with
their context the detached sentences which his hot-blooded antagonist
adduces, we shall find that Tillotson maintained no opinion which would
not be considered in a modern English Churchman to be at all events
perfectly legitimate. Had his opponents been content to point out
serious deficiencies in the general tendency of his teaching, they would
have held a thoroughly tenable position. When they attempted to attach
to his name the stigma of specific heresies, they failed. He thought
for himself, and sometimes very differently from them, but never
wander