;
but in threatenings it is quite otherwise. He that threatens keeps the
right of punishing in his own hands, and is not obliged to execute what
he hath threatened any further than the reasons and ends of government
do require.'[274] Thus Nineveh was absolutely threatened; 'but God
understood his own right, and did what he pleased, notwithstanding the
threatening he had denounced.' Such was Tillotson's theory of the
'dispensing power,' an argument in great measure adopted from the
distinguished Arminian leader, Episcopius,[275] and which was
maintained by Burnet, and vigorously defended by Le Clerc.[276] It was
not, however, at all a satisfactory position to hold. Intellectually and
spiritually, its level is a low one; and even those who have thought
little upon the subject will feel, for the most part, as by a kind of
instinct, that this at all events is not the true explanation, though it
may contain some germs of truth. To do reasonable justice to it, we must
take into account the conflicting considerations by which Tillotson's
mind was swayed. No one could appeal more confidently and fervently than
he does to the perfect goodness of God, a goodness which wholly
satisfies the human reason, and supplies inexhaustible motives for love
and worship. We can reverence, he said, nothing but true goodness. A God
wanting in it would be only 'an omnipotent evil, an irresistible
mischief.'[277]

But side by side with this principal current of thought was another.
Dismayed at the profligacy and carelessness he saw everywhere around
him, he was evidently convinced that not fear only, but some
overwhelming terror was absolutely necessary for even the tolerable
restraint of human sin and passion. 'Whosoever,' he said, 'considers how
ineffectual the threatening even of eternal torments is to the greatest
part of sinners, will soon be satisfied that a less penalty than that of
eternal sufferings would to the far greater part of mankind have been in
all probability of little or no force.'

The result, therefore, of this twofold train of thought was this--that
when Tillotson had once disburdened himself of a conviction which must
have been wholly essential to his religious belief, and upon which he
could not have held silence without a degrading feeling of insincerity,
he then felt at liberty to suppress all further mention of it, and to
lay before his hearers, without any qualification, in the usual language
of his time, that tremen