g to acknowledge that he
was greatly respected by Nonconformists. Why not? said they, when he and
his party are half Presbyterians, and would 'bring the Church into the
Conventicle or the Conventicle into the Church.'[216] They allowed
still more readily that he was constantly praised by Rationalists and
Deists. Collins put a formidable weapon into their hands when he called
Tillotson 'the head of all freethinkers.'[217] But they also had to own
that in authority as well as in station he had been eminently a leader
in the English Church. A majority of the bishops, and many of the most
distinguished among them, had followed his lead. The great bulk of the
laity had honoured him in his lifetime, and continued to revere his
memory. Men like Locke, and Somers, and Addison were loud in his praise.
Even those who were accustomed to regard the Low Churchmen of their age
as 'amphibious trimmers' or 'Latitudinarian traditors' were by no means
unanimous in dispraise of Tillotson. Dodwell had spoken of him with
esteem; and Robert Nelson, who was keenly alive to 'the infection of
Latitudinarian teaching,' not only maintained a lifelong friendship with
him, and watched by him at his death, but also, as was before mentioned,
referred to his sermons for sound notions of religion.

A study of Tillotson's writings ought to throw light upon the general
tendency of religious thought which prevailed in England during the
half-century or more through which their popularity lasted; for there
can be no doubt that his influence was not of a kind which depends on
great personal qualities. He was a man who well deserved to be highly
esteemed by all with whom he came in contact. But in his gentle and
moderate disposition there was none of the force and fire which compels
thought into new channels, and sways the minds of men even, against
their will. With sound practical sense, with pure, unaffected piety, and
in unadorned but persuasive language, he simply gave utterance to
religious ideas in a form which to a wide extent satisfied the reason
and came home to the conscience of his age. Those, on the other hand,
who most distrusted the direction which such ideas were taking, held in
proportionate aversion the primate who had been so eminent a
representative of them.

Tillotson was universally regarded both by friends and foes as 'a
Latitude man.' His writings, therefore, may well serve to exemplify the
moderate Latitudinarianism of a thoughtful a