nd religious English
Churchman at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Perhaps the first thing that will strike a reader of his works is the
constant appeal on all matters of religion to reason. That Christianity
is 'the best and the holiest, the wisest and the most reasonable
religion in the world;'[218] that 'all the precepts of it are
reasonable and wise, requiring such duties of us as are suitable to the
light of nature, and do approve themselves to the best reason of
mankind'[219]--such is the general purport of the arguments by which he
most trusts to persuade the heart and the understanding. And how, on the
other hand, could he better meet the infidelity of the age than by
setting himself 'to show the unreasonableness of atheism and of scoffing
at religion?' If the appeal to reason will not persuade, what will?

The primary and sovereign place assigned to reason in Tillotson's
conception of man as a being able to know and serve God involved some
consequences which must be mentioned separately, though they are closely
connected with one another.

It led him, if not to reject, at all events to regard with profound
distrust all assumptions of any gift of spiritual discernment
distinguishable from ordinary powers of understanding. Tillotson's view
was that the Spirit of God enlightens the human mind only through the
reason, so that the faith of Abraham, for example, 'was the result of
the wisest reasoning.'[220] He allows that the spiritual presence may
act upon the reason by raising and strengthening the faculty, by making
clear the object of inquiry, by suggesting arguments, by holding minds
intent upon the evidence, by removing the impediments which hinder
assent, and especially by making the persuasion of a truth effectual on
the life.[221] This, however, is the very utmost that Tillotson could
concede to those who dwell upon the presence within the soul of an
inward spiritual light.

Tillotson gave great offence to some of his contemporaries by some
expressions he has used in relation to the degree of assurance which is
possible to man in regard of religious truths. He based all assent upon
rational evidence. But he unhesitatingly admitted that mathematics only
admit of clear demonstration; in other matters proof consists in the
best arguments that the quality and nature of the thing will bear. We
may be well content, he said, with a well-grounded confidence on matters
of religious truth corresponding t