from the Puritan and Calvinistic teaching
which, instilled into him throughout his earlier years, had laid deep
the foundations of the serious and fervent vein of piety conspicuous in
all his life and writings. He had learnt much from the sublime Christian
philosophy of his eminent instructors at Cambridge, Cudworth and Henry
More, John Smith and Whichcote, under whom his heart and intellect had
attained a far wider reach than they could ever have gained in the
school of Calvin. But his influence in the eighteenth century would have
been more entirely beneficial, if he had treasured up from his Puritan
remembrances clearer perceptions of the searching power of divine grace;
or if he had not only learnt from the Platonists to extol 'that special
prerogative of Christianity that it dares appeal to reason,'[222] and
to be imbued with a sense of the divine immutability of moral
principles, but had also retained their convictions of unity with the
Divine nature, implied alike in that eternity of morality and in that
supremacy of the rational faculties,--together with a corresponding
belief that there may be intimate communion between the spirit of man
and his Maker, and that 'they who make reason the light of heaven and
the very oracle of God, must consider that the oracle of God is not to
be heard but in His holy temple,' that is to say, in the heart of a good
man purged by that indwelling Spirit.[223] Considering the immense
influence which Tillotson's Cambridge teachers had upon the development
of his mind, it is curious how widely he differs from them in inward
tone. It is quite impossible to conceive of their dwelling, as he and
his followers did, upon the pre-eminent importance of the external
evidences.

Tillotson could not adopt as unreservedly as he did his pervading tenet
of the reasonableness of Christianity without yielding to reason all the
rights due to an unquestioned leader. Like Henry More, he would have
wished to take for a motto 'that generous resolution of Marcus
Cicero,--rationem, quo ea me cunque ducet, sequar.'[224] 'Doctrines,' he
said, 'are vehemently to be suspected which decline trial. To deny
liberty of inquiry and judgment in matters of religion, is the greatest
injury and disparagement to truth that can be, and a tacit
acknowledgment that she lies under some disadvantage, and that there is
less to be said for her than for error.'[225] 'Tis only things false and
adulterate which shun the light an