ed the sermon which
they discredited with their praise. It is possible, however, that
through misapprehension, or through the disturbing effects upon some
minds, quite apart from rational grounds, of any seeming innovation upon
accustomed teaching, there may have been here and there real ground for
the alarm which some very good people felt at these views having been
broached. It must be acknowledged that Tillotson's theory of a
dispensing power is not only unsatisfactory on other grounds, but
possesses a dangerous quality of expansibility. However much he himself
might protest against such a view, there was no particular reason why
the easy and careless should not urge that God might perchance dispense
with all future punishment of sin, and not only with its threatened
endlessness.

Tillotson's theological faults were of a negative, far rather than of a
positive character. The constant charges of heresy which were brought
against him were ungrounded, and often serve to call attention to
passages where he has shown himself specially anxious to meet Deistical
objections. But there were deficiencies and omissions in his teaching
which might very properly be regarded with distrust and alarm. In the
generality of his sermons he dwells very insufficiently upon distinctive
Christian doctrine. His early parishioners of Keddington, in
Suffolk,[280] were more alive to this serious fault than the vast London
congregations before whom he afterwards preached. He has himself, in one
of his later sermons, alluded to the objection. 'I foresee,' he
observed, 'what will be said, because I have heard it so often said in
the like case, that there is not one word of Jesus Christ in all this.
No more is there in the text, and yet I hope that Jesus Christ is truly
preached, whenever His will, and the laws, and the duties enjoined by
the Christian religion are inculcated upon us.'[281] Tillotson never
adequately realised that the noblest treatise on Christian ethics will
be found wanting in the spiritual force possessed by sermons far
inferior to it in thought and eloquence, in which faith in the Saviour
and love of Him are directly appealed to for motives to all virtuous
effort. This very grave deficiency in the preaching of Tillotson and
others of his type was in great measure the effect of reaction. Brought
up in the midst of Calvinistic and Puritan associations, he had gained
abundant experience of the great evil arising from mistaken ide