as on
free grace and justification by faith only. He had seen doctrines
'greedily entertained to the vast prejudice of Christianity, as if in
this new covenant of the Gospel, God took all upon Himself and required
nothing, or as good as nothing, of us; that it would be a disparagement
to the freedom of God's grace to think that He expects anything from us;
that the Gospel is all promises, and our part is only to believe and
embrace them, that is, to believe confidently that God will perform them
if we can but think so;'[282] 'that, in fact, religion [as he elsewhere
puts it] consists only in believing what Christ hath done for us, and
relying confidently upon it.'[283] He knew well--his father had been a
bright example of it--that such doctrines are constantly found in close
union with great integrity and holiness of life. But he knew also the
deplorable effects which have often attended even an apparent
dissociation of faith and morality; he had seen, and still saw, how deep
and permanent, both by its inherent evil and by the recoil that follows,
is the wound inflicted upon true religion by overstrained professions,
unreal phraseology, and the form without the substance of godliness. He
saw clearly, what many have failed to see, that righteousness is the
principal end of all religion; that faith, that revelation, that all
spiritual aids, that the incarnation of the Son of God and the
redemption He has brought, have no other purpose or meaning than to
raise men from sin and from a lower nature, to build them up in
goodness, and to renew them in the image of God. He unswervingly
maintained that immorality is the worst infidelity,[284] as being not
only inconsistent with real faith, but the contradiction of that highest
end which faith has in view. Tillotson was a true preacher of
righteousness. The fault of his preaching was that by too exclusive a
regard to the object of all religion, he dwelt insufficiently on the way
by which it is accomplished. If some had almost forgotten the end in
thinking of the means, he was apt to overlook the means in thinking of
the end. His eyes were so steadfastly fixed on the surpassing beauty of
Christian morality, that it might often seem as if he thought the very
contemplation of so much excellence were a sufficient incentive to it.
His constantly implied argument is, that if men, gifted with common
reason, can be persuaded to think what goodness is, its blessedness
alike in this world a