prudential religion, throughout the
period which set in with the Revolution of 1688, is closely associated
with the name of Tillotson. It is certainly very prominent in his
writings. His keen perception of the exceeding beauty of goodness might
have been supposed sufficient to guard him from dwelling too much upon
inferior motives. Tillotson, however, was very susceptible to the
predominant influences of his time. If he was a leader of thought, he
was also much led by the thought of others. There were three or four
considerations which had great weight with him, as they had with almost
every other theologian and moralist of his own and the following age.
One, which has been already sufficiently discussed, was that feeling of
the need of proving the reasonableness of every argument, which was the
first result of the wider field, the increased leisure, the greater
freedom of which the reasoning powers had become conscious. It is
evident that no system of morality and practical religion gives so much
scope to the exercise of this faculty as that which pre-eminently
insists upon the prudence of right action and upon the wisdom of
believing. Then again, the profligate habits and general laxity which
undoubtedly prevailed to a more than ordinary extent among all classes
of society, seem to have created even among reformers of the highest
order a sort of dismayed feeling, that it was useless to set up too high
a law, and that self-interest and fear were the two main arguments which
could be plied with the best hopes of success. Thirdly, a very mistaken
notion appears to have grown up that infidelity and 'free-thinking'
might be checked by prudent reflections on the safeness of orthodoxy and
the dangers of unbelief. Thought is not deterred by arguments of
safety;[299] and a sceptic is likely to push on into pronounced
disbelief, if he commonly hears religion recommended as a matter of
policy.

In all these respects Tillotson did but take the line which was
characteristic of his age--of the age, that is, which was beginning, not
of that which was passing away. Something, too, must be attributed to
personal temperament. He carried into the province of religion that same
benign but dispassionate calmness of feeling, that subdued sobriety of
judgment, wanting in impulse and in warmth, which, in public and in
private life, made him more respected as an opponent than beloved as a
friend. To weigh evidence, to balance probabilities,