Tillotson's Ecclesiology
My intention in this paper is to examine the contribution of the Reverend John Tillotson, the eminent restoration divine, to the ecclesiological debates of the R estoration Church. Tillotson's unexpected death in 1694, three and a half years after being raised to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, limits for me the period of Church history I shall examine to the beginnings of his career until the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. I am not concerned to enquire into the posthumous influence Tillotson's life and writings had on the ongoing ecclesiological controversies which, in the new context of the Williamite settlement, were to develop in new directions and continue well into the eighteenth century. I shall investigate, rather, Tillotson's ecclesiological standpoint, asking what kind of a Church of England it was that he envisioned and struggled to see established in the formative years of the Post- Interregnum Church. It will be seen that although he