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 Restoration 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 accepted the terms of the Restoration settlement and did not feel compelled to separate from the Church, the narrow, high church exclusivism embodied in the 1662 Act of Uniformity failed to satisfy him. I will hope to explain his objections and consider his influence over events. Finally, I shall ask to what extent the Church of England by the time of his death had come to conform to his vision of the Church; and, indeed, whether it was even further from his ideal than had been the Church of Juxon and Sheldon.

 

Tillotson's ecclesiological position can be understood to have emerged from the tension created between the Puritanism of his background and the Anglicanism that he was first impressed by and later embraced as a cleric. Born in 1630 in Sowerby, near Halifax, to a Puritan family, he was exposed to the teachings of Calvin and the Presbyterian life of worship from his earliest days. His father, an honest, well-respected, prosperous clothier, could afford to give him a sound education and in 1647, at the age of seventeen, he moved to the University of Cambridge where he proved a conscientious and able student. He joined the college of Clare Hall, renowned for its Puritan allegiances, where to begin with he found himself "in entire sympathy with everything that was Puritan". He regularly attended the services of the Presbyterians, his favourite preachers, and immersed himself in the Supralapsarian theology of William Twisse². He was also, however, introduced to a range of religious, philosophical and intellectual currents of the age that broadened his mind and led him to question the education of his upbringing. Notably, he was deeply impressed with the rational nature and broad moderation of the theology of William Chillingworth, as expounded in his famous and influential "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation." The movement of religious humanism, deriving from the work of the former Cambridge scholar, Jeremy Taylor, also caught his attention.³ Yet without doubt what impressed him the most was the new, very distinctive doctrine of the now famous group of religious philosophers remembered as "The Cambridge Platonists." Together, these influences opened Tillotson's mind and helped him develop a position of moderation which Tillotson saw entailed that his true spiritual home lay in Anglicanism.

 

Although he did not join the group of Cambridge Platonists, he knew and learnt from many of its members- men such as Benjamin Whichcote, the provost of King's, John Smith and Henry More, fellows of Queens and Christs respectively, and from Ralph Cudworth.⁴ What he learnt in turn profoundly influenced his theology, the performance of his pastoral duties and the style, character, and indeed much of the content of his numerous works: both his books, of which there were few, and his sermons, of which there were many and for which he is mostly remembered. But they also, more importantly, determined to a great extent his beliefs about the nature of the Church; about the correct means for enlarging its membership and upholding its cause; and about the correct attitude to adopt towards those in dissent from it.

 

The Platonists esteemed the faculty of reason as a universal human quality. If correctly utilised, it provided the surest and ultimate authority in religion; one with which, necessarily, Biblical revelation could not be incompatible. This marked a clear departure from the Puritan subordination of reason to the Bible which Tillotson had been familiar with and which had invested authority, rather, in the infallible dictat of Calvinist theology. To the Platonists, in the wake of this high view of reason, it followed that it was through rational demonstration that the truths of religion should be defended, spread and inculcated into the minds of the people; and not any longer through coercion or the sanction of law. Only by being rationally convinced of the truth can a man hold it, so they believed. External assent without inner conviction was not good enough, being only insincere and hypocritical. In the words of Cragg, "If a man did not see the Truth, he must be shown it by the methods of persuasion; if he did no amount of coercion could justify him in forsaking it." Naturally, this provided an intellectual argument for a legal toleration of religious error, one that the Platonists felt entirely comfortable with, believing toleration to be the only stance compatible with man's rational nature and the inherent dignity that this afforded him.

 

The other main tenet of Cambridge Platonist theology was that the essence of religion subsisted in the promotion and practice of morality.⁶ This took as its cue a resolute rejection of predestinarian soteriology, which they charged with sanctioning an implicit antinomianism.⁷ God had not preordained it that only a select few would find salvation and  avoid the eternal damnation of hell. Rather, the mercy of God extended to all and was  conditional only on their response. This response, moreover, so they held, would follow from a rational apprehension of God's truth and subsequently issue in a life of good conduct and moral devotion. This devotion, moreover, would be enacted through a moral code that was as intrinsic a part of the universe as God himself and which, like God, could be discovered and understood through reason.⁸ These three emphases of the Platonists, on reason, toleration and  morality were later clearly evident in Tillotson's ministry, informing and colouring his stance towards all theological issues.

 

Alongside this positive impression that the claims of Anglicanism made on him at Cambridge, it should be noted that during the 1650s a growing disillusionment with Puritanism had also taken hold. This disillusionment was the consequence of a growing revulsion he felt at the seemingly unmitigated enthusiasm and extremities of the Puritan party. One particular incident in 1658 left a very forcible impression. A week after Cromwell's death, Tillotson was present at a Puritan religious service for the family of the deceased and reported later to his friend Burner that in the prayers "God was as it were reproached with Cromwell's services, and challenged for taking him away so soon." Goodwin, who had earlier assured the family that the Protector would not die, proclaimed to God "Thou hast deceived us and we are deceived." Later, Sterry added in words spoken about Richard, the new Protector, which to Tillotson seemed almost blasphemous:  "make him the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person."⁹

 

Within three years of this experience, he had converted to Anglicanism. His first curacy was- at Cheshunt, where he stayed until June 1663. Then, at his next post at Keddington in Suffolk he proved unpopular with his largely Puritan congregation, an experience that reveals the direction in which his theology had developed.¹⁰  The problem, to his biographer Birch, was that this congregation’s familiarity was with a " Religious system….directly opposite to that more rational one of real and genuine Christianity, upon which he had formed all his discourses to them." After a five month stay in Suffolk, his growing reputation as a preacher brought him to Lincoln's Inn as Chaplain. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Tuesday lecturer at St.Lawrence Jewry's, joining John Wilkins, the vicar. There he stayed, preaching and writing until 1669 when Charles II appointed him Royal Chaplain. Retaining his post as Tuesday Lecturer in London, he also moved to Canterbury where he became a Prebend in the same year and Dean three years later under the then Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon and from 1678 under Archbishop Sancroft. He remained Dean at Canterbury until after the accession of William and Mary, though also took up a Prebendary at St. Paul's in 1675. In early 1689 he left Canterbury, perhaps under pressure from the, by then, "Non-Juring" Sancroft to replace Stillingtleet as Dean of St. Paul's, at the same time resigning his Prebendary at that Church. In the same year and by that time a good friend of King William, he was appointed Clerk of the King's closet. Finally, in April 1689, against his own wishes and after much persuasion from a King who felt sure he could not find a suitable alternative to the ejected Sancroft, he submitted humbly to the King's design and was made Archbishop of Canterbury, the post for which he is most remembered. His primacy was to be short. He died, struck down by a second apoplectic seizure, seven years after his first, and died on November 22 1694. ,

 

Throughout this eminent and ultimately distinguished career Tillotson remained on

the "Low" or "Broad” wing of the Church, despite his personal repudiation of the doctrines of Puritanism. Enough of his original faith remained to alienate him from the alternative "High" Episcopalianism, and he was, to the end, a member of that group of men called the "Latitudinarians", so named by their opponents as a term of abuse. Apart from Tillotson, who was their most famous representative, this group included such men as John Wilkins, whose "Principles of Natural Religion" Tillotson edited, Simon Patrick, Edward Stillingfleet, Thomas Tennison, and John Sharp. On all these the influence of the Platonists is clearly visible. Low Church, moderate and conciliatory, they sought to preach the truths of religion in a clear, logical and rational way, to spread and exalt morality and to oppose what they saw as the three enemies of the faith: the idolatry and superstitiousness of Rome, the enthusiasm and hypocrisy of the Puritans and the licentiousness and indulgence of atheism; yet to pursue these enemies in a spirit of moderation and charity. I^-'

 

By his enemies Tillotson was often accused of compromising the interests and threatening the constitution of the Church with his moderate, charitable approach towards outsiders.¹⁵ Yet to Tillotson, such a spirit of moderation was integral to the character of the Church. Rather than being a threat, it was of great importance to its establishment. In 1662, in a preface to a volume of sermons written to defend John Wilkins’ character, he writes:

 

"...moderation is a virtue, and one of the peculiar ornaments and advantages of the excellent constitution of our Church, and must at last be the temper of her members, especially the Clergy, if ever we intend the firm establishment of the Church.."¹⁶

 

He opposed zeal and fierceness, viewing them as counter-productive. In matters of doctrine he reasoned that "no man that is in error thinks he is so"; consequently, "if we go violently to rend their opinions from them, they will hold them up so much the faster."¹⁷ Instead, the correct approach was to show patience and undermine errors by degrees until at last they fall in pieces of themselves. Yet zeal was not only opposed because he considered it ineffective as a style of argument; he also rejected state-sanctioned coercion, the frequent result of zeal, when exercised by those in power. To him, as he makes plain in a sermon preached before the House of Commons, the spirit of persecution was "directly opposite to the main and fundamental precepts of the Gospel, which command us to love one another, and to love all men, even our very enemies; and are so far from permitting us to persecute those who hate us, that they forbid us to hate those who persecute us."¹⁸ Instead, he enjoined on others and sought himself to practise the virtues of mercy, forebearance and patience. He refers to the example of Christ who "went about doing good to the bodies and souls of men", including heretics and schismatics, and intended that his religion "should be propagated in humane ways, and that men should be drawn to the profession of it by the bonds of love, and by the gentle and peaceable methods of Reason and Persuasion.." Clearly such an attitude to toleration would logically embrace all people, including Roman Catholics.

 

Tillotson, however, in his opposition to religious coercion was motivated by more than just an idealistic adherence to the spirit of the Gospel. More practical considerations also moved him. Tillotson reasoned, throughout his ministry, that in the light of the ever advancing threats posed by a resurgent Roman Catholicism and the new spirit of scepticism and apostacy it was imperative that the Church be as strong a bulwark as possible in order resist these dangerous tides of idolatry and unbelief. In Tillotson's mind, Atheism and Roman Catholicism were bound together in the same web of evil. Indeed, in the spread of scepticism Tillotson perceived the covert work of the Papacy since he felt that it was the Papacy's intent to make men atheists so they could the more easily be made Papists.

 

The strength of the Church relies on the one hand on internal unity, but also on the size and comprehensiveness of the Church, on its ability to, as much as possible, be the Church of the Nation. He lamented the degree of zealous disputation over matters of Church Government and Liturgy  between fellow members of his Church and warned that without internal concord the Church by "cherishing heats and divisions" in itself stood in danger of letting in Popery "at the breaches." ¹⁹ in addition, however, he reasoned that a fragmented Protestantism would pose a weaker defence of resistance against the Romish threat than an enlarged National Church. Whiltst the latter, provided the problem of internal dissent could be resolved, would be "firmly united and compacted in all its parts", a disunited Protestantism could only be "like a foundation of sand to a weighty building; which, whatever shew it makes, cannot stand long, because it wants union at the foundation, and for that reason must necessarily want strength and firmness."²⁰ As his biographer says, he pursued an entire union of Protestants "not only on account of the general advantage of it; but likewise of the particular one of forming a stronger barrier against the perpetual encroachments of the see of Rome. ^"21 In order to win converts, since coercion was not acceptable, he instead pursued the policy known as Comprehension, a means whereby some of the more moderate Puritans, without yielding up their convictions, could be encompassed by the Church through certain concessions in matters of Church discipline and ceremonies. This, however, could never hope to embrace all Protestants, but only those whose theologies were near enough to Anglicanism to be potentially reconcilable. For the rest, all that could be hoped for was the development of a peaceful, harmonious relationship between them and the Church. Such would not increase the size of Church but would build that much needed defensive union amongst Protestants. It would also increase the chances of these Protestants being won over to the Church by rational argument. The gesture to encourage such a relationship would be toleration.

 

The various Christian peoples who concerned his attentions should now be examined. I shall start with the High Anglicans. Then I shall look at the Roman Catholics and the various Protestant groups of Independents and Separatists. Associated with these Protestant Christians belong a younger, more independent generation of Presbyterians who, during the course of Charles II's reign, became a distinct group within Presbyterianism. Finally, I shall consider the more traditional, moderate group of Presbyterians whose ecclesiological aspirations were less innovative and more in keeping with the past. I shall consider these two sets of Presbyterians separately because whilst the former sought toleration, the legal right to worship as separatists outside the Church, the latter strove for their own comprehension within it. Although all these Christians shared in common a desire to escape religious persecution, they pursued different routes to that freedom. I shall not be concerned with the Atheists, Socinians and Deists. Not being Orthodox Christians, they hold no relevance to Ecclesiology except in the way outlined above, in that they increased the need Tillotson felt for a strong and broad Protestant Church to be established as a bulwark against them.

 

After the unprecedented ecclesiastical upheavals of the Interregnum years, in the 1660s the newly re-established Church of England was faced with the difficult task of pursuing a policy of restoration and reaction against the background of almost two decades of theological and ecclesiastical turbulence. Naturally, after the return of the Monarchy, the intention of the Anglicans was as much as possible to return the Church to the form it possessed prior to the revolution. The idea that there existed a strong, necessary relationship between Monarch and Church held universal currency amongst Anglicans, having received considerable intellectual justification in the writings of Filmer and Hooker. Since they were interdependent, their fates must rise or fall with one another (as the experience of the previous two decades had proved). Therefore, it was expected and considered natural that the restoration of the Monarchy would go hand in hand with that of the Church. In this expectation they were not to be disappointed. And the form Anglicans expected the Church to take would be, as before: Episcopalian and Laudian. Once again, their expectations were realised.

 

Just as in the political sphere all institutions were restored, and life, as much as possible, returned to how it was before the revolution, so also in the ecclesiastical sphere the Church of Charles II, in terms of Government, doctrine and liturgy, bore few marks of departure from its pre-revolutionary predecessor.²² Meanwhile, what was held to be to blame for the disasters of the preceding decades was "enthusiasm", the individualistic experientialism of the Puritan Gospel. Such an enthusiasm still posed a threat, as the recent insurrections of the "Fifth Monarchists" in January 1661 proved.''²³ In consequence, the prevailing forces in the Church demanded the full, complete rehabilitation of the pre-Interregnum Church.

 

Looking at the Catholics and other Protestant dissenters, we see that after the Act of Uniformity these Christians were consigned to their separate denominations outside the Anglican Church. Their ecclesiastical standing reverted to the form it took prior to the Civil War, albeit with one, important difference- they came increasingly to seek, expect and demand toleration. The hopes of Catholics for toleration rested in the knowledge that the King covertly and his brother, the Duke of York, more openly, and then explicitly after 1670, sympathised with the Catholics and wanted, at the very least, to free them from persecution. Understandably, they hungered for freedom, to be extended the right to worship. However, they were also motivated by another interest. Except during the reign of Queen Mary, Catholic hopes that a restoration of Roman Catholicism could arise from within the country, as opposed to be imposed by the intervention of a continental power, had been undermined, not only by the anti-Catholic spirit of so much of the Protestant populace, but by the continued existence of the draconian Elizabethan penal laws. If only these could now be suspended by Royal prerogative, or better still legally revoked in Parliament, the true faith at last would be in a position to take more effective strides towards winning back the hearts and loyalty of apostate England.

 

As for the Protestant separatists, the Baptists, Independents and Quakers, these groups had enjoyed an unprecedented degree of freedom and power under Cromwell. Naturally, such a status was not to be given up lightly. However, given the reactionary circumstances and unlikelihood of the Anglican regime granting them the same possibilities for power and influence that the Republic had, their hopes rested mainly on a return to freedom - the hope for power being tied to the necessity of perpetrating another revolution; and despite Anglican fears to the contrary, there was not a widespread desire for such an upheaval amongst the majority of Dissenters.

These demands for freedom and therefore toleration, however, because they sought an acknowledgement of legal status outside the establishment, confirmed these Dissenter’s contentedness to remain there. They also show that, with increasing confidence, they had their sights set on altering a fundamental ecclesiological assumption of Reformation England - that there must be, and only is, one legal, National Church. If such an assumption disappeared, after all, they would be left alone by the State. It would no longer be supposed that those in dissent from the Church had no right to worship outside it and must therefore be coerced to join²⁴.

Amongst the above group of Dissenters seeking toleration should be included a new group of Presbyterians whom Sir Joseph Williamson Williamson, assistant to Lord Arlington at the Home office, christened the Ducklings, in opposition to "The Dons" who represent the more traditional, old fashioned traditions and aspirations of The Presbyterians.²⁵ These new Presbyterians, the chief of whom was Samuel Annesley, aligned themselves with the Ecclesiological aspirations of the Independents and wanted to be accorded toleration as a separate worshipping communion.

 

To the moderate Presbyterians, however, hopes for freedom were tied to the hope of Comprehension, of their being included within the Post-Interregnum Church. To understand this it is necessary to consider that the settlement of 1662. Although the restored Church witnessed a clear continuity with the past, it also differed from the Jacobean Church withn respect to the criteria and scope of Church membership. Prior to the commencement of Presbyterian Church reform in 1641, Presbyterians were encompassed alongside Episcopalians in the National Communion, albeit a communion beset by continuous, sometimes furious, internal disputes. After the enforcement of the rulings of the new act on St. Bartholomew's day 1662, however, the situation changed. Those clergymen unable to consent to the High Church character of the settlement were forcibly expelled from their benefices. This action resulted in the loss of some two thousand men and created a new, more explicit and formal divide between Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Such moderate Presbyterians, like Baxter, Bates and Pool, displeased at the failure of the Government to honour the promises of Comprehension expressed in the earlier Declaration of Breda,²⁶ found themselves in a position where, unless they compromised the Puritan ideals for which they had fought and their Presbyterian forebears struggled so valiantly to see prevail in the National church, they would be left with no option but to leave the Established Church and  join the ranks of Dissenters as "Non-Conformists". Given that they did not want to leave the Church permanently, however, their efforts focused on Comprehension, on winning their freedom through reincorporating themselves into the Church and so returning the Church to its pre-revolutionary structure.

The relevance to Tillotson's ecclesiology of the conflicted position in which it left these moderate Presbyterians was considerable and the difficulties caused by this development were to absorb a large degree of Tilloson's attention. For Tillotson remained a Low Churchman despite his belief in the superiority of Episcopacy and excellence of the Book of Common Prayer.  He shared with Presbyterians like Baxter, Manton, Bates and Pool the belief that the Act of Uniformity was negative in its effect on the scope of Church membership. That said, his reasons for feeling that way differed from the Presbyterians. He harboured no designs, like they did, to extend the cause of non-Episcopalian Puritanism against the interests of an Anglicanism he had only recently committed himself to. Nevertheless, he still sympathised with the plight of the persecuted Presbyterianians, (as indeed he did with that of all non-Anglicans, including the Catholics) and shared their desire for an end to their sufferings.

 

Tillotson also, as we have seen, believed in the importance of maintaining a strong and secure National Church. This belief, of course, was universal to Anglicans but to Tillotson the strength of that Church did not rely on excluding those who could not assent to all the prescriptions of a particular view of Church practice. On the contrary, it relied on accommodating within the Church as many Protestant Christians as it conceivably could (notwithstanding the obstacle of the scrupulous Puritan conscience). In order to do that and so strengthen the Church by absorbing greater numbers, Tillotson felt it was necessary to acknowledge that there were certain matters of Church practice that were matters of "indifference", technically known as adiaphora.²⁷

Tillotson, despite being met with the persistent accusations of displaying an unorthodoxy of a Socinian, if not Deist nature²⁸, remained, throughout his life, consistently orthodox in matters of doctrine. Where he was flexible and tolerant of a certain diversity, however, was in matters he considered open to a justifiable range of interpretation and practice- matters relating to prayer, smaller details of the liturgy and various Church ceremonies. For the sake of his ideal universal Church and the related purpose of reducing as much as possible the population of Dissenters, Tillotson believed that these matters of convention should not be, as they were, a source of unnecessary, destructive conflict within the communion of Protestants.

To the High Anglicans, however, concessions were anathema, because, if given, they would symbolize that the Puritans had been correct all along in reviling the ordinances of the Church as sinful. They also thought that if they conceded once, pressures for further changes might well escalate endlessly. Meanwhile, to the moderate Presbyterians the matters which Tillotson called "indifferent" were in fact sinful if not interpreted in the correct way. In consequence, although these Dissenters were happy for Episcopalians to be flexible and adapt towards their requirements, they themselves were not happy to adapt to anyone else’s. All the compromising, therefore, would have to take place on the Anglican side. This stubborness on the part of both parties ultimately spelt the death of Comprehension. Tillotson pressured the Church men but also admonished the Dissenters and did not spare them from the blame he attached to this overscrupulous obsession with adiaphora.

We can understand Tillotson's exasperation in the following appeal to Reason:

"Are not the things, about which we differ, in their nature indifferent? That is, things about which there ought be no difference among wise men? Are they not at a great distance from the life and essence of Religion, and rather good or bad as they tend to the peace and unity of the Church, or are made use of to schism and faction, than necessary or evil in themselves."

"You, who spend the strength and vigour of your spirits about external things, whose zeal for or against ceremonies is ready to eat you up; you who hate and persecute one another because of these things, and break the necessary and indispensable commands of love, as an indifferent and unnecessary ceremony, Go and learn what that means, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice," which our Saviour doth so often inculcate... .And study the meaning of this, "God is a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth."²⁹

 

Tillotson's first involvement in an attempt to improve the situation of the Protestant Dissenters was in January 1668. Under the instigation of the new Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and Lord Chief Baron Hale, a series of conferences took place between Anglican and Presbyterian representatives. Tillotson joined Bishop John Wilkins, Dr Stillingfleet and Hezekiah Burton in consultations with leading moderate Presbyterians Thomas Manton, William Bates and Richard Bates. The hope was to agree terms for a Comprehension Bill that would later be put to Parliament. According to Birch, the plan was to secure a "comprehension of such of the Dissenters, as could be brought into the communion of the Church, and a toleration of the rest."³⁰ Terms were agreed and expectations raised that reform would occur. A simple proposal approving the "doctrine, worship and Government" of the Church of England was required of Dissenters. Kneeling at the cross, the cross in Baptism, and bowing at the name of Jesus, however, were defined as optional and the troubling problem of the re-ordination of clergyman previously ordained by Presbyters resolved through a formula for admission that conferred legal authority to preach and administer the sacraments.³¹ The recent fall of Clarendon, the respect Nonconformist ministers recently earnt by their conduct in the Plague and Great Fire and the thought that the current trade depression might entice the Government to reverse depressive effects that persecution was having on the economy, gave the Bill a plausibility it never would have held before.  Unfortunately, however, a mood of great suspiciousness towards all Dissenters, kindled by a recent upsurge of defiance, led the Bill to be rejected by vote in the Commons on 8 April 1668.³²

Six years later in 1674 Tillotson was involved in a further attempt at Comprehension. Two years before this attempt, however, the King had granted a Declaration of Indulgence- liberty to all persecuted subjects for a twelve-month period - which had roused the indignation of Parliament. As a result, the King was forced to revoke this Declaration. A spirit of persecution would once again set a negative background to the attempt at Comprehension and the measure was blocked, this time by Bishops Morley and Ward, before even coming to Parliament.³³ Because of the two periods of High Church Tory supremacy, between 1675 and 1678, and 1681 and 1685, the intervening period, following the Popish Plot, was the only remaining period of Charles II's reign when Comprehension stood a chance of success. During this time, in 1680, Tillotson was involved in another attempt to encompass the Dissenters. But when Whig supremacy crumbled in the parliamentary dissolution of March 1681, so did the Bill, defeated only two days after it was introduced. The anti-Puritan reaction lasted well into James' reign and so long as it persisted hopes for Comprehension could not be raised.³⁴

 

What altered the situation was the growing realisation amongst Tory Anglicans that James intended to subvert the Church and re-impose Catholicism on the nation. His strategy of wooing Dissenters with promises of Indulgence led, in response, to the formation of an unexpected alliance between the Church and Dissent. For the first time since 1662 the Church embraced the aspirations of the Dissenters and countered James' promises of Indulgence with those of their own. Archbishop Sancroft and the bishops also acknowledged the need for Comprehension. Yet the dependence of this alliance on the threat of Catholicism entailed that after the flight of James the old rivalries and suspiciousness towards the Dissenters returned. This new division only became more stark when William and Mary ascended the throne in 1689 and caused the schism of the "Non-Jurors", the party of men who, although incensed at James' policy, remained loyal to him and never intended his overthrow, only his repentance.³⁵

Nevertheless, King William was intent on a degree of Indulgence and achieved his aim with the passing of the Toleration Act in May 1689. This year also witnessed Tillotson's final attempt to achieve Comprehension, however. He suggested to the King that a measure be obtained through a meeting of Convocation since if the Church and not merely Parliament was involved Roman Catholic critics would be less able to criticize the reform as merely Erastian and political. Tillotson sat on the Ecclesiastical Commission convened in October to prepare proposals for Convocation. However, by this time Jacobite and Non- Juring opinion had become intent on stalling the measure in Convocation. They fomented a spirit of alarm in the Nation, spreading rumours that the Latitudinarians were secretly promoting the plans of Presbyterianism and sought the corruption of the Church. Consequently, when Convocation met the following month, fears that Puritanism, if admitted into the Church, would cause the same strife in England it was causing in Scotland led the proposals to be quickly rejected by the conservative lower house.³⁶ Comprehension would now become a closed issue until well into the reign of Queen Anne. Tillotson, as primate, did not take advantage of his power to try again, fearing, in accordance with his own Irenic principles, that if Comprehension was now passed, although some Dissenters would be encompassed, a new schism, in addition to that division developed by the rebellion of the Non­Jurors, might very well emerge. Ironically, the same peaceable instincts that had earlier led him to pursue Comprehension now led him to ignore it.

Towards toleration Tillotson's policy was complicated. Although he desired toleration for all, his principal energies were directed to securing a measure of Comprehension, the increase  in the size of the Church. However, even though it was a secondary goal, it remained important. On the one hand, as we have seen, he opposed whatever persecution was undertaken merely for the sake of religion. Necessarily, therefore, because the absence of persecution is a legal toleration he believed in such a toleration as a moral right, even for Roman Catholics. On the other hand, in the case both of Roman Catholics and certain Protestant Dissenters, he seems to display a certain reluctance towards it.

 

Such an ambiguity and inconsistency of attitude can be especially noted with respect to the Roman Catholics. Despite his general opposition to their persecution, in 1673, 1687 and 1688, Tillotson opposed the policy of first Charles and then James to extend toleration to Catholics by way of three general declarations of indulgence. In explanation, we can consider the danger he would have perceived a liberated Catholic community, with the support of the Court, to entail for the Protestant future of the nation. That all three declarations had been made by Royal Prerogative, circumventing Parliament and so showing an absolutist disregard for the Law only increased the danger they posed. For if Monarchs were to be allowed to pursue their Catholic hopes in such an arbitrary fashion, nothing could prevent them from taking even stronger steps towards their goal. During James’ reign, this danger was particularly acute because from 1686 he had already, without the consent of Parliament, taken numerous steps towards the subversion of the Church.³⁷

 

Indeed, it can be one thing to believe, in accordance with Cambridge Platonist idealism, that in a secure Protestant nation Roman Catholics should be freed from persecution and only exposed to the pressures of conversion in the form of rational persuasion. But if toleration, in fact, is perceived as the first step on a path to the reconversion of the nation to a religion that has no sympathy for the freedoms of conscience, the picture at once becomes more complicated. After all, to empower through toleration an absolutist group of people who themselves favour coercion for heretics might itself in the long run in turn imperil toleration. Of course, at the same time we should remember that Tillotson, the former Puritan who could never entirely shed the values of his upbringing, never lost those virulent anti-Catholic prejudices so characteristic of the Puritan party. They lived on in him, disposing him to view the toleration of Catholics in an instinctively suspicious light. Tillotson's deep distaste for Roman Catholic Theology is clearly evidenced in a number of works, written between the Act of Uniformity and the Reign of James II³⁸ He considered their doctrine erroneous, unscriptural, idolatrous, blasphemous, innovative, and because of that heretical. This theological aversion disposed him to wish no unnecessary encouragement to their Church. But then, if his reservations had been only theological, the force of his idealism in favour of toleration would probably have swayed him to support it. It was the added political threat Catholics posed that confirmed his attitude. After all, the Catholics had always been hostile to Puritanism, because of their political associations, historical relationship to the English Monarchy and claims to supremacy. The essence of his objection, therefore, was political. Although in theory his designs for toleration included Catholics, in reality the interests of Protestantism were greater, especially if these interests would be endangered by an acquiescence to Catholic freedom. This inconsistency must lead us to modify the importance that toleration held for him in practice.

 

Yet the Declarations also granted freedom to the Dissenters, Christians whose freedom Tillotson whole-heartedly supported. They were, however, unattended by an accompanying measure of Comprehension and so would threaten to further the aims of the "Ducklings", the separatist Presbyterians. In addition, even if their negative effects on Comprehension are not considered, the route to toleration they proposed was far from ideal. Since this freedom was granted by Royal Prerogative it could be revoked as easily as it was given, whilst that given to Catholics could remain and be built upon. Even in the very unlikely event that the Declarations had only alleviated the Dissenters Tillotson would still have opposed them as illegal, reversible acts that would signal to the Monarch the acceptability of a type of illegal maneuver which in the future could be turned to the assistance of the Catholics.

 

As we saw, to Tillotson, Comprehension had the advantage that it would enlarge the Church of England. It would lessen the number of dissenting voices lying outside it and for that reason the Church would be stronger, embodying more than ever the kind of universal Church of England Anglicanism desired and prove a stronger bulwark against the potentially devastating threats posed by Roman Catholicism and scepticism in all its forms. But a measure of toleration would not have such benign effects on the Church since toleration is the legal recognition of non-­Establishment religion, not the expansion of the established Church. In addition, a toleration of dissenters would necessarily liberate those more moderate dissenters who could most conceivably have been comprehended, those who desired to be in the Church and had only been excluded because of the Act of Uniformity. Therefore, comprehension was prioritized over toleration. After all, if toleration and the freedom to worship in peace came first, the incentives for dissenters to join the Church would be fewer and the numbers content with permanent schism might grow. Moreover, those Anglicans who opposed Comprehension would have more weight in their arguments if a major justification for it, the distress of the dissenters, had been removed beforehand by toleration. Tillotson therefore believed that, pursued in the correct order, comprehension before toleration, two of his goals, as opposed to one, would be realised. Not only would the religious persecution of Englishmen cease, but the Church would be larger, and so stronger against Catholicism and atheism.

In conclusion we can see that the ecclesiological aspirations of Tillotson were only partly realised at the time of his death. Where he was to find his hopes most fulfilled was in relation to curtailing the political power of Roman Catholicism. The successful establishment of two Protestant Monarchs had removed from power the Roman Catholic King who through extravagant and illegal means was intent on the destruction of the Church and the reintroduction of Catholicism. In consequence, England was now free from pressure from Rome which, since 1660, had to a varying but always constant extent threatened to gain ground through the sympathy extended to it by the courts of both Stuart Kings. A Protestant succession was also now legally guaranteed, so in a sense the Protestant identity of Britain was more secure than it had ever been since the reformation.

 

Turning to more strictly religious matters, we see a partial success with respect to toleration but a failure regarding Comprehension, his key ecclesiological goal. Through the Toleration Act of 1689, toleration had come to a significant extent to be reflected in the Church. Moreover, it had been secured in the correct legal manner, by an Act of Parliament and not through an illegal, arbitrary, easily reversible use of the Royal prerogative. To this extent Tillotson's ideal of a secure, non- coercive Protestantism was realized. However, the toleration granted was very restricted in its scope. It extended only to orthodox Protestant dissenters - the Presbyterians, Baptists, Independents and Quakers – but was denied to Roman Catholics, Christians who denied the Trinity, and to the Socinians, Arians and Deists, as well as the growing contingent of atheists. The Act, moreover, didn't repeal the various Penal Laws , the "Five mile Act" and Conventicle acts but only rather freed Dissenters from the actual penalties of these laws³⁹. A small point perhaps but nonetheless significant.

Also, we see that the reforms of the Glorious Revolution did not extend to Comprehension, Tillotson's primary goal. The size of the Church, therefore, was not expanded through the incorporation of those Dissenters, the moderate Presbyterians, who wished to accommodate their Puritanism inside the Church; and who, Tillotson felt, could reasonably be incorporated through yielding concessions to them in matters of indifference. The legal toleration of these potentially reconcilable Dissenters, moreover, also indicated that the Church set the forms of worship above the scope of membership in importance, and that the Church was more similar to just another denomination than what it was always meant to be - the Church of the nation. Therefore, Tillotson's hopes of broadening the Church proved friutless. Also, because the Toleration Act was not preceded by Comprehension and also granted freedom and recognition to Presbyterianism outside the Church, it reflected and supported the aspirations of the more extreme "Ducklings" that Presbyterianism should content itself with being in permanent schism. This, in turn, entailed that their view of the future of Presbyterianism would gain more and more adherents since the practical blessings of toleration diminished the incentive to find peace inside the Church. Over the course of the next century, indeed, independence became an accepted fact to Presbyterians, and with desires for Comprehension much diminished any hope for it at all could only fade away.

 In addition, we should consider the fragmentary effects of the new Church schism that was caused by the ejection of the "Non-Jurors". Their principled loyalty to oaths sworn to King James II led to a breach in the established Church the consequence of which was to render it even narrower than after the ejections of 1662. This unforeseen tragedy of the 1689 settlement - ironic since it involved the departure of men who opposed the policies of James H no less vigorously than their fellow countrymen - is one more testimony to the only limited degree to which English Christianity had come to accord with his ideal. That it entailed the Church shrinking to a size even smaller than it was when Tillotson was ordained even shows that far from progress being made there had in fact been a regression.

Therefore we find that although Tillotson, in the strengthened security of the Protestant throne, saw that much of what he wanted politically had been achieved, in religious matters he was less successful. Not only had he failed to restore the tradition of broad church unity, lost in 1662, he was a witness to the development of a new Church fragmentation. The gains made towards toleration were indeed a consolation, but were not nearly as far-reaching as he’d hoped they would be. Nevertheless, the failure of comprehension and more especially the rise of the principle of toleration did mean, however, that the only method the Church of England could now use to propagate its truth was the rational practice of persuasion so beloved of Tillotson. Nevertheless, the Church had proved itself unwilling to yield in those matters Tillotson called indifferent. In such an unwillingness it would persist. Clearly this, if he’d lived to see it, would have disappointed Tillotson. But the Church lives by spreading the Word, by guaranteeing and extending the faith, by winning converts. Except in the case of Roman Catholics, non-Trinitarians and atheists, who being denied toleration could still be ‘persuaded’ to convert and join the true faith by coercion, the means of coercion were no longer available to the Church for the evangelization of the orthodox Protestants. Against these, only rational demonstration, a genuine persuasion which could not threaten, would be used and could be hoped to prevail. In this we see one sense in which the ecclesiological practice of Tillotson became a feature of the Williamite Church and was to shape its future development. 

Note: I apologise for the lack of footnotes and bibliography. This is why this paper is only posted on my blog and not on Academia.edu. If they turn up, I will add them here.