The religion of reason and the reason for religion: John Tillotson and the latitudinarian defense of Christianity, 1630--1694

To a generation of Englishmen who were weary of religious dispute and political instability, John Tillotson's message on the reasonableness of Christianity, religious comprehension, and anti-Catholic polemicism was welcomed with much gratefulness. Yet, while some works have been written about Tillotson's role (with John Wilkins) in the important transformation of English prose after the Restoration, less is known about the theology of the man who reluctantly chose to lead the Church of England during a complex period that would be marked by the rise of Deism and skepticism.; Historians have portrayed Tillotson as a mere moral preacher who, in attempting to form a via media position between dogmatism on the one hand and “enthusiasm” on the other, subverted the orthodox tradition of the English Church. The historiographic consensus contends that Tillotson and other Latitudinarian preachers abandoned their Reformation heritage only to create a Christianity beset with rational moralism and devoid of doctrinal clarity and vitality. Emphasizing the practical over and against the speculative aspects of Christianity, Tillotson is thus identified with the Deism, Pelagianism, and pagan moralism that would emerge in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, while some works have interpreted Tillotson's theology within the context of the Latitudinarians, these works focus primarily on “public” documents such as published sermons, treatises, pamphlets, etc. None of the works utilize significant “private” manuscript materials such as personal letters and diaries to nuance their analyses.; The portrayals of Tillotson as a mere moral and rational preacher, however, have little relation to the man who emerges from his 254 sermons and his personal writings. They fail to do justice to the complex context that surrounded the Latitudinarians during the Restoration—especially their efforts to defend the Church from her multiple enemies without and to realize a unified Protestant church within.{09}Arguments that identify Tillotson with Deism and moralism do not fully assess the texture of Tillotson's thought in light of internal personal motivations as well as external political and religious circumstances that impacted his life and thought.; The aim of this dissertation is to uncover the diverse components of Tillotson's defense of Christianity—found primarily in his sermons—that shaped his thought and life. It seeks to answer this central question: What were the central motivations that elicited and shaped John Tillotson's defense of Christianity? This dissertation will argue that the two primary motivations that drove Tillotson's defense of Christianity were (1) the desire for intellectual certainty, and (2) the desire for communal stability. Tillotson desired to provide the English people with a defense of Christianity that not only made religion more accessible to a greater number of people, but also safeguarded true religion from its many enemies.