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DOING GOOD

BY

JOHN TILLOTSON

JOHN TILLOTSON

1630-1694

John Tillotson, an eminent divine and Archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Sowerby, in Yorkshire, in 1630. His father, Robert Tillotson, was a clothier and a zealous puritan. It is remarkable that under such circumstances his son should turn out the most broadminded churchman of his age. Tillotson was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts in 1654.

The writings of Chillingworth are said to have had a guiding influence on Tillotson while a student, but he owed much to his intercourse with Cudworth, More, Smith, and other eminent scholars. At the age of twenty-six, in 1656, he became private tutor in the family of Edmund Prideaux, Attorney-General under the Protector, and a few years later he went to London. The circumstances and the year of his taking orders are not known, but we find him a preacher in 1661 attached to the Presbyterian party in the Church of England. At the famous Savoy Conference he was present on the Presbyterian side, but he submitted at once to the Act of Uniformity. In 1663 he was appointed to the rectory of Keddington in Suffolk, but almost immediately after was chosen preacher at Lincoln's Inn. Here his mild, evangelical, and undoctrinal morality was at first little relished. However, as the graces of his character gradually displayed themselves, his popularity increased, especially when it was found that, although not a Puritan, he was not inclined towards atheistic views. During the fifteen years now following Tillotson wrote and published his best known sermons. In 1664 appeared the one On the Wisdom of being Religious," followed_by The Rule of Faith

66

in 1666, the latter a reply to a work by an English clergyman who had gone over to the Church of Rome. About this time he was made a doctor of divinity and in 1670 a prebend of Canterbury. Two years later he was promoted to a deanery.

In 1680 Tillotson published a sermon entitled "The Protestant Religion Vindicated from the Charge of Singularity and Novelty." In this he upheld the principle of state religion, which he abandoned later as untenable. On the accession of William III, Tillotson rose in high favor; he was raised to the see of Canterbury in 1691, made vacant by the deposition of Sancroft. This honor, which he accepted reluctantly, brought him no peace, the non-juring party pursuing him with unrelenting rage to the end of his life, but their animosity did not bring a single murmur or complaint or vindictive retaliation from the meek, humane, and tolerant primate. Tillotson did not long enjoy the new dignity; he died of palsy in 1694, at the age of sixty-four. The copyright of his sermons, reported to have been of considerable pecuniary value, was the only legacy he left to his widow, a niece of Oliver Cromwell. His sermons were at one time very popular and ranked as examples of the most finished oratory. Doing Good," the sermon we have selected here, is an example of this order.

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