Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/402

 royal command. Gunning complained of it in the House of Lords as playing into the hands of Rome. John Howe [q. v.], in the same strain, drew up an expostulatory letter, and delivered it in person. At Tillotson's suggestion they drove together to dine at Sutton Court with Lady Fauconberg (Cromwell's daughter Mary), and discussed the letter on the way, when Tillotson ‘at length fell to weeping freely’ and owned his mistake. Yet the passage was never withdrawn, and is scarcely mended by a qualifying paragraph added in 1686. The nonconformists never treated Tillotson's doctrine as levelled against themselves, knowing that by ‘the establish'd religion’ Tillotson meant protestantism. It is plain, however, that the principle of obedience to constituted authority, as providential, was accepted by him from the period of the engagement (1649) onwards. His famous letter (20 July 1683) to William Russell, lord Russell [q. v.], printed ‘much against his will,’ maintains the unlawfulness of resistance ‘if our religion and rights should be invaded;’ his subsequent exception of ‘the case of a total subversion of the constitution’ is rather lame in argument, though quite consistent with his real mind, protestantism being identified with the constitution. He is said to have drawn up the letter (24 Nov. 1688) addressed to James II by Prince George of Denmark [q. v.] on his defection from his father-in-law's cause; that this letter identifies the Lutheran religion with that of the church of England is no disproof of the story.

He preached before William at St. James's on 6 Jan. 1689; on 14 Jan. a small meeting was held at his house to consult about concessions to dissenters, with Sancroft's approval. On 27 March he was made clerk of the closet to the king; in August the Canterbury chapter appointed him to exercise archiepiscopal jurisdiction, owing to the suspension of Sancroft; in September he was nominated to the deanery of St. Paul's (elected 19 Nov., installed on 21 Nov.). Apparently he had declined a bishopric, but, on his kissing hands, William intimated that he was to succeed Sancroft. This was on Burnet's advice, and was contrary to the inclination of Tillotson, who honestly thought he could do more good as he was, and have more influence, ‘for the people naturally love a man that will take great pains and little preferment.’ In a later paper (13 March 1692) he allows ‘that there may perhaps be as much ambition in declining greatness as in courting it.’

The Toleration Act was carried without difficulty (royal assent 24 May 1689); a bill for comprehension was passed by the lords with some amendments, but on reaching the commons it was held over for the judgment of convocation. Burnet felt that this would ruin the scheme. Tillotson's strong common-sense was alive to the odium of a new parliamentary reformation, and urged William to summon convocation and appoint a smaller body to frame proposals for its consideration. A commission was issued to thirty divines (including ten bishops) on 13 Sept. 1689. On the same day Tillotson formulated seven concessions which would ‘probably be made’ to nonconformists. The commission met on 3 Oct., and held sittings till 18 Nov. Very extensive alterations in the prayer-book found favour with a majority, the chief revisers being Burnet, Stillingfleet, Simon Patrick [q. v.], Richard Kidder [q. v.], Thomas Tenison [q. v.], and Tillotson (full details were first given in ‘Alterations in the Book of Common Prayer,’ &c., printed by order of the House of Commons, 2 June 1854). Tillotson also had a scheme for a new book of homilies.

Convocation met on 21 Nov. Much canvassing had taken place for the elected members of the lower house, who were predominantly high churchmen, the man of most note being John Mill [q. v.] Tillotson was proposed as prolocutor by John Sharp (1645–1714) [q. v.], his successor in the deanery of Canterbury. William Jane [q. v.] was elected by 55 votes to 28; his Latin speech, on being presented to the upper house, was against amendment, and closed with the words ‘Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari.’ The leaders of the lower house ignored the commission, declining to give nonjurors occasion to say they were for the old church as well as for the old king. Ineffectual attempts were made to win them over. On 24 Jan. 1690 convocation was adjourned, and dissolved on 6 Feb.

The state of contemporary feeling is well illustrated by the outcry against Tillotson's sermon on ‘the eternity of hell torments,’ preached before the queen on 7 March 1690. He sought to give reality to the doctrine, presenting it as a moral deterrent, but was accused of undermining it to allay Mary's dread of the consequences of her action as a daughter. Hickes makes the groundless suggestion that he borrowed his argument from ‘an old sceptick of Norwich,’ meaning John Whitefoot (1601–1699), author of the funeral sermon for Joseph Hall [q. v.] Whitefoot's ‘Dissertation,’ which maintains the destruction of the wicked, is printed in Lee's ‘Sermons and Fragments attributed to Isaac Barrow,’ 1834, pp. 202 sq. (cf., Works, ed. Napier, 1859, i. p. xxix).