Intellectually he was a man of eminence;[229] what Burnet advances cannot be gainsayed; for Tillotson’s writings indicate a rare amount of common sense and of calm judgment, the more remarkable in an age of manifold passions;[230] and he shows eminent precision and force in stating propositions and arguments, at a time when a great deal of loose reasoning passed muster. His sermons are chiefly remarkable in this point of view. Free from Puritan stiffness, and what many would call Puritan enthusiasm, free also from that academical affectation which had so long offended pure taste,--they were couched in the language of common life, and people felt a strange pleasure, which they could not describe, at hearing from the pulpit language such as they heard at their own fireside. He seems to have aimed at that which ought to be the object of every Christian preacher, to translate the truths of the Gospel into such forms of thought and utterance as were suited to the age in which he lived. He spoke upon religion just as men talk upon every-day topics; and thus he brought down Divinity to the level of his congregation. He could be earnest and even vehement in the inculcation of truth and duty; and never would he be more acceptable to a large class of his hearers than when, with tact and warmth, he exposed the errors of Popery--an opportunity for doing which he rarely, if ever, missed. His habit, too, of insisting upon the reasonableness of almost everything he taught would coincide with the current which, in educated circles, had strongly set in against the enforcement of morality and religion on grounds of authority. Preachers not only help to promote, but they reflect the spirit of their own times. Their modes of teaching are fashioned by it. A reaction had arisen against the authority of the Church, of the Fathers, of the Schoolmen, and of the Reformers; consequently, sermons filled with quotations and appeals to great names were no longer in request. Even Scripture came to be less favourably used in the way of exclusive authority, than in the way of addition to the force of reasoning. Texts were with many not so much corner-stones, as pillars and buttresses. Tillotson made a large use of Scripture, but the common key-note with him was the reasonableness of the doctrines he laid down. I should suppose that his appearance, his voice, and his manner in the pulpit--the fact of what he was, as well as the circumstance of what he said, and that indefinable something which contributes so much to a speaker’s popularity--added immensely to the impressiveness of his elocution. There is for modern readers nothing attractive in his style, quite the reverse. I know scarcely any other popular sermons so hard to read. Some are exceedingly dry and uninteresting.[231] From natural temperament he lacked what is signified by the word _unction_. He has no strokes of pathos, and the spirit of his theology adds to the defect, by depriving his