[Footnote 183: Monk's _Life of Bentley_, vol. i. See also Berkeley's _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, 107.] [Footnote 184: Advertisement to the first edition of _The Analogy_, p. xiv. See also Swift's description of the Duchess of Marlborough, in _Last four Years of Queen Anne_, bk. i. The first and most prominent subject of Bishop Butler's 'Durham Charge,' is 'the general decay of religion,' 'which,' he says, 'is now observed by everyone, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious persons' (written in 1751). The Bishop then instructs his clergy at length how this sad fact is to be dealt with; in fact this, directly or indirectly, is the topic of the whole Charge.] [Footnote 185: He wrote to Courayer in 1726,--'No care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian Faith against all assaults, and I believe no age or nation has produced more or better writings, &c.... This is all we can do. Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds,' &c.] [Footnote 186: Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293.] [Footnote 187: _Guardian_, No. 3.] [Footnote 188: _Guardian_, No. 88.] [Footnote 189: _Examiner_, xxxix. See also Charles Leslie's _Theological Works_, vol. ii. 533.] [Footnote 190: _Tatler_, No. 108.] [Footnote 191: _Tatler_, No. 137.] [Footnote 192: See _Amelia_, bk. i. ch. iii. &c.] [Footnote 193: Dedication of first three books of the _Divine Legation_. See also Pattison's Essay in _Essays and Reviews_.] [Footnote 194: Farrar's _Bampton Lectures_, 'History of Free Thought.'] * * * * * CHAPTER IV. LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP. (1) CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON'S THEOLOGY. 'Latitudinarian' is not so neutral a term as could be desired. It conveys an implication of reproach and suspicion, by no means ungrounded in some instances, but very inappropriate when used of men who must count among the most distinguished ornaments of the English Church. But no better title suggests itself. The eminent prelates who were raised to the bench in King William III.'s time can no longer, without ambiguity, be called 'Low Churchmen,' because the Evangelicals who succeeded to the name belong to a wholly different school of thought from the Low Churchmen of an earlier age; nor 'Whigs,' because that sobriquet has long been confined to politics; nor 'Broad Churchmen,' because the term would be apt to convey a set of ideas belonging to the nineteenth more than to the eighteenth century. It only remains to divest the word as far as possible of its polemical associations, and to use it as denoting what some would call breadth, others Latitudinarianism of religious and ecclesiastical opinion.