Until the end of his life he remained a protagonist in theological controversy and a keen fighter against latitudinarianism and liberalism; but the sharpest religious or political differences never broke his personal friendships and his Christian charity.
He must have been a much hated man, for his latitudinarianism offended the high church party and his rationalism the other sections.
Even some cultured theologians, the historical representatives of latitudinarianism, seem to accept the great body of what was contended for by the deists.
The most acrimonious of all his works is his Defence of Justification by Faith, an answer to what Bunyan calls "the brutish and beastly latitudinarianism" of Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the taint of Pelagianism.
His " latitudinarianism " was the result of extraordinary reverence for truth, and a perception that knowledge may be sufficient for the purposes of human life while it falls infinitely short of speculative completeness.