It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly
it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is
the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite
untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a
church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that
holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a
meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a
more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe
Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his
friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was
more than a match for Knott[2] to be sure.
I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the
idea of a church on the true foundation.
[Footnote 1:
"The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a
Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,'
which pretends to prove the contrary."]
[Footnote 2:
Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge
against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed
the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of
July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years
immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent,
beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in
which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this
passage:--"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of
this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against
the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the
most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the
argument drawn from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost
always defendants, and scarse ever opponents, _he shall not choose but
confesses or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of
Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy_." The truth is,
however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been,
had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man than of the
being of God.