Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/262

Chillingworth worked through the prepossessions 'which by his education had got possession of his understanding,' and sought for a reasonable basis of belief. He rested upon scripture interpreted by reason, and did not seek to discover any perfect system of dogma or practice. He was not interested in setting up the church of England against the church of Rome, but was contented to convince himself that a man, honestly in search of truth, could find it in the scriptures, and that no claims of infallibility could be maintained against the right of the enlightened conscience to bring everything to the test of learning and rational investigation. Tried by these tests he found nothing erroneous in the teaching of the church of England, but he declined to take orders because he was not convinced that every proposition contained in the Thirty-nine Articles could be proved from scripture, and he regarded the articles themselves as an 'imposition on men's consciences,' resembling the authority claimed by the church of Rome to utter infallible definitions of dogma (, Letters to Sheldon, p. 78, &c.)

It was natural that the Romanists should attack with some bitterness a convert from whom they had hoped much, whose conduct had been marked by such apparent irresoluteness; while, at the same time, Chillingworth's new position did not commend itself to protestant zealots. The divines of the Laudian school, however, combined great doctrinal tolerance with a love for outward order, and treated Chillingworth with consideration while they strove to overcome his scruples. They recognised his value as a controversialist, and, however much Chillingworth may have wished to hold aloof from controversy, it was forced upon him. His former friends among the Romanists assailed him with reproaches, which he answered by temperate arguments against the chief positions on which they rested their attacks. Thus he wrote to John Lewgar, a convert to Romanism, a letter giving 'Reasons against Popery,' and further held a conference with Lewgar in which they discussed the Roman claims of infallibility and catholicity. The same controversy also seems to have given rise to a short treatise of Chillingworth's, 'A Discourse against the Infallibility of the Roman Church.' About the same time he engaged in a similar controversy with a jesuit known as Daniel, whose real name was John Floyd, against whom Chillingworth took up the formal ground that the contradictions involved in several of the Roman doctrines were a conclusive proof against the infallibility of the church. A third disputation was held before Lord Digby and Sir Kenelm Digby with Mr. White, the author of 'Rushworth's Dialogues,' on the subject of tradition. A summary of all these controversies is contained in the detached pieces which were published in 1687 under the title of 'Additional Discourses of Mr. Chillingworth.'

All this, however, was but preparatory to Chillingworth's great work, which was the result of accidental circumstances, and suffers from its accidental form. Rarely has a work of such importance been weighted by so much extraneous matter, for Chillingworth is not only answering an enemy, but defending a friend at the same time. The controversy to which Chillingworth brought all his learning and all his thought arose from the publication in 1630 of a book called 'Charity mistaken, with the want whereof Catholics are unjustly charged for affirming, as they do with grief, that Protestancy unrepented destroys salvation.' The writer was a jesuit, Edward Knott, who was answered by Dr. Potter, provost of Queen's College, Oxford, in a book called 'Want of Charity justly charged on all such Romanists as dare (without truth or modesty) affirm that Protestancie destroyeth salvation' (1633). The jesuit replied in 1634 in a work entitled 'Mercy and Truth, or Charity maintained by Catholics.' The nature of the controversy is sufficiently indicated by these titles, and the question thus raised was precisely the one which interested Chillingworth most deeply. He had become a Romanist through his longing for certainty; he found that a more logical organisation gave no greater certainty, but made more demands upon the intellect; he had abandoned Romanism because he discovered that the problem was an individual problem, and that a universal solution was unattainable. He accordingly undertook to spare Dr. Potter the trouble of replying to Knott's pamphlet, and set to work to answer it himself. For this purpose he went to the house of his friend, Sir Lucius Cary (then Lord Falkland), at Great Tew in Oxfordshire. There he found a well-stocked library and a man of congenial temper, with whom he might discuss the various points in the argument which he was preparing.

The news of this intention of Chillingworth caused some stir; it was a great point for the Anglicans that their champion was one who knew the ways of the jesuits, and could answer them from personal experience. Knott, in the heat of the fray, adopted an unworthy means of putting his adversary at a disadvantage. In 1636 he issued a pamphlet, 'A Direction to be observed by N. N. if hee